Review of The Mortal Storm

A good film by Frank Borzage, curiously a director who has won 2 Oscars and is practically a stranger. We have seen many films in the second war but few on the awakening of Nazism, when Hitler comes to power in 1933, and the consequences of this in Germany itself, particularly in the families and relations between people, depending on the position of each on ideology of Hitler and Nazism. The first half of the film is extremely well made and credible, with Hitler's supporters wanting to impose the new ideology by force on those who do not refer to that ideology. We see that, very quickly, non-supporters of the regime were persecuted, arrested and even murdered. Hitler's doctrine was quickly assimilated by much of the German youth of the time. Thankfully there were exceptions such as the cases of the characters played by James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, in the figure of two in love that Nazism in Germany threatens to separate. All these aspects are shown very convincingly in the first half of the film. The second half of the movie does not have the same level as the first, being a bit melodramatic and dragged. The film culminates in a beautiful scene filmed by Borzage, with the leading pair, on the run, "getting lost" in the snow...