Category Archives: War

SIFF 2022: Hinterland (**1/2)

April 24, 2022 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 23, 2022)

Stefan Ruzowitsky directed this expressionist police procedural set in post WWI Vienna. A PTSD-afflicted veteran (Murathan Muslu) who was a policeman before the war is drawn into the investigation of a serial killer who is picking off his former fellow POWs one-by-one. A cross between Babylon Berlin and Sin City (with a hint of Berlin Alexanderplatz), it’s stylish and visually arresting, but hobbled by slow pacing and a boilerplate murder mystery. Co-written by the director, along with Robert Buchschwenter and Hanno Pinter.

Drama, War, Writers

Nomadland: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (***½)

June 7, 2021 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 5, 2021)

Writers spend an inordinate amount of time sitting around and thinking about writing. To the casual observer it may appear he or she is just sitting there staring into space, but at any given moment (trust me on this one) their senses are working overtime.

Consequently, films about writers and/or writing can be a tough row to hoe (how do you parlay the seed of inspiration blooming in a writer’s mind into a visual?). Consider Caroline Link’s When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, of which I had no idea was a semi-autobiographical story about the germination of a writer until a screen crawl at the end informed me so.

The writer in question is Judith Kerr (who passed away at 95 in 2019, just months before the film premiered in Germany). I was an avid reader as a kid, but somehow missed Ms. Kerr’s trilogy of children’s books “Out of the Hitler Time”. First published in 1971, “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” was volume one of that series (as I have come to learn).

This family-friendly drama (adapted from Kerr’s novel by Link with Anna Brüggemann) centers on 9-year-old Anna Kemper (Riva Krymalowski), who lives with her parents and her older brother Max (Marinus Hohman) in late Weimer Germany. Her mother (Carla Juri) is a classical pianist, and her father (Oliver Mascucci) is a high-profile theater critic.

As this is Berlin in 1933, the elephant in the room is one Adolph Hitler, who is on the verge of dominating the imminent election. And as the Kempers are Jewish, this is not the ideal time for them to be in Berlin. While the Nazis have yet to “officially” seize control, Anna’s dad has been an outspoken critic of Hitler for a spell and awaits the election results with consternation. Informed that he’s on the Nazis’ “list”, he takes a trip to Prague, instructing his family to meet up with him in Switzerland should Hitler prevail.

When Hitler prevails, the family must pack quickly and skedaddle. They also must pack light, forcing Anna to make a difficult choice to leave her beloved stuffed pink rabbit behind, under the watchful eye of the family’s devoted housekeeper (Ursula Werner). Soon after the family reunites in Switzerland, Anna learns that the Nazis have not only absconded with Pink Rabbit, but all the Kemper’s possessions (and burned Dad’s books).

Despite the country’s alleged neutrality, things get a little hot in Switzerland after a few months and the family moves to Paris. When word reaches the Kempers that the Nazis have put a price on dad’s head, they eventually have to flee France to merry old England.

The initial scenes of the family hiking through lush Swiss Alpine scenery suggests you may have been roped into an unofficial remake of The Sound of Music, but ultimately When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is better viewed as The Diary of Anne Frank with a less heartbreaking postscript. I don’t intend that as a glib observation; after all, the wartime experiences of young “Anna” mirror those of Kerr herself…this is her life story.

The film is not really “about” Hitler, the Nazis, or even WW2. Rather, it is about the resilience of children, and the power of a child’s imagination. Through Anna’s eyes (helped immensely by young Krymalowski’s wonderful performance) I found myself transported back to that all-too-fleeting “secret world” of childhood. It’s that singular time of life when worries are few and everything feels possible (before that mental baggage carousel backs up with too many overstuffed suitcases, if you catch my drift).

Certain elements of Anna’s story resonated with me in a personal way (aside from the fact that she and I both had a Jewish mother). I think it’s because I grew up as a military brat. It’s a nomadic life; not so much by choice as by assignment. In the military, you follow orders, and if you have a family, they follow you. To this day, no matter where I’m living, or how long I have lived there, I feel like a perennial “outsider”.

One way I coped with the constant uprooting was to retreat into my rather vivid imagination. I remember creating comic books (mostly involving adventures in outer space) featuring characters named after friends I met along the way. I also wrote short stories for my own amusement. I hadn’t thought about that in years, but was triggered by watching Anna noodle caricatures and such throughout the film (Judith Kerr also did the illustrations for her books).

Nazi Germany is something we can only hope never again occurs in any way, shape, or form. There are myriad films you can watch if you wish to steep in the utter horror of it all. But even during wartime, life goes on. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is best likened to the selective recollections of a carefree childhood: no matter what the harsh realities of the big world around you may have been, only the most pleasant parts will forever linger in your mind.

(“When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” is currently streaming via SIFF Channel)

Historical drama, Spy vs Spy, Thriller, War

SIFF 2021: The Spy (**1/2)

April 18, 2021 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 17, 2021)

Swedish director Jens Jonsson’s WW2 drama is based on a “rumored” story regarding famous Norwegian-Swedish actress Sonja Wigert. After Sonja (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) shuns the advances of German occupied Norway’s reichskommissar Josef Terboven (Alexander Scheer), he arranges to have her father arrested by the SS (as spurned Nazis do). Swedish intelligence offers to help free her father if Sonja agrees to get chummy with Terboven so she can gather intel (they are eager to find out if/when the Germans plan on invading Sweden).

The film drags in the first half, which is essentially a series of fetes and elegant dinners where Sonja flirts and mingles with high-ranking Nazis, but eventually delivers on its “spy thriller” billing with added layers of subterfuge and intrigue. While not destined to be mentioned in the same breath as Mephisto or The Last Metro, The Spy is a stylish (if workmanlike) genre entry. The screenplay was written by Harald Rosenløw-Eeg and Jan Trygve Røyneland.

Documentary, Family Issues, War

SIFF 2021: The Earth is Blue as an Orange (***)

April 12, 2021 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 10, 2021)

“Life during wartime” is not all about soldiers, generals, and politicians. The most overlooked participants are those who did not ask to be in the thick of it…the civilians caught in the crossfire. They are not spending time obsessing over borders, strategy, or ideology. They are just trying to keep their heads down and go about with their daily lives. Such is the plight of the Ukrainian family in this one-of-kind documentary.

Filmed near Donbass, Ukraine over a 2½-year period during and after the 2014 war in the region, it chronicles the daily life of a single mother and her four children. The mother is a writer, and one of her daughters is an aspiring film maker. There are times when the conflict intrudes (like when artillery shells explode much too close for comfort), but director Iryna Tsilyk avoids sensationalism and focuses instead on showing us the humanity of her subjects.

Adventure, Drama, War

Blu-ray reissue: Five Graves to Cairo (***)

December 14, 2020 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 12, 2020)

Five Graves to Cairo – Kino Classics

Billy Wilder’s 1943 war drama tends to get short shrift from film scholars (understandable if held up next to Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment and other heralded entries in the director’s impressive canon), but it’s solid, slam-bang “popcorn” fare for movie night.

Five Graves to Cairo was the second Hollywood feature from the Austrian-born film maker. Adapted by Wilder and Charles Brackett from the Lajos Biro play “Hotel Imperial”, it is essentially a chamber piece set in a remote hotel in the North African desert. Like Casablanca (released a year earlier), it is a contemporaneously produced WW2 adventure brimming with intrigue, selfless heroics and of course-evil Nazis.

In this case the chief villain is a real-life WW2 luminary, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, played with larger-than-life aplomb by veteran scene-stealer Erich von Stroheim (who would give his most memorable performance 7 years later in Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard).

Leading man Franchot Tone portrays a wounded British tank crewman who stumbles into the hotel half-alive a few days before Rommel and his entourage arrive for a rest from the desert campaign. Anne Baxter and Akim Tamiroff round off the excellent principal cast.

Kino’s Blu-ray features a 4K remaster that highlights John F. Seitz’s cinematography and an enlightening commentary track by film historian Joseph McBride.

Adventure, Historical drama, Religion, War

Blu-ray reissue: The Last Valley (***)

July 20, 2020 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 18, 2020)

The Last Valley – Kino-Lorber

Films set in Germany during The Thirty Years War are a niche genre…but as far as films set in Germany during the Thirty Years War go, one could do worse than this nearly forgotten but worthwhile drama from writer-director James Clavell.

The “outsider” is a recurring theme in Clavell’s work; and this tale is no exception. In this case the “outsider” is a two-headed beast in the form of an apolitical war refugee (Omar Sharif) and the ruthless Captain (Michael Caine) of a small contingent of mercenaries who both stumble upon a “hidden” valley whose residents have somehow managed to remain unscathed by the ravages of war and the Plague.

The Captain is ruthless (he would just as soon slit your throat as look at you) but also pragmatic; he decides against his initial impulse to kill Sharif, pillage the sleepy hamlet and move on after the quick thinking and silver-tongued Sharif convinces him it would be better all-around to spare the residents in exchange for putting his battle-weary soldiers up for the winter. The villagers, who seem malleable and complacent at first, come to reveal their own brand of pragmatism. A well-mounted period piece that also works as a timeless observation of human behavior in survival situations.

Kino-Lorber’s transfer of this 1971 film is excellent (although it does not look restored) and the audio quality is decent, which serves John Barry’s rousing score quite well. The only extra is a new commentary track, by a trio of film historians. It gets overly chatty at times with three people, but for the most part the observations are enlightening.

Sci-Fi, War

Blu-ray reissue: Slaughterhouse-Five (***1/2)

December 23, 2019 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 21, 2019)

Slaughterhouse-Five – Arrow Films

Slaughterhouse-Five – Film adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut stories have a checkered history; from downright awful (Slapstick of Another Kind) or campy misfires (Breakfast of Champions) to passable time killers (Happy Birthday, Wanda June and Mother Night). For my money, your best bets are Jonathan Demme’s 1982 PBS American Playhouse short Who Am I This Time? and this 1974 feature film by director George Roy Hill.

Michael Sacks stars as milquetoast daydreamer Billy Pilgrim, a WW2 vet who weathers the devastating Allied firebombing of Dresden as a POW. After the war, he marries his sweetheart, fathers a son and daughter and settles into a comfortable middle-class life, making a living as an optometrist.

A standard all-American postwar scenario…except for the part where a UFO lands on his nice, manicured lawn and spirits him off to the planet Tralfamadore, after which he becomes permanently “unstuck” in time, i.e., begins living (and re-living) his life in random order. Great performances from Valerie Perrine and Ron Leibman. Stephen Geller adapted the script.

Arrow’s 4K restoration is superb. Critic Troy Howarth contributes one of the more entertaining commentary tracks I’ve heard in a while. Extras include new interviews with Perry King (who played Billy Pilgrim’s son) and film music historian Daniel Schweiger.

War

Blu-ray reissue: Apocalypse Now Final Cut (****)

December 23, 2019 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 21, 2019)

Apocalypse Now Final Cut – Lionsgate

“Are you an assassin, Willard?” This nightmarish walking tour through the darkest labyrinths of the human soul (disguised as a Vietnam War film) remains Francis Ford Coppola’s most polarizing work-a masterpiece to some; pretentious hokum to others. Me? I love it. Remember…never get outta the boat.

I know what you’re thinking (aside from “Saigon…shit…I was still in Saigon”). Do you really need to double, triple, quadruple-dip and buy another “upgraded” home video edition of this film? Well, the “final cut” label assures a certain…finality. It’s not a marketing gimmick; Coppola really has assembled a new (and final?) edit for this edition.

First, I will say this new ‘final cut” neither detracts from, nor necessarily adds anything of a particularly revelatory nature to, the famously scattershot narrative of the piece as we know and love it. That said, it’s worth noting that this is the first time the film has been scanned from the original negative and gone through a meticulous frame-by-frame restoration, and it shows. It’s a truly stunning transfer, with newly remixed audio to boot.

Extras are plentiful; including co-directors Eleanor Coppola, Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper’s excellent (theatrically released) 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which recounts the harrowing, trouble-plagued production of the film, which almost killed star Marin Sheen (he suffered a heart attack and had to be flown to the U.S. mid-shooting) and drove Coppola to the edge of a nervous breakdown. Also included are the Apocalypse Redux Extended Cut and the original theatrical version.

Drama, Politics, Up the Workers, War

SIFF 2019: I Am Cuba (****)

May 25, 2019 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 1, 2019)

There is a tendency to dismiss this 1964 film about the Cuban revolution as Communist propaganda. Granted, it was produced with the full blessing of Castro’s regime, who partnered with the Soviet government to provide the funding for director Mikhail Kalatozov’s sprawling epic. Despite the dubious backers, the director was given a surprising amount of creative freedom.

On the surface, Kalatozov’s film is in point of fact a propagandist polemic; the narrative is divided into a quartet of rhetoric-infused vignettes about exploited workers, dirt-poor farmers, student activists, and rebel guerrilla fighters.

However it is also happens to be a visually intoxicating masterpiece that, despite accolades from critics over the decades, remains relatively obscure. The real stars of the film are the director and his technical crew, who will leave you pondering how they produced some of those jaw-dropping set pieces and logic-defying tracking shots!

War

SIFF 2019: Monos (****)

May 20, 2019 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)

Lord of the Flies meets Aguirre: The Wrath of God in this trippy war drama. A squad of teenage South American guerilla fighters undergo intense training for an unspecified contemporary conflict. Initially, it’s just a game to them; but after a bloody skirmish, they rebel against their adult commander and flee into the dense mountain jungle with a female American hostage in tow. Brutal, visceral, and one-of-a-kind. It’s the Apocalypse Now of child soldier films.