About the America that Exiled Him

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2000)

I find this film remarkable. Here you have a man at the peak of his celebrity who has some moral responsibility. How rare! Imagine Michael Jordan risking all (and eventually losing all) in order to do the right thing. This film is a multidimensional risk: he is trying to master the talkie (though his talent is in the visual), he is trying to mix tragedy and comedy (always a hard mix, and nearly impossible when using current events) and he is trying to actually effect his audience, to counter evil in the land.
One must remember that when this was started, Hitler was generally admired in the US and essentially no one at all was standing up for the Jews. (In the film: `first we get the Jews, and then the brunettes.')
I think he succeeds so far as the talkie, but he doesn't stand at the top of the heap, and several years before, the Marx brothers had made their own, superior, antiwar movie (Duck Soup). He succeeds in mixing comedy and tragedy only by alternating, and extending the length of the film.
Concerning his effectiveness in countering evil: his impassioned speech at the end is powerful. But it appears to have had no effect whatsoever. This is the man that McCarthy and friends drove from the US! I think one of his mistakes was portraying the pogrom and invasions as the work of one man, rather than of a whole nation: Germans, not Nazis.