Something not often noted

Rating: 9/10 (15 June 2003)

This film may have its detractors, but I am not one of them. I saw it first in 1963 when I was a graduate student in Germany. What stood out then in everyone's mind was that it was absolutely true to its time and location. The German actors were indeed German, and not all of them were portrayed unsympathetically. Anyone traveling through Germany at that time would see many sections of the larger cities that remained in ruins. Yet there was evident a popular feeling that the country had largely been reborn and had rejoined the mainstream of European life and culture, as had Italy and other formerly fascist states.
Films made shortly after (say, 1948 to 1965) and about about World War II in Europe, whether they were entirely fictional or based on fragments of fact -- as was this one -- seem always to have been either very good or very bad at portraying history within their own internal contexts. This one belongs among the former, together with "The Third Man " "Battleground," "The Devil Makes Three," and -- yes -- "The Sound of Music." The contrast with truly awful stuff like the television comedy "Hogan's Heroes" or action pix like "Guns of Navarone" or tendentious stuff like "The Night Porter" is sharp and painful to anyone sensitive to broader historical truths.
Comments on artistic value and style aside, great movies based on recent history are in part great because they reflect those truths. More fanciful images that distort reality may be chic, but I tend not to value them very highly.