This is like the ABCs of Naziism. In 1933 Germany there is this perfect family headed by a beloved, elderly professor of physiology, Frank Morgan (the wizard of Oz). His wife is devoted to him and their children, two young men and a girl, Margaret Sullavan. On the old fellow's 60th birthday he is given a tribute in his classroom by two of his students, the medical student Robert Young, and the veterinarian James Stewart. Both of them are in love with Sullavan but Young is the more assertive of the two and seems to be winning her heart.
That night, at dinner, the prof is presented with a birthday cake and the family and guests, including Young and Stewart, applaud when he blows out the candles.
The dinner is interrupted by the radio announcement that Hitler has been appointed chancellor. The festive group creaks for a few moments and then falls apart. Young and the prof's two sons cheer. Germany will now be renewed and the so-called pacifists quieted. The professor himself looks thoughtful. Stewart is patently disappointed. The women voice no opinion but seem worried. Kinder, Kirche, Kuchen.
Overnight -- and I mean RIGHT AWAY -- Robert Young and the prof's two sons begin wearing Nazi uniforms and acting like robots. They denounce the Roth family and Stewart while standing at attention and addressing the walls. They are organized by Gauleiter Dan Dailey, if you can imagine Dan Dailey as a sneering Nazi.
What follows is a kind of Kindergarten lesson on how Fascism works. You must be of Aryan descent to be free of harassment, naturally, and you must be politically correct. Otherwise you are either jailed like the professor, who has been teaching that there are no differences between Aryan and non-Aryan blood, or else you are beaten and finally driven into exile like the dissident Stewart. One by one, the political demands destroy the affectionate world we were introduced to. Stewart and Sullavan try to make their escape over the mountains into Austria, not anticipating that it will be only a temporary haven.
It's a Classic Comic version of the rise of Naziism, boiled down to its value-laden essence. The story doesn't try to explain the nationalistic appeal of Hitler. There's nothing about the resentment and humiliation of the treaty ending World War I. There's nothing about the reparations Germany paid or the explosive inflation that followed. There are virtually no thoughtful conversations about anything. The comic book characters seem to speak in little balloons over their heads.
Yet I think it's a valuable movie. For one thing, there are some gorgeous second-unit shots of mountains under a silvery sheen of snow, stippled with dark evergreens. The final scene, in which we hear Robert Young's boots echoing forlornly in the empty house, is pregnant with loss. For another, the evolution of social relationships lends the movie some poignancy. For another, I honestly believe that this will provide a necessary history lesson for people, mostly youngsters, whose curiosity doesn't extend beyond their own body sheaths. Years ago, Barbara Tuchman gave a lecture on the causes of World War I at a famous Midwestern university and one of the students thanked her, adding that he'd always wondered why the other was called World War II. (That's at a university, not a home for the cognitively challenged.) For another thing, it helps put our current Zeitgeist into the perspective it so desperately cries out for. We're throwing around words like "Fascism" and I doubt that half those using it could define it. And -- isn't it terrible to throw this lovable old professor in jail because the science he teaches is politically incorrect, discordant with what a certain segment of the population wants to hear? "Creationism," anyone? Or will you have "evolutionary theory?" I watched it all the way through, despite its dated qualities, wishing that everyone under the age of, say, fifty could sit through it. This is how bad it can get.
That night, at dinner, the prof is presented with a birthday cake and the family and guests, including Young and Stewart, applaud when he blows out the candles.
The dinner is interrupted by the radio announcement that Hitler has been appointed chancellor. The festive group creaks for a few moments and then falls apart. Young and the prof's two sons cheer. Germany will now be renewed and the so-called pacifists quieted. The professor himself looks thoughtful. Stewart is patently disappointed. The women voice no opinion but seem worried. Kinder, Kirche, Kuchen.
Overnight -- and I mean RIGHT AWAY -- Robert Young and the prof's two sons begin wearing Nazi uniforms and acting like robots. They denounce the Roth family and Stewart while standing at attention and addressing the walls. They are organized by Gauleiter Dan Dailey, if you can imagine Dan Dailey as a sneering Nazi.
What follows is a kind of Kindergarten lesson on how Fascism works. You must be of Aryan descent to be free of harassment, naturally, and you must be politically correct. Otherwise you are either jailed like the professor, who has been teaching that there are no differences between Aryan and non-Aryan blood, or else you are beaten and finally driven into exile like the dissident Stewart. One by one, the political demands destroy the affectionate world we were introduced to. Stewart and Sullavan try to make their escape over the mountains into Austria, not anticipating that it will be only a temporary haven.
It's a Classic Comic version of the rise of Naziism, boiled down to its value-laden essence. The story doesn't try to explain the nationalistic appeal of Hitler. There's nothing about the resentment and humiliation of the treaty ending World War I. There's nothing about the reparations Germany paid or the explosive inflation that followed. There are virtually no thoughtful conversations about anything. The comic book characters seem to speak in little balloons over their heads.
Yet I think it's a valuable movie. For one thing, there are some gorgeous second-unit shots of mountains under a silvery sheen of snow, stippled with dark evergreens. The final scene, in which we hear Robert Young's boots echoing forlornly in the empty house, is pregnant with loss. For another, the evolution of social relationships lends the movie some poignancy. For another, I honestly believe that this will provide a necessary history lesson for people, mostly youngsters, whose curiosity doesn't extend beyond their own body sheaths. Years ago, Barbara Tuchman gave a lecture on the causes of World War I at a famous Midwestern university and one of the students thanked her, adding that he'd always wondered why the other was called World War II. (That's at a university, not a home for the cognitively challenged.) For another thing, it helps put our current Zeitgeist into the perspective it so desperately cries out for. We're throwing around words like "Fascism" and I doubt that half those using it could define it. And -- isn't it terrible to throw this lovable old professor in jail because the science he teaches is politically incorrect, discordant with what a certain segment of the population wants to hear? "Creationism," anyone? Or will you have "evolutionary theory?" I watched it all the way through, despite its dated qualities, wishing that everyone under the age of, say, fifty could sit through it. This is how bad it can get.