This is the film that deserved to be made to have it story told, but unfortunately the way it is developed ultimately is its undoing. It's the story of the title character, a smart and well-bred young woman who devotes her existence to helping Hungarian Jews avoid the Nazis. It could easily have been told in a two-hour running time instead we got that recurring musical theme as people just doomed to march around while nothing seems to be happening on screen. Maruschka Detmers is attractive and feisty as the heroine, being given an award in the opening scene yet all of a sudden running out of the room and is declining it when she is confronted by the local law. The scene really makes no sense as it appeared that she was being arrested, but she just bolts leaving everyone remaining including her mother Ellen Burstyn perplexed.
When the film shows Hannah in action, it is quite good, and Detmars is quite commanding. The resistance fighters was a collective group were men and women, adults and children, young and old, all did what they could to keep the Nazis from pulling off their evil plans. Donald Pleasence and David Warner are quite chilling as the Germans whose menacing ways are written on their face. Burstyn sadly is greatly wasted. Is that, even with its tense atmosphere, the photography often makes it claustrophobic, and the film becomes a missed opportunity that certainly could have been done better.
When the film shows Hannah in action, it is quite good, and Detmars is quite commanding. The resistance fighters was a collective group were men and women, adults and children, young and old, all did what they could to keep the Nazis from pulling off their evil plans. Donald Pleasence and David Warner are quite chilling as the Germans whose menacing ways are written on their face. Burstyn sadly is greatly wasted. Is that, even with its tense atmosphere, the photography often makes it claustrophobic, and the film becomes a missed opportunity that certainly could have been done better.