This is one of those films that are impossible to overrate. Everything is overwhelmingly good about it - the story, the acting, the music, the photography, the direction, the suspense and the universal message - it's simply 100% all the way and heart-rending at that - it almost becomes unbearable at certain moments when the children have their say.
It's interesting to observe, that Lilli Palmer and Albert Lieven met once before in leading roles in the screening of Stefan Zweig's "Beware of Pity" 13 years earlier. In that film Albert Lieven was an Austrian officer at the mercy of Lilli Palmer as an invalid terrorizing her environment, and somehow Lilli Palmerr repeats her feat of getting the upper hand of the officer also here but in a very different manner - here she is the survivor.
This is also one of those films that always should be reminded of, as its message couldn't be more sincerely and timelessly vital, how human concerns always must be the main priority in life however hard and pressing the circumstances, and that it's only the heart that can lead you right.
It's interesting to observe, that Lilli Palmer and Albert Lieven met once before in leading roles in the screening of Stefan Zweig's "Beware of Pity" 13 years earlier. In that film Albert Lieven was an Austrian officer at the mercy of Lilli Palmer as an invalid terrorizing her environment, and somehow Lilli Palmerr repeats her feat of getting the upper hand of the officer also here but in a very different manner - here she is the survivor.
This is also one of those films that always should be reminded of, as its message couldn't be more sincerely and timelessly vital, how human concerns always must be the main priority in life however hard and pressing the circumstances, and that it's only the heart that can lead you right.