NR | 1 h 40 min | Drama | 1940
Frank Borzage’s prescient film, set in early 1930s Germany, stands out even in the subgenre of anti-fascism war films.
Academia loves and respects Professor Roth (Frank Morgan) for his distinguished contribution to science, teaching, and research. But with Hitler’s rise, Roth finds himself distinguished for another reason: being “non-Aryan” (Borzage’s code for Jew).
Roth’s wife Amelie, his stepsons Erich and Otto, his daughter Freya (Margaret Sullavan), his students Martin (James Stewart) and Fritz (Robert Young) love him, too. But Nazi propaganda around Aryan superiority polarizes Roth’s family and friends. Some pick a side; others are forced to.
Lovely Freya symbolizes what’s worth preserving in civilized society (tolerance, humor, courage, love). Both Fritz and Martin eye her as a bride, but only Martin wins her because he doesn’t want to fashion her after himself and his ideals. He loves her for herself.
This MGM production proved so stinging a critique of Nazism that the ideologue Joseph Goebbels shut the Berlin office of MGM’s parent firm and prohibited screening of MGM movies in German territories.
It boasts a rare Western European authenticity. Phyllis Bottome, who wrote the novel that inspired the film, studied under Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler. One of Borzage’s screenwriters, Georg Froeschel, was the son of a Jewish banker in Austria. Morgan’s father grew up in Germany. And Borzage’s father was born in what was once the Austrian Empire.
To Bottome, horror is not what happens once fascism marches, but when it first takes hold of a single soul. She’s not gazing at a ruinous fire or its billowing smoke. Instead, she’s looking for the hands that light the first flame, and for those that’ll work through the night to put it out. Borzage builds on that to show how fascism is no different from a cult that eats you from the inside out.
Being True to Oneself
To Borzage, divisiveness doesn’t begin in fascist party meetings, but in homes, at birthday parties, during fireside chats, on dates, on train rides. Dinner-table conversation during Roth’s anniversary shows how Hitler’s “new” Germany promises a share in “glory” predicated on three falsehoods: Glory lies in the past, it’s been usurped by the present, and it must be restored in the future by cornering perceived threats with a false “with us or against us” choice.Rejecting Nazism’s deceptive dichotomy, Professor Roth, Freya, and Martin prove how a culture of individuality unites; one is true to himself and others. Fritz, Erich, and Otto prove how a cult of individualism divides; one is true to an idea of himself and others, never mind that it’s distorted. With astonishing lack of self-awareness, a Nazi officer warns those hesitant to incriminate free-thinking family and friends as traitors: “In the service of your country, there are no human relationships.”
Roth’s scenes at the university show how anti-intellectualism turns havens of learning into battlegrounds. He’s arrested because he believes that classrooms are places for ideas, not insidious ideology. When Amelie begs the imprisoned Roth to feign obedience to avoid further reprisal, he says: “It would be unworthy of the love that we have for each other, for me to be less than myself.”
Borzage captures how fascists, hollow on the inside, cling to whiffs of shared “glory” on the outside (swastikas, salutes, sworn loyalty). Freya and Martin draw power from loyalty, too, but their loyalty is to truth. Fritz, who swears by Nazism, is powerless because he’s condemned to proving his loyalty, repeatedly. He longs for the power that’s his but which eludes him. When Freya seeks help to find her imprisoned father, Fritz pretends to look down at his desk, but like a proxy, the camera steals a glance at her reflection in a glass-framed swastika above him.
One electrifying scene shows Nazis breaking up friendly revelry in a bar. Nearly to a man, the patrons stand ramrod straight, saluting robotically, swearing allegiance in words and song to “glory”: Hitler’s, the Party’s, Germany’s, their own. Not swearing or saluting, Freya and Martin exchange stunned glances; even in the crowd, they’re alone. Borzage’s camera tracks the frozen couple, enveloped by a colony of outstretched arms sticking out like the barbed-wire fenceposts that would soon envelop the world.
