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TopBilled

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    Neglected films...how would you define a film that's neglected?

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    Today's neglected film is from 1951. It has aired six times on TCM.

    Screen Shot 2021-09-09 at 6.57.01 AM

    I am not too well-versed on Rommel’s career or the German military strategies that were waged against the British and its allies during the second world war. But I don’t think a casual viewer watching this film needs to know all those things. The film is fairly easy to follow. Producer-writer Nunnally Johnson provides us with a nicely paced script, which is based on a biography about the famous field marshal of the third reich. The book was a bestseller and had been written by Lt. Col. Desmond Young.

    Young was a member of the British Indian Army who crossed paths with Rommel, and he appears as himself in this carefully mounted 20th Century Fox production. Key passages of the story are narrated by Fox contract player Michael Rennie, who is supposed to be speaking in Young’s “voice” since these are Young’s own studies and thoughts about Rommel. Young had interviewed Rommel’s widow Frau Lucie, played by Jessica Tandy.

    Screen Shot 2021-09-09 at 7.00.27 AM

    For her part, Tandy does an effective job conveying a housewife who stands by her man all the way, even if he is standing by Hitler and they have their doubts about Hitler. Lucie and Erwin Rommel are depicted as high-ranking members of the Nazi party who ironically oppose Nazism. This characterization by Young has led to myths about Rommel which is a topic of considerable discussion.

    This is a postwar propaganda piece…a piece about a “good” German who was a close friend of Hitler’s in the early days and still led troops that defeated the Allied forces on several important battle fronts.

    Screen Shot 2021-09-09 at 7.01.46 AM

    Perhaps it is easy to glorify the Rommels here, because we want to believe there had to be at least one German officer and his wife who were not Hitlerian puppets. There had to be one couple that was able to think critically and decide on their own terms not to support the barbarism of Der Fuhrer. A major component of this film is that the Rommels are committing treason. However, it’s a form of treason that British and American movie audiences in 1951 would have applauded.

    Part of the film’s purpose is to generate sympathy for the Rommels. And the way James Mason and Jessica Tandy choose to play their scenes does help elicit sympathy, especially when they are interacting with a doctor (Cedric Hardwicke) who wants them to endorse a plan to kill Hitler (Luther Adler).

    Screen Shot 2021-09-09 at 7.01.18 AM

    Going along with such a plan would undoubtedly put the Rommels at odds with their closest associates within the Nazi party. There is even a suggestion in an early scene that the Rommels’ son might be under the thumb of the Nazis, which would make him an enemy of his parents.

    This is a different sort of role for Tandy. She is the only credited female in the entire cast…though there is one uncredited woman with limited dialogue who plays the Rommels’ maid. Tandy gets a chance to stand out a bit because she is providing the only real vantage point for women that may be in the audience watching.

    Shot in a semi-documentary style, we get staged scenes intercut with the newsreel footage…all of it emphasizing the seriousness of war. At first I found this a bit gimmicky and tedious, but as the story continued, I decided that I liked the flavor of actual history that the news clips provide.

    Screen Shot 2021-09-09 at 7.22.14 AM

    Do I consider the Rommels heroic? Well, I don’t exactly think they are like the Von Trapps in THE SOUND OF MUSIC. But from a dramatic standpoint, I enjoy the irony their situation brings to the screen. Incidentally, the studio made a follow-up two years later, THE DESERT RATS (1953), which is a prequel. In that later film Mason returns as Rommel, in active battle along the northern part of Africa. He speaks more German in the second film, and he is a bit more villainous. That’s because he hadn’t yet become a treasonous hero.

    Screen Shot 2021-09-09 at 7.02.53 AM

    • Like 3

    ClassiCategories

    in Games and Trivia

    Posted

    50 minutes ago, Fausterlitz said:

    If I understand correctly what you mean by "business," you're looking for films about people who have to be funny as part of their profession (?) 

    Yes, that's the general idea with today's category.

    Though with every category, we welcome different interpretations! :) 

    • Thanks 1
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