Ludwig Haas Movies
- 1993
The sorry story of the Vichy government of France from 1940 to 1945 is the subject of this thoughtful historical drama. In return for a swift surrender in 1940, the French government was allowed to retain, in Vichy an unoccupied portion of the country. There, at the Hotel du Parc, the government enacted and carried out its own decrees, which paralleled the Nazi persecution of Jews elsewhere. While the film itself simply tells its story in a straightforward manner that reviewers found quite creditable, it is remarkable for the fact that it was actually made and released. Why? Because it punctures the convenient illusions so many had constructed about the period, and reveals that far from being coerced into cooperating with the Germans, a large number (perhaps a majority) of Frenchmen were quite enthusiastic. In fact, the producer found it extremely difficult to get anyone to cooperate in making the film, and it took him over six years to bring together the resources to begin shooting. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jacques Dufilho, Jean Yanne, (more)
Kewpie-doll voiced Melanie Griffith does a sexed-up Nancy Drew turn in David Seltzer's adaptation of Susan Issacs' novel Shining Through. Set during World war II, Griffith plays Linda Voss, a spunky New York girl who applies for a job with international lawyer Ed Leland (Michael Douglas). Ed hires her immediately when he finds out that she speaks German fluently. The reason Ed is so interested in Linda's language skills is because Ed is an undercover OSS officer who needs a German translator. Their business relationship translates into love, but when America enters the war, Ed abandons his law practice to become a full-time spy. Utilizing Linda's charms, she travels to Berlin and infiltrates the Nazis as a domestic to try to discover information about "a bomb that can fly by itself." But Linda has personal as well as patriotic motives for agreeing to go undercover, since she has Jewish relatives in Berlin and wants to find out their whereabouts. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Michael Douglas, Melanie Griffith, (more)
- 1988
Originally shown on television in two parts, the second of which takes place after WWII. Surviving escapee Major John Dodge (Christopher Reeve) is sent back to Germany by Winston Churchill to capture the Gestapo officer who ordered the machine-gunning of 50 of the captured escapees, in direct defiance of the Geneva convention. Donald Pleasance, one of the "good guys" in the original, plays the Nazi villain in the new version. Filmed in Yugoslavia, Great Escape II: The Untold Story was originally telecast November 6 and 7, 1988. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1986
The Dutch-filmed Assault was based on a novel by Harry Mulisch. Presented in a non-linear, flashback/flashword fashion, the film tells the story of a physician whose family was killed by the Nazis during World War II. This came about after the family's neighbors dragged the body of a dead collaborator to their doorstep. The doctor spends his entire adult life trying to find out why his neighbors had betrayed his family. At various isolated moments of political upheaval in Europe, the doctor comes closer and closer to the truth. During a 1984 anti-missile rally, the mystery is solved--and the answer is more complex than anyone back in 1945 had imagined. The hero's "growth" is thus placed in the context of the international turmoil of the four decades following the war. Marc van Uchelen plays the main character as a 12-year-old, while Derek de Lint portrays the adult physician. In a nicely underplayed symbolic touch, Monique van de Ven is cast in a dual role, playing de Lint's wife in the "present" scenes, and an older woman who is murdered by the Nazis because she shelters young van Uchelen in the flashback sequences. The Assault was the "best foreign film" Academy Award winner of 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Derek de Lint, Monique Van de Ven, (more)
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