Hitler: The Last Days (1973/Paramount/Legend DVD)/The Last Flight Of Petr Ginz (2012/First Run DVD)/Only The Young / tchoupitoulas
(2012/Oscillioscope DVD set)/Orchestra
Of Exiles (2012/First Run DVD)/Power
aka “Jew Suss” (1934/Rank/VCI DVD)
Picture:
C/C+/C+ & C/C+/C Sound: C+ (Power: C) Extras: D/C/C+ & C /B-/D Films: C+/C+/C+ & C/B/C
Our
latest round of documentaries and docudramas look at the Holocaust, WWII and
what is missing from a simple look at our world today…
We’ll
start with the not-always-remembered Ennio De Concici’s film Hitler: The Last Days (1973) which has
Sir Alec Guinness as the title murderer hiding in his bunker, based on
eye-witness accounts. Instead of being
exploitive (no sex in the bunker here) or any sensationalism, this plays more
like a filmed stage play with occasional vintage WWII and Holocaust footage,
plus a few moments of text information so we know what is going on in
historical context.
Now that
Guinness is so known for being the mentor in Star Wars, it is hard to buy him as Hitler. He looks the part, moves around convincingly
enough, but just cannot lose his voice or even parts of his British accent
every time he speaks. The result is that
the film is not able to build on his performance (he is too nice to some extent
as well, not acting sick enough for those final days) and though I appreciated
the efforts here, the film just does not hold up on its 40th
anniversary.
Paramount originally issued the film and it
was not a bomb, as well as it being a British co-production that is helped by a
supporting cast that includes Simon Ward, Adolpo Celli, Eric Porter, Diane
Cilento, Gabrielle Ferzetti, Doris Kunstman, Julian Glover, Joss Acklund,
Sheila Gish, Michael Goodliffe, Angela Pleasence and Freddie Jones. De Concici was more successful as a writer (Salon Kitty, the 1956 VistaVision War & Peace, Divorce Italian Style) in one of his rare directorial outings. It is worth a look, but it did not stay with
me then or now.
There are
no extras.
Lothar
Mendes’ Power aka “Jew Suss” (1934) is
the original British version of the film Hitler eventually remade as one of the
most hideous anti-Jewish propaganda films ever made, but this version is not so
great and sometimes even bizarre. Conrad
Veidt is the title character (Suss is pronounced Zeus here, though it is also
pronounces like success, esp. with the remake) who is Jewish, but wants nothing
but money and power, already playing on a stereotype. He gets the chance by helping a King to be in
the 18th Century, but never admits he is a Jew.
After
some twists and turns, including actual Jews being humiliated and one framed
for murder, more revelations come to the surface and Joseph has to decide
whether he will take action and make himself look bad, endangering his power
drives, or make the tough choice and have a life spared. The script is heavy-handed, the acting
awkward and oddly comical, whether intended or not. Flaws and all, this is a historically
important film with more than enough flaws and issues to leave open the even
worse Nazi version. Whether it is even
historically accurate (it is so melodramatic, you have issues suspending
disbelief) is another issue, but I would give this one a look, but expect shock
at its many flaws and problematic moments.
There are
no extras.
Sandy
Dickson & Churchill Roberts co-directed The Last Flight Of Petr Ginz (2012), a sometimes mixed documentary
about another Jewish child like Anne Frank who kept a diary as the Nazis
approached and The Holocaust was getting into full force unbeknownst to too
many. He kept a diary, was very
articulate and creative for being 13 years old, a diary that was found thanks
in part to a U.S. Space Shuttle explosion (horrifically) and did so much more
in his life than most do by the fully lived adult end of theirs.
Animation
is created to recreate some of his drawings while other drawings are show
outright and this is an intense 66 minutes.
I wish it even showed more or had more to say, though I will also note
that the music is sometimes awkward and does not always match the mood or
circumstances being shown. Still, it is
yet another unbelievable chapter of the future lost and re-reminds us of the
massive losses to the world the Holocaust will always represent.
Three
shorts on the material are the brief extras.
Josh
Aronson’s Orchestra Of Exiles (2012)
is even more thorough in its amazing tale of Bronislav Huberman, an ace
violinist who was Jewish and was facing more than the usual crisis in the face
of Hitler, WWII and his own life. Unhappy
about The Nazis and rise of Nazi Germany, he decided to not only start an
orchestra with Jewish musicians, but get them to the holy land desert then
known simply as Palestine
(before the State of Israel was established) and save their lives while also saving
the arts and Jewish culture.
As part
of the Nazi campaign to remove Jews, there was also a maniacal drive to make
sure Jewish culture, art and achievement in the arts never reached the peak
pitch of the Europeans, even when they were playing the music of
Europeans. One of the untold stories of
WWII is how so many in Europe agreed and
turned their back on world Jewry to make sure this too was so. Instead, some of those works became
permanently tainted in blood (like Wagner) and thanks in part of Huberman, Jews
and Jewish culture survived, even if some Jewish-authored works were denied
worldwide success and fame.
This runs
an intense 85 minutes and is a remarkable, vital work that impressed me
throughout. Aronson even fills in new
interviews and vintage footage with semi-sepia-toned HD-shot reenactments that
are not bad if too pristine to totally fit in visually, but it is the music and
story of the people that count and that is why this is as much of a must-see
documentary as I have seen lately among many good ones including The Last Days Of Petr Ginz above.
Extras
include an on-camera Aronson interview and four bonus shorts (The Power Of Music, Music Education: The Legacy Of The IPO, Huberman’s Dream, Why Jack
Stayed In Europe) worth seeing after the documentary. It is a plus how well the reasons why Jews
did not immediately leave their respective countries before the Axis killers
arrived is explained here.
Finally
we have a double feature that brings us to the present. Oscilloscope has a new
DVD set with two
Jason
Tippet and Elizabeth Mims’ Only The
Young (2012) is about a group of
lost Southern California skate youth not knowing what to do with themselves and
try to find where they are going in life with hardly any adult guidance,
influence or involvement. Like so many
suburbs and towns across the country, the national housing scandal has caused
too many foreclosures, the economy has left them behind and they are lost in
many ways.
This can
be raw and honest, but we have seen this often before and better, whether in
scripted dramas or other documentaries, but it is not phony like reality TV
garbage and has some good moments if not enough to make its 70 minutes really
work. There is maybe more interview moments
than just footage shown, which backfires and makes this too much about talking
heads and not visually cinematic enough about their lives. It is worth a look, but don’t be tired when
you do it.
Extras
include a feature length audio commentary track by the co-directors, the Original
Theatrical Trailer, Outtakes and the dramatic comedy short Thompson by Tippet that is in the mode of the feature.
It is
joined by The Ross Brothers’ tchoupitoulas
(2012) focusing in three young African American brothers from a poor
neighborhood near New Orleans
and how they just miss the last Midnight train home, leaving them out on the
streets overnight. There is even more
talk here, some moments that ring oddly, several disconnects (the directors are
white and miss the boat on the Black Experience at times) and at 82 minutes
never adds up to a trip, experience or memorable work that really shows up or
tells us something we have not seen before.
Specifically
on New Orleans,
it plays like Treme-lite and both
documentaries show how co-directing backfires and makes for a less-intimate
work. It still makes an interesting
flipside to Young, but I wish both were richer in showing us what was there and
going on in each situation instead of letting too much talk and awkwardness get
in the way.
Maybe
revisits in both cases will improve from these works, but we’ll see.
A trailer
and Behind The Scenes featurette are
the only extras.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Hitler
is supposed to be from a film in Technicolor, the dye-transfer, three-strip
kind, but despite a good print being used here, this is duller than I would
have liked. I know that British color
can be a bit more overcast than other labs, but that is not the issue here and
this should be a little sharper too.
The 1.33
X 1 black and white image on Power
is from a print that shows its age and though it has likely been cleaned up and
fixed, it is just very soft, which is to be expected for a film 79 years
old. Rank and VCI have done the best
they likely can here until the money is put out to do an HD-level clean-up.
That
leaves the rest of the DVDs with their anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image
transfers a little soft and choppy as to be expected form documentary works
with the newer HD shooting having motion blur and on the spot flaws and older
footage being dated, but tchoupitoulas
tends to be much softer throughout and was shot with limited HD cameras.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 5.1 on Orchestra
sounds as good as any of the titles here, with the 5.1 on tchoupitoulas and Young
having some location audio issues as expected.
Flight is in a consistent,
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo that is just fine, but the lossy Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono on Power has background
hiss throughout and shows its age.
- Nicholas Sheffo
