Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Two recent Third Reich movies: Black Book and Witness

Originally produced in 2004 for AMC, "Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust" examines Hollywood's coverage, or lack thereof, of the Holocaust. From the Boston Globe's review:

    The argument that US movie studios downplayed the Nazi threat in the years leading up to World War II is made not just clear but understandable: For every "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" (1939) or "The Mortal Storm" (1940), there were rantings from isolationist anti-Semites in Washington about Hollywood Jewish propaganda. The studio heads, assimilators to a man (Harry Warner excepted, perhaps), were loath to call attention to themselves, especially with Joseph Kennedy warning them, "This will be seen as your war."

A critic for The Village Voice lists "Black Book" among his top ten films of 2007:

    The anti–Army of Shadows. Paul Verhoeven's first Dutch film in over two decades rewrites Soldier of Orange, his first epic of the resistance, penned in irony and from the perspective of a woman. And what a woman! Carice van Houten gave the performance of the year as a magnificently self- contained Jewish femme fatale who falls in love with . . . a sympathetic Nazi.

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