Hollywood has always loved the resistance fighter, and it's easy to understand why. The handsome young partisan who evades the authorities, the world-weary libertine whose cynicism is a pose, the plucky young woman who outwits the Nazis—they're perfect movie heroes. They were wildly romanticized during the war, but in recent years, the trend toward fact-based stories has resul…
1942 Michael Curtiz In the movies, as in the rest of life, timing is everything. On Monday, December 8, 1941, after he'd listened to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt the day before describing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and demanding that the Congress declare war, Stephen Karnot went back to work in his cubicle. Mr. Karnot was a reader for the Warner Bros. studio. He scanned thr…
1991 Larry Elikann Larry Elikann's fact-based made-for-TV film about the French Resistance is every bit as good as its big-screen counterparts. In many ways, it takes a deliberately old-fashioned approach to its subject, with solid characters and attitudes that could have come straight from the 1940s. Countess Mary Lindell (Judy Davis), English by birth, French by marriage and choice, work…
1946 Irving Pichel Today, producer Richard Maibaum's early espionage thriller can be seen as a prototype for the genre he would perfect in the 1960s. That's when he was involved with the James Bond series and either co-wrote or -produced the best early entries, from Dr. No to On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Almost all of the familiar Bond devices appear here, from the off-be…
1946 Henry Hathaway Like O.S.S., this early wartime thriller contains the seeds of the spy films, both serious and frivolous, that would become so hugely popular in the 1960s. To viewers who are familiar with those movies, it is an exercise in unexpected nostalgia that carefully explains the plot devices which have become accepted conventions of the genre. A ponderous introduction even goes so fa…
1942 Ernst Lubitsch The horrors of Nazism make it an almost impossible subject for comedy, but that didn't stop Ernst Lubitsch from creating a masterpiece. He translates many of his favorite themes and humorous asides—along with the famous “Lubitsch touch”—to make a romantic comedy-thriller that transcends its propagandistic roots. So many of the jokes are based…
1943 Herman Shumlin Well-intentioned and seriously acted, Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett's adaptation of her play never breaks free from the limitations of the stage. Other changes in acting styles further distance the work from contemporary audiences, and so now it is little more than a propagandistic curiosity. Kurt Muller (Paul Lukas), his wife Sara (Bette Davis), and their three …
Die Weisse Rose 1983 Michael Verhoeven Stories of the resistance movement in World War II tend to take on an heroic, almost mythic quality. That is precisely not the case with this one. It's based on fact, and every frame has the unmistakable look of truth. From an introduction that lists the names of the young protagonists and the dates of their executions, to a conclusion that stops the …