ESCAPE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 92, 28 March 1941, Page 16

ESCAPE

(M-G-M)

ROBABLY the most acceptable kind of story which an author can offer Hollywood these days is one with an anti-Nazi or anti-

Fascist basis. Nearly all the diplomatic injunctions and prohibitions which once walled off the movie capital from the world of reality-so that it was necessary, for instance, for the Spanish Civil War to be fought in a mythical country lest Franco be offended-have now been blown away, and the Lease-and-Lend Bill should remove the last traces of Hollywcod’s reticence about European affairs. Henceforth the Nazi is likely to be elevated to the position of official Hollywood villain. Escape, from the novel by Ethel Vance, is to-day’s answer to a moviemaker’s prayer. Like The Mortal Storm, it is a powerful indictment of Nazi ruthlessness, presented with tingling suspense and plenty of action. M-G-M paid 50,000 dollars for the rights of the story, and are likely to get their money back with great interest. But, as it happens, the villains of the piece are not so much individual Nazis as the system which enslaves them and the state of mind which obsesses them. Indeed, one of the Nazi characters, a doctor in a concentration camp (Philip Dorn), is not only sympathetic, but almost heroic; and even the Prussian general (Conrad Veidt), who most closely personifies the machine-like ruthlessness of Nazism, has his moments of humanity. They aren’t many, and they don’t last long, but he is not all beast. As for the other characters-the great German actress Emmy Ritter (Alla Nazimova), who despises the Nazis and barely escapes execution, the Countess (Norma Shearer), who pities and helps the refugees, the old servant whose courage stands the test, and others in whom rebellion is stirring-these, one imagines, are the kind of people Priestley meant when he said recently: "Any German who sincerely believes that Nazism is wrong and that a liberal democratic view of life is right, is an ally/and not an enemy." However, although its topicality is inescapable, this picture is drama_ first and propaganda a good long way second. Often the tension of the story is almost too much of a good thing, as the Ameri-can-born son of Emmy Ritter, who has arrived in Germany to find his mother in a concentration camp and on the eve of execution, blunders desperately about trying to save her. "Nerve-wracking" is for once a justifiable description of Mervyn Le Roy’s direction. The picture has so much in its favour that it surmounts without much difficulty the not inconsiderable hurdle of having Robert Taylor as leading man. I would have had none other than Norma Shearer to play the Countess, for Miss Shearer is still, to my mind, the most gracious and lovely lady on the screen; Conrad Veidt plays the Prussian as nobody else can; and Philip Dorn as the sympathetic doctor is a newcomer to be excited about. But I could think of a dozen actors better qualified than Taylor to play the hero’s

part in Escape. He’s out of his depth in the story and out of his class in the acting. That’s all I have against é th picture, and it isn’t much.