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THE OPPENHEIM FAMILY

(Mosfilm)

F you saw Professor Mamlock, you have pretty well sten The Oppenheim Family. Which isn’t to say that it is not worth seeing, but you will

at least know what to expect — the gradual decay of decent standards within Germany, the mounting boldness of the Nazis, the spread of the slow poison of racial hatred which finally destroys some of the country’s greatest benefactors, the men of science and culture who have made the mistake of being born Jews. Concurrently, there is the organisation of revolt against the Government by the Communists; all this being portrayed with ruthless realism and considerable dramatic art by one of those casts of talented character types which Soviet producers know so well how to assemble. When a Soviet producer makes a film about Nazis, Jews and Communists, the Nazis certainly look like Nazis, the Jews are unmistakably Jewish, and this being so we may assume that the Communists resemble Communists. The propaganda is similarly clear-cut black and white. Indeed, as a friend remarked to me after the preview, in these Russian films they aren’t merely content to cut you open and ram the propaganda inside, they practically crawl in after it and poke it into the corners! However, The Oppenheim Family is not as naive in its propaganda as some of its type, and for this reason perhaps I found it interesting if not exactly joyful entertainment. The reaction and revolt against the Nazi tyranny which it

depicts takes place as much in the intellectual sphere as in the physical. There is the heroic Communist chauffeur who organises active revolt and sabotage and gets beaten up for his pains; but there is also the quiet, intellectual student who dies by his own hand rather than retract what: he knows to be the truth. And there are the Jewish doctors who go on quietly doing their job until the Nazis crash into the clinic and pack them off to concentration camps. You feel that the director wants you to believe that the chauffeur and his fellow party-members played the nobler and more useful part, and that the student who insisted that the Germanic hero, Arminius, was more of a barbarian than a demi-god would have been better employed making bombs than writing a thesis in defiance of the Nazis. But in spite of the director it doesn’t quite seem to work out that way.

This article text was automatically generated and may include errors. View the full page to see article in its original form.I whakaputaina aunoatia ēnei kuputuhi tuhinga, e kitea ai pea ētahi hapa i roto. Tirohia te whārangi katoa kia kitea te āhuatanga taketake o te tuhinga.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19420904.2.39.2

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 167, 4 September 1942, Page 16

Word count
Tapeke kupu
403

THE OPPENHEIM FAMILY New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 167, 4 September 1942, Page 16

THE OPPENHEIM FAMILY New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 167, 4 September 1942, Page 16

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