Prisoner of Paradise
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| Prisoner of Paradise | |
|---|---|
 Film poster |
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| Directed by | Malcolm Clarke, Stuart Sender |
| Distributed by | Menemsha Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | DVD: April 12, 2005; Theatrical: December 12, 2003 |
| Running time | 96 mins. |
| Country | Canada, Germany, United States, United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Official website | |
| IMDb profile | |
Prisoner of Paradise is a 2003 Canadian documentary film directed by Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender. The film tells the true story of Kurt Gerron, a German-Jewish cabaret and film actor in the 1920s and 1930s who was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp where he was commanded to write and direct a Nazi propaganda film.[1]
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[edit] Content
The documentary is a chronicle of the life and career of Kurt Gerron. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Gerron was a well-known cabaret and film actor in Berlin. He sang the song Mack the Knife in the initial production of The Threepenny Opera and appeared in a supporting role in Josef von Sternberg's classic German sound film The Blue Angel, co-starring Marlene Dietrich. When the Nazis were in power, Gerron remained in Germany, in spite of serious requests from Josef von Sternberg and Peter Lorre that he should leave the country. Later, Gerron moved to Paris and Amsterdam in order to continue his entertainment career, and was in the end captured by the Germans in 1943 and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp located near Prague. At the time, this camp was being used by the Nazis with the purpose of propagating and fabricating a situation that the Jews were not being ill-treated . Gerron was recruited there to write and direct a 23-minute The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews, which is a sanitized propaganda film depicting the concentration camp as a "wonderful" place. Despite his cooperation, Gerron was subsequently sent to Auschwitz concentration camp where he and his wife were eventually murdered.
[edit] Production and release
Prisoner of Paradise was produced for the Cineplex Odeon Films presentation in Canada; the film is a Montral production, in association with BBC, PBS, SODEC, and the Canadian cable television specialty channel History Television.[1] The script was written by Malcolm Clarke and the film was narrated by Ian Holm. The documentary was released theatrically on December 12, 2003. A DVD version was released on April 12, 2005.[1]
[edit] Reception
[edit] Critical reaction
The documentary received generally positive reviews by the press. Metacritic gave Prisoner of Paradise a score of 70 out of 100.[2] Variety magazine called the film "an important and smoothly mounted meditation on moral choices within the entertainment biz."[1]
Charlotte Observer 's reviewer Lawrence Toppman praised the film, stating that "its uniqueness lies in its juxtaposition of happy faces and unhappy realities, of fleeting expressions of art and culture undone by daily brutality."[3] The press widely agreed that the documentary exploited a new and unexpected aspect of the Nazi war against the Jews.[4][5] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B, and added that the film "reveal[ed] a queasy corner of the Nazi mind that tried to imagine a concentration camp as it fantasized the inmates might have."[5] According to Hollywood Reporter, the distinction between Prisoner of Paradise and previous films of the same topic is that "it tells a morality tale of a man whose hubris partially led to his downfall and whose willingness to work for his Nazi overseers resulted in one of the most notorious propaganda films of the era."[6]
Along with the good reviews, Prisoner of Paradise also received mild criticism regarding the analysis of why Gerron agreed to direct the Nazi propaganda film The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews, with New York Times commenting that the film "seems to just drift to a close rather than pronounce an end. This can be a result of wrestling with a daunting subject and not being up to its demands."[7]
[edit] Nominations and awards
The film received a nomination for Best Feature Documentary at the 75th Academy Awards. Director Malcolm Clarke won the Directors Guild of Canada Award; he and Stuart Sender were also nominated for the 2003 Directors Guild of America Award.[1][8]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e Review from Variety magazine
- ^ Reviews from Metacritic
- ^ An improbable propagandist for Hitler from Charlotte Observer
- ^ MOVIE REVIEW 'Prisoner of Paradise' from Los Angeles Times
- ^ a b Prisoner of Paradise review from Entertainment Weekly
- ^ Prisoner of Paradise from Hollywood Reporter
- ^ FILM REVIEW; Putting a Smiley Face on a Nazi Camp from New York Times
- ^ Welcome to the Directors Guild of America
