PRISONER OF PARADISE --------------------
Beloved German-Jewish film star and director Kurt Gerron, who costarred with Marlene Dietrich in "The Blue Angel," was so focused on his career that he seemed blind to the encroaching Nazi threat. While he organized a financial pass of the hat among expatriate filmmakers in Amsterdam to get an ailing Peter Lorre to Hollywood, Gerron boxed himself into a corner until he became the ironic "Prisoner of Paradise."
Paradise being the concentration camp Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, where the Nazis herded Jewish celebrities and artists. This was the camp that was used to present the model of the ideal treatment of the Jews to the outside world. The Red Cross visited (with a tightly controlled and choreographed agenda) and gave their stamp of approval. Goerring decided to make another propaganda film and held a contest among the inmates. The first attempt unwittingly allowed too much of the actual conditions to be shown, outraging the Nazis, so Gerron was tapped. The beloved Berlin entertainer became hated by many of his peers when he transformed the camp into 'heaven on earth' for his camera. Even more ironically, Goerring had used footage of Gerron to present his idea of the archetypical Jew in his early propaganda films like "The Eternal Jew.'
"Prisoner of Paradise" filled last year's Oscar's nominated documentary feature slot for the Holocaust subject, but this is certainly a unique look at that much-covered horror of history. Ian Holm narrates and directors Malcom Clarke (who also wrote) and Stuart Sender begin their film with a fake out, having Holm describe a Utopian community of artists. This turns out to be Theresienstadt, as publicized by the Germans. The filmmakers then trace Gerron's career in cabaret and film with film clips and audio recordings - Gerron's friend Bertholt Brecht provided him with his signature song, "Mack the Knife." Gerron's influence, particularly in Berlin, is underlined with the fact that he made 27 films in 1927 alone. In one inspired look back, an old suit of Gerron's is displayed amidst candelabras and studio lights on the Marlene Dietrich stage at Babelsberg Film Studios as we hear him sing, giving the song a ghostly effect. Another eerie effect is achieved by superimposing footage of transport trains over film of Gerron doing a magic trick, making things disappear.
A former neighbor, who knew him as a star-struck little girl, describes him as a jolly man with a big cigar who shared his life of luxury with friends and family, yet he watched many of them, including colleagues Josef von Sternberg, Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder, leave Berlin while he persisted in his European career. Involved in directing a film in Amsterdam, Gerron rejected a Hollywood job when he learned he and his family's passage would not be first class! He even choose to perform at the Dutch seaside resort of Scheveningen for two years during which he could have escaped. Only when it was impossible to ignore the situation did Gerron panic, writing pitiable letters to the likes of Fritz Lang, which, sadly, were ignored.
On February 26, 1944, Kurt Gerron arrived in Theresienstadt, where a survivor describes his shock at seeing the once immense movie star starving. Clarke and Sender paint Gerron as a Norma Desmond-ish character, dressing the part of director while suffering the abusive words of the Nazis he was filming for. The collaboration issue is sliced three ways with one survivor describing their hatred for what Gerron was doing while another puts forth the 'what would anyone do in his place' argument. A third perspective, that his film was never shown to its intended audiences, is offered as a historical acquittal.
The film suffers slightly, frustrating by offering too much speculation on Gerron's thoughts during the time and too little factual evidence of them. Still, "Prisoner of Paradise" leaves its audience with a sense of sadness and loss for this childlike man who offered so much to so many before his horrific end which was ironic on so many levels.
B
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