None Shall Escape
US (1944): Drama
This is a hard film to sit through. It is an excellent little product but it is unrelentingly grim. Alexander Knox gives an Oscar® nom-worthy performance as Wilhelm Grimm, a man so evil that he has not an ounce of humanity in him. Although filmed during the war, the story is set after the war in a Nuremburg-like setting, where war criminals are being tried by an international tribunal. Grimm's life is told in flashbacks by a series of people who knew him. He is a monster - he rapes a young girl, who commits suicide, he denounces his own brother to the Gestapo, whose family dies in the aftermath, and he shoots down in cold blood his nephew whom he has trained to be like him, but who succumbs to humanity in the end when Grimm's placing of the nephew's fiancée in an officer's brothel leads to her suicide. (She was by the way the daughter of his former bride to be who wisely rejected him). Marsha Hunt is excellent in an Ida Lupino-like performance as Marja. Knox displayed tremendous versatility this year, going from this monster of a role to his benevolent, wise, performance as Woodrow Wilson in Wilson, which brought him his sole Oscar® nom. This should be viewed, along with Address Unknown (also 1944), as an important and very well made "little" film which seriously addresses the Nazi world. André De Toth directs for Columbia. (Arne Andersen, IMDb)
1 nomination
· Writing (Original Story) 1944: Alfred Neumann, Joseph Than