Die 25. Stunde

I saw this film a number of years ago, but I still think of it now and then. I think that Anthony Quinn does a superb portrayal of a man caught up in series of coincidences beyond his control. He is a simple man, not a dolt, as some reviewers have opined. It is a story that could have happened to a number of people during that time. How many of us would have had completely altered lives if just one single event in our past had turned out differently? I would love to see the film again to see if I still thought that it is a terrific movie.

living in Romania, i was almost stunned by the very realistic setting for the scenes and the great care paid to local details by the director. The performance of Anthony Queen is absolutely great, and the rest of the cast does a great job supporting him. The movie does take a little knowledge of the east European context in order to be fully enjoyed, but it remains otherwise a great performance with some memorable lines. the ending is maybe a bit too melodramatic, but that's actually the way people are in this part of the world I believe the screenplay is great, because it presents the horrors of the 2nd WW in a most original manner - no blood, no battlefields. Still, lives are shattered, and the smiles you get every now and then throughout the movie are quickly killed by the war realities touching the characters.

The naive Catholic Romanian peasant Johann Moritz (Anthony Quinn) is happily married with the gorgeous Suzanna Moritz (Virna Lisi). The local sergeant Dobresco (Grégoire Aslan) is a wolf and lusts Suzanna that rejects him. So he includes the name of Johann in the list of Jewishes in the village and he is sent to a forced labor camp for Jewish. Johann explains to the commander that he is not Jewish while Suzanna unsuccessfully seeks out authorities trying to fix the mistake, but she is forced to divorce from Johann to keep their house. Johann finally accepts to join a group of Jews to escape from the camp to Bulgary. However he is captured again and sent to a concentration camp. However, the SS commander believes there is a mistake since he has the profile of the perfect Arian and Johann joins the SS. After the end of the war, he is sent to a prisoner camp and judged in Nuremberg when he finally knows the fate of Suzanna.

"La vingt-cinquième heure", a.k.a. "The 25th Hour", is a great movie with a heartbreaking story of wickedness, naivety and injustice in World War II. This movie forces the viewer to understand the chaotic condition of Europe after this war in every aspect. Anthony Quinn has a wonderful performance and Virna Lisi is perfectly cast in the role of a beautiful peasant. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A 25ª Hora" ("The 25th Hour")

It was the first time Henri Verneuil had tackled a super production with international stars (Quinn,Lisi) with a lot of his compatriots in small parts :Serge Reggiani as an intellectual who thinks we are living on borrowed time (it was 1939) and it was the 25th hour (hence the title of the novel and of the film) ;Françoise Rosay as a Jewish mama ;Jean Dessailly as a government man ....

In France,Henri Verneuil is generally adored by the audiences and despised by the critics ;but there's a welcome tendency to restore him to favor nowadays ;after all who among us wouldn't have preferred a good old Verneuil flick to Godard's intellectual chores? I had seen "La Vingt-Cinquième Heure" when it was theatrically released and when I saw it yesterday after all this time,I must admit it holds up quite well.

This is the story of the wrong man at the wrong place :the film begins with a baptism ,a very important scene since all that follows is the story of a man who is sent to a labor camp because a man who covets his wife says he is a Jew .This is a subject which Joseph Losey will resume with his own "Monsieur Klein" .But Verneuil's work has a more universal feel :in every place he is ,he is always the wrong man,not only as a Jew.For the Hungarian authorities ,he is expendable ,since he is a Romanian .For the Nazis,extreme derision,he represents the "supreme Aryan superman".For the Americans ,he was friends (unintentionally) with the Germans ,so he represents the enemy.

Although Verneuil is not considered an auteur in France (French critics obsession with the Cinema D'Auteur,one of the diktats of the Nouvelle Vague),there are several scenes great directors could envy: the christening celebration ,with a wonderful use of Georges Delerue 's score inspired by Eastern Europa folk music ;the baby crying as Hitler is bawling out his speech on the radio;the prisoners picking flowers to decorate the train;the death of Serge Reggiani who gives his glasses to the hero because he's seen enough men; the photographs which are taken in the railway station,a sequence I have never forgotten.

This is a good movie about a poor guy ,caught up in man's madness and living through trouble times who never understands why .On a train to a labor camp,he is happy "to be on a train" .

There are many, many older movies that deserve to be transferred to the DVD format. This is surely one of them. An Anthony Quinn triumph! Scores of movies portray the victims of Nazi atrocities before and during the war, but, I don't think any of them have delved into the psyche of the victim and predator as well as this this one has. Anthony Quinn was truly a man for all seasons. He had the ability to portray the humblest of creatures devoid of any human vises to a creature of extreme animalism and pull it off as believable to the audiences who watched with no afterthought of what they had just witnessed! Truly one of our greatest artists. He is missed.