Das Boot ist voll

Slow moving film from Switzerland that takes place during WWII where six people seek refuge in a village inn, much to the discomfort of the couple who runs the place. The group attempts to pose as a family, but their plans are thwarted. Although there are wonderful performances from Engel and Bois, as two Jews, the story doesn't stay strong enough to last the almost two hours running time. Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of 1981.

In 1996 a panel was created called the Independent Commission of Experts headed by historian Jean Francois Bergier to study Switzerland's wartime past. The report of the Bergier Commission, though acknowledging the many refugees Switzerland accepted during 1940-45, condemned its wartime practices of deporting Jewish refugees (around 30,000) back to Germany, accusing Swiss officials of pursuing an inhumane policy at odds with the country's tradition of offering asylum to those facing persecution. A Swiss/Austrian/West German co-production, Markus Imhoof's striking drama The Boat is Full dramatizes this issue, challenging myths about Swiss wartime virtue and innocence.

Nominated for an Oscar in 1982 for Best Foreign Film, The Boat is Full is not widely known in the U.S. but it is one of the finest films dealing with the holocaust. In the film, a group of German Jewish refugees must pretend they are a family in order to be granted asylum in Switzerland (refugee families with children under 6 are allowed to remain in Switzerland) but are faced with the rigidity of small-minded bureaucrats who see it as their duty to uphold the letter of the law. As the film opens, a German train is halted because of a Swiss attempt to wall off the tunnel to close potential escape routes. Six people, four Jews, a French child, and a deserting German soldier jump off the train and seek refuge at a rural inn, run by a married couple Laurent and Franz Fluckiger (Renate Steiger and Mathias Gnadinger). It is only afterwards that they discover that the country maintains strict quotas and that they are in danger of being deported.

To survive, they pose as a family. Judith Kruger (Tina Engel), a young woman, pretends that she is the wife of Karl Schneider (Gerd David), a Nazi deserter, an elderly man from Vienna, Lazar Ostrowskij (Curt Bois) pretends to be her father, and a young boy (Simone Maruice), who can only speak French, pretends that he is a deaf mute. The scheme is threatened, however, when a hard-nosed constable comes to investigate and Judith's real husband escapes from a work camp and tries to find her. Though we do not know the protagonists on other than a surface level, The Boat is Full is still a powerful film that reminds us that rigidly supporting the letter of the law does not always mean adhering to its spirit, or understanding the personal consequences that may result.

The anxiety of an attack from Hitler-Germany was real in Switzerland during WW II. Why should Hilter not integrate German-speaking Switzerland into his "Reich" to which already belonged Germany and Austria? After all, the "Grossdeutsches Reich" was based on the common language spoken, so Northern Switzerland was considered once lost from the "Grossreich" like Mussolini considered the Italian speaking parts of Southern Switzerland as "terre irridente". Why Hitler did not conquer Switzerland stays one of the big enigmas of history up to today.

The Swiss population that lived close to the German border - in "Das Boot ist voll" it is Siblingen, Canton of Scaffusia - realized much more of what is going on on the other side of the river Rhein. Everyday immigrants crossed the Swiss border illegally. However, what did "illegal" mean in regard of immigrant-laws that had become criminal themselves? That the population must have reacted confused when it was confronted actually with a group of immigrants like the six persons in the movie, is clear. The wish to help them hide and feed them went along with the fear to be detected and to go to prison. The boat was not full, of course, and the title of the movie is cynically meant, but Switzerland did not want to provoke Germany by giving their Jewish population asylum.

I think, films like "The Boat is Full" are necessary, but not because Switzerland had loaded more guilt upon herself than other states during WW II did. The opposite is true. But Switzerland had started to construct a very strange self-image of alleged neutrality and interwoven it with her history back to Wilhelm Tell which consists exclusively of fairy-tales. Middle-aged people like me still had to learn in school that a handful of Swiss soldiers defeated "the Habsburgian army" in "battles" whose names do not even occur in Austrian history and are not even to find in Swiss geographic maps.

Good span of characters, the movie lacks another storyline other than the couple hiding the refugees (and a little more, too little). It's too long for the little story it holds, while it does hint the characters have some more in them. Well acted, touching and haunting, is does light a different angle about Switzerland's neutrality- still being unraveled today in the news.

This is a rather small movie, realistic, concentrating on its people. German and Austrian refugees come to Switzerland, find shelter at a countryhouse and experience that they are not really wanted there because the Swiss have their own problems yet they are not in war. It's a dense movie, with authentic actors and simple but convincing dialogues.

The fact that it ends up not in one big but in some smaller singular tragedies is not particularly stressed; the true story the movie is based upon is told plainly, without cinematic flamboyance and therefore the movie gains a somewhat disturbing, unpleasant touch. Actually, this is the first Swiss World War II movie I've seen and it was interesting to get to know their point of view too. I recommend this.