The Desperate

Ben-Hur Sepehr carried this story with him for thirty years. It is beautifully poignant and conflicted - choosing to do right or not when you have been wronged a million time over. The casting, mood and editing of this movie is flawless. Set in the later stages of World War II in a concentration camp, this may be the best movie ever dealing with the holocaust. It is an uplifting story but also tears at your heart and humanity given the circumstance.

Morality plays are not easily captured in short films, but Ben-Hur displays the finesse of years of film-making to make this film speak loud and clear across a generation.

The Desperate is a fine short subject about the holocaust and the loss of so much talent. When Jews and others were tossed into the camps in Nazi Germany, the racist policies of the regime truly were at their stupidest.

Peter Mark Richman is an aged Jewish man who was once a top man in the medical field. But because of his religion is deemed as a person less worthy of being treated as a human being.

But General Greg Mullavey's son has been wounded and he needs a topflight man. So Richman who is slated for the next round in the gas chambers is briefly reprieved.

Richman has some choices to make and I won't go any further. Watching this movie the man I thought of was one of the best scientists Germany had who like so many was hounded out of the country or killed for no other reason as for being who and what they were. Albert Einstein, a Jew wound up in America, he was a lucky one.

This is a truly great short subject film on the holocaust.