Pas un n'échappera

This was a wonderful little American propaganda film that is both highly creative AND openly discusses the Nazi atrocities before the entire extent of the death camps were revealed. While late 1944 and into 1945 would reveal just how evil and horrific they were, this film, unlike other Hollywood films to date, is the most brutally honest film of the era I have seen regarding Nazi atrocities.

The film begins in a courtroom in the future--after the war is over (the film was made in 1944--the war ended in May, 1945). In this fictitious world court, a Nazi leader is being tried for war crimes. Wilhelm Grimm is totally unrepentant and one by one witnesses are called who reveal Grimm's life since 1919 in a series of flashbacks. At first, it appears that the film is going to be sympathetic or explain how Grimm was pushed to join the Nazis. However, after a while, it becomes very apparent that Grimm is just a sadistic monster. These episodes are amazingly well done and definitely hold your interest and also make the film seem less like a piece of propaganda but a legitimate drama.

All in all, the film does a great job considering the film mostly stars second-tier actors. There are many compelling scenes and performances--especially the very prescient Jewish extermination scene towards the end that can't help but bring you close to tears. It was also interesting how around the same point in the film there were some super-creative scenes that use crosses in a way you might not notice at first. Overall, it's a must-see for history lovers and anyone who wants to see a good film.

FYI--This is not meant as a serious criticism of the film, but Hitler was referred to as "that paper hanger". This is a reference to the myth that Hitler had once made money putting up wallpaper. This is in fact NOT true--previously he'd been a "starving artist", homeless person and served well in the German army in WWI. A horrible person, yes, but never a paper hanger!

Judgment at Nuremburg was a very successful film of the early 1960s which brought the atrocities of the Nazis into clearer focus for millions. It won an Oscar for Maxmillan Schell, who did a very good job in the film. However, that film was executed with grand intellectual examination; a great deal of emotional dialogue, and a few illustrations of the hideous actions of the Third Reich. This film, None Shall Escape, is also fueled by a great performance by Alexander Knox as Grimm, but avoids the intellectualism of Judgment at Nuremburg. Instead, it focuses on the personal and visceral actions of those involved in the Polish occupation. Made some 20 years before the Schell film, and though a bit dated, it captures the visceral aspect of the inhumanity of the Nazis better than its successor. A highly underrated film.

...not because it is boring and tedious, but because it spends the last 40 minutes of its 90 minute run showing the raw cruelty of Nazi rule over one Polish village - the Jews sent on railroad cars to concentration camps without food or water, the old men forced to do hard labor until they collapse and are shot, the girls put into forced prostitution at the Nazi officers' club.

What does the first 50 minutes do? It shows the creation of a monster - Wilhelm Grimm (Alexander Knox), a German who was teaching in Poland before WWI, went to fight with his fellow Germans and lost a leg, and returned from war a bitter man. He already felt superior to the Poles before he was bitter. His fiancee (Marsha Hunt) decides she doesn't want to marry him because he has returned from war with hate in his heart, and he becomes even more angry because he thinks she has rejected him because of his lost leg and his poverty. He then commits an unspeakable act, escapes to Germany, discovers Nazism, and the rest is literally history.

The entire story is told in flashback at a war crimes trial. It was inspired by FDR's promise to try those responsible for the evil they did during the war.

What is remarkable about this film besides the acting and the noirish cinematography is that this was made a year before the war was over in Germany. In fact it was released four months before D Day so there was no detailed information about what had happened in Europe, not even information about the fate of the Jews. So the whole production ends up being so oddly prescient.

Alexander Knox is terrific as Wilhelm Grimm, the Nazi officer who returns to this small Polish town, where he taught school years before, as a ruler representing the Third Reich. Knox played many roles as a good guy and protagonist, but he always had that school marm way about him in his performances, and it works for him here. As Grimm he's never playing a good guy, but he does go from bitter to evil very convincingly. Marsha Hunt - She's a revelation here. I had only seen her performances at MGM where she got roles that were rather bland and attenuated. She really breaks out of that MGM box in this film. I'd highly recommend this B film from little Columbia that packs an A list punch.

"None Shall Escape" is a scathing investigation into the pysche of a Nazi. It explores the circumstances and personality traits of someone for whom the Nazi ideology would be welcome in an effort to explain how otherwise "normal" people could find themselves swept along by such a horrific movement. The Nazi at the film's center, played by Alexander Knox, finds himself drawn to the movement out of unresolved feelings of vengeance, a sense that he needs to get back at those who, in his mind, wronged him in some way. Basically it's the story of someone who has felt bullied himself becoming the bully, but on a monstrous scale.

I admired this film for trying to address Nazi atrocities as they were happening. For all of the hordes of Hollywood films made during WWII, I can't think of a single other one that actually showed Nazis gunning down Jews, or showed them being herded onto train cars for transportation to extermination camps. This film is also weirdly prescient; the framing device of the film is a fictional war crimes trial that anticipated the actual Nuremberg trials that would occur after the end of the war.

Knox gives a sterling and frightening performance. The film makes of his character a believable and very human brand of evil, so it's not easy to simply dismiss him as a beastly aberration.

"None Shall Escape" received an Oscar nomination for Best Motion Picture Story in 1944.

Grade: A-

This one is tough to watch -- as an earlier reviewer says. That is amazing considering the terrible films that came out right after WWII -- particularly the "liberation" of Dachau. It is clear that, as of the middle of the war, we knew exactly what was happening to the Jews. The sequence that shows a "transport" is vivid, almost as if based upon an actual newsreel (the Nazis liked to record their atrocities). Knox as the Nazi is brilliant. He charts the course of a Nazi career. That charting is particularly telling when contrasted with the reactions of other Germans, at first laughing at Hitler, then incredulous, and finally helpless. That contrast, however, permits us to believe in the "conversion" of one young Nazi officer to an anti-Nazi stance. That did happen, as witness the several attempts against Hitler, most notably the Staffenberg plot which occurred as this film was coming out. A strong film, effectively using flashbacks, accurately predicting the Nuremburg trails and others that would occur once the war ended.