So Ends Our Night

This film focuses on the plight of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. It is fairly well made but the script, based on a novel by famed writer Remarque, tends to wander rather aimlessly, making for a less than compelling film. March is fine as a man who has escaped from a concentration camp, leaving behind his beloved wife in Germany. In one of his earliest roles, baby-faced Ford turns in an impressive performance as March's fellow escapee. Sullavan, in one of her last films, is also good as Ford's love interest. Dee gets third billing, but has only a few minutes of screen time as March's wife. The film looks good visually, but the pacing leaves something to be desired.

Not best written (choppy) yet realistic melodrama depicting very real times during WWII. Movie is notable for Anna Sten's brief appearance (admittedly, one of my favorites) who was more or less done-in by Hollywood yet never failed to deliver superb performances. Either Glenn Ford's first or one of his first movies. Depressing yet worth seeing. Good luck, because I think I got one of the last VHS copies around.

America might still have officially been neutral in 1941, but Hollywood filmmakers were beginning to poke at the nation's conscience with films like the unjustly overlooked So Ends Our Night. A young Glenn Ford and Fredric March stay one step ahead of the Nazis as they journey from country to country without passports only to meet with indifference to their plight wherever they go. Its message is still relevant today - and still as overlooked.

Wartime drama from United Artists and director John Cromwell. Three Austrian citizens find themselves outcasts in their own land after the rise of fascism. Josef Steiner (Fredric March) is persona non grata thanks to his outspoken political beliefs, while young man Ludwig Kern (Glenn Ford) learns that he is half-Jewish. Academic Ruth Holland (Margaret Sullavan) is fully Jewish, with the added "crime" of having been engaged to an Aryan. These struggles to survive as they are arrested and deported multiple times, sent to countries throughout Europe.

This film was a political hot potato when it was released, as Hollywood was warned by the Production Code not to make any overtly anti Nazii films. Therefore this adaptation of an Erich Maria Remarque novel was independently produced by David Loew and Albert Lewin, who took their chances with the film getting approval, which it did. It's a powerful, moving indictment of the activities of the time, with good performances, especially from a very young Glenn Ford, whose career was said to have been greatly boosted by his turn here. Ironically, both star Fredric March and director John Cromwell would become subjects of US government displeasure during the HUAC era. The movie earned an Oscar nomination for Best Score (Louis Gruenberg).

Stateless refugees from Hitler's Germany must move from one country to the next in this realistic film from 1941. The realism is in the cast of actors other than the well known Glenn Ford, Frederic March, Frances Dee, and Margaret Sullavan, those playing the smaller but important parts of spies, sympathizers, officials, restaurateurs, nurses, etc...all with a keen eye for authenticity and details. As well, one of the best parts in the film is played by Erich Von Stroheim as an intelligent, sympathetic, and cunning SS officer who's out to arrest the non-conformist played in a terrific part by Frederic March. So while we follow the main characters and a touching love story and a biting role for March, the real value of the picture is the portrait it paints in its portrayals of the other people caught up in the pre-war manoeuvrings.