Gli invisibili

Die Unsichtbaren / The Invisibles (2017)

This film is absolutely unique; it combines interviews with four remarkable Jewish people that, through all odds, managed to survive the Nazi invasions in Berlin along with a feature film type story that depicts these four as youth in 1943, and also includes vintage clips. The interviews are priceless; the actors are engaging and excellent; and each storyline is intriguing on it's own. Although each of the four stories is separate without intersecting with the others, the narrative is captivating and the film flows along and mesmerizes. Die Unsichtbaren depicts the courage, wits, and resistance of both the Jewish survivors and the German citizens who put themselves in harm's way to help them. I highly recommend this film.

This is a must-see movie. A masterpiece of this genre...a blend of interviews, re-enactment and war-time film footage interspersed.

The individuals who were interviewed were eloquent, charming and insightful.

How important is to see how many Germans risked their lives to do the right thing. Rather amazing. I have watched the movie several times, and am moved to tears by the end.

Claus Räfle is amazing. It is such a pity that the film didn't have a wider distribution. But the film, will one day, get the exposure it deserves.

"The Invisibles" is a sanitized version of what could have been an important film about Jews in Berlin who stayed behind and blended in with the rest of the Berliners during WWII. We are told approx. 7,000 Jews evaded capture but that only 1,500 survived to the end of the war. This picture is handsomely produced but is a bloodless rendition of what must have been the case at the time. No violent encounters, no shootings and no sense of the scope of the matter.

The semi-documentary style is distracting, as the actors portray some of the survivors, who are interspersed with the story. Continuity is the casualty as the narrative is repeatedly interrupted to interview those survivors again and again. Well done film that needed some Hollywood 'punch' and some added tension to avoid onscreen blandness.

One reviewer here asks how much more drama can be "squeezed" from this "event". I would answer an infinite amount. There will never be too much that can be said or portrayed about the largest act of genocide, torture and madness. To the already copious number of films on the subject, comes The Invisibles, a docudrama, so labeled with names of the two genres that combine successfully to make up this film. I thought the combination worked extremely well. Having the actual photographic footage of Berlin during the war gave the film an aura of authenticity that enhanced it. Also, the interviewing of the survivors, combined with enactments of what they were reporting, also worked extremely well. In fact, seeing and listening to them made watching the film more bearable for me as I knew they avoided the horrific fate that most of their compatriots didn't. The only reason I rated The Invisibles a 9 and not a 10 was because in a couple of instances I experienced some confusion, mainly about who was who. I think there could have been a bit more clarity in this area. Other than that, the world now has another documentation of something that you'd think happens only in nightmares.

Interesting film telling the story of these terrible times from another perspective, with the heroes being the German people who risked their lives to help many young Jews hide underground in World War 2