The Wall

John Hersey is a great author who has distinguished himself from the beginning after the war, by first of all "A Bell for Adano", an unforgettable classic also as film demonstrating a deep sense of humanity. For this book he has used authentic diaries and accounts of survivors from the Warsaw ghetto, so the story and film could be said to be next to quite authentic and is even filmed in Warsaw. It is more convincing than Andrzjej Wajda's great film of the same horrors, but this is no feature film but a television series, just like "Holocaust", "The Winds of War" and other great Second World War TV epics, while only Polanski's "The Pianist" can vie with this one for convincing authenticity, also based on a true story. As a whole, it's a great production with fine music and performances, especially by Eli Wallach and Tom Conti, and it is well sustained the whole way - you will find no difficulty in seeing the whole thing (2½ hours) in one sitting. There is no speculation, no conjecture, no romanticizing, but plain downright realism all the way, so it should be endorsed as a must, more so than "Holocaust" and "Winds of War" which are mainly fiction, for a vital testimony of important facts of the Second World War.

It could be said that without the incredible success of the ABC miniseries Holocaust in 1978, CBS might have thought twice before greenlighting the ambitious, three-hour TV docudrama The Wall four years later. Adapted by Millard Lampell from his own 1960 Broadway play, which in turn was inspired by John Hersey's 1950 novel, The Wall is the heartbreaking but inspiring story of the heroic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. When it becomes obvious that every Jew in Poland is doomed to be shipped off to the Nazi work and death camps, some 650 members of the newly formed Jewish Fighting Organization mount a last, brave stand against nearly 3000 German soldiers. The story is told through the eyes of Warsaw Jew Dolek Benson (Tom Conti, in his first American TV appearance), who is a passive observer of the atrocities all around him until he learns the truth about the Nazi's "resettlement" program. Rachel Roberts, cast as a former schoolteacher, made her final appearance in this film; she passed away shortly after production ended. Filmed on location in Sosnowiec, Poland and first telecast February 16, 1982, The Wall earned a Peabody Award the following year. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide (NYTimes).

I bought my own copy of The Wall after seeing the TV miniseries Uprising. Some 30 years ago, I read the novel upon which the film is based--a diary (modelled on Emmanuel Ringelblum's Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto) recounting the experiences of diarist Noach Levinson and his family--Dolek and Symka Berson (Dolek is Jewish--the anonymous reviewer described him wrongly as non-Jewish), Rachel, Mordechai, Halinka, David Apt, Rutka and Stefan Mazur and several others. Curiously, Noach Levinson is absent from the play and movie.

Filmed on location in Warsaw, The Wall shows horrific scenes of Jews being moved into the ghetto, loaded on the trains to the death camp of Treblinka. One scene shows hundreds of Jews receiving bread and marmalade for reporting for "resettlement". The uprising scenes show Nazis being killed by bullets, Molotov cocktails.

The characters are somewhat one-dimensional--no real development of them is given here (unlike the book). Rachel is a militant from the start, Halinka is an airhead all the way, Dolek simply drifts along.

Amazing how the film is relentless in portraying the horrors of ghetto life and the deportation. However, the dating is garbled in parts--deportations to Treblinka begin in April, 1941 instead of July, 1942. This is not an insignificant issue since the death camps were not operative until late 1941 and 1942--Treblinka did not begin operations until July, 1942.

Somewhat curiously, no attention is given to the party allegiances of the ghetto underground which united Zionists, socialists, communists and other groupings.

Still, for somebody wanting an introduction to the Warsaw ghetto, this might be the appropriate film.

I was only 13 when I saw this movie, but I still remember it after all of these years. I think it was one of the movies that I never got over because it hit home as to how much the Nazi's destroyed the lives of countless families.

Many of the actors in the cast made their first professional appearances in this film. Some have gone on to successful careers, although many of them stated in interviews that they would never forget the experience of working on this film.

The cinematography is phenomenal and the depictions of life under Nazi rule quite accurate. I gained a new respect for holocaust survivors after this film. When you see this film, you realize that the horror and fear was something that these people faced every day.

Shortly after watching it, my grandparents told me how my uncle managed to live through a Nazi Prison Camp. If you are a Schindler's List fan, you will probably enjoy this movie. I recommend it to anyone who not only wants to see what happened, but feel it as well.

I saw this film over twenty years ago. Still remember the acts of sublime heroism and cowardice depicted convincingly by the cast. I didn't mind the the few historical inaccuracies, because I still felt that the film was true to the desperate situation in the Warsaw Ghetto at that time. I think that this was the first time that I saw Lisa Eichhorn. I have been a fan of her work since.