Underground

This top rate production from Warners Bros., tells the story of the anti-Nazi underground and its attempts to sway the German people to reject the Nazi regime and put an end to its war machine. This film is far better than many other later anti-Nazi films cranked out by Hollywood during WW2. The cast all give top rate performances. Martin Koslec is effectively slimey as the Nazi secret police leader who is out to crush the underground. After seeing him here, no wonder he made a career portraying evil Nazi leaders. Perhaps the most memorable performance is by Wolfgang Zilzer as the sad, pathetic former underground leader who becomes a traitor in exchange for release from the hellish torture he is undergoing in a Nazi concentration camp. The scene where he is confronted by underground leaders and forced to commit suicide has real power. The lighting and the music are perfect. Seen today, this film might seem a bit optimistically naive. It gives the viewer the impression the Nazi regime would soon fall from power. None the less the film effectively portrays the terror inflicted on the German people to assure obedience to its corrupt and evil regime.

Note; One odd idea thrown in, is a suggestion about why Rudolph Hess fled Germany and flew into London. During one of the underground broadcasts, Philip Dorn states that Hess fled to escape the gestapo and tell the world the truth. This sounds a bit naive, since everything suggests in real life Hess was always a staunch supporter of the Nazi regime. Of course the whole Hess affair is still to this day shrouded in mystery, and we may never know the real reason why Hess flew into London. That, however is a matter of discussion for another forum.

The Warner Bros. trademarks--fast pacing, good photography, tight editing, a cast of veteran character actors--are in full bloom in this well-made thriller from Vincent Sherman, soon to be one of Warners' top directors. Philip Dorn (who was actually Dutch, not German) and Jeffrey Lynn are two brothers, Dorn the leader of an underground German anti-Nazi movement and Lynn a crippled German soldier unaware of his brother's activities. Martin Kosleck is fine as a reptilian Nazi officer eager to destroy the resistance, and Dorn and Lynn have seldom been better. Sherman even manages to throw in a little humor as he satirizes the paranoia of the regime--Mona Maris, an aide to Kosleck who is actually a member of the Resistance, starts a rumor at work about Himmler that builds to the point that when Kosleck eventually repeats it back to her a short time later it bears little resemblance to the one she started. Although it is a first-rate propaganda piece, it unfortunately bears little resemblance to the real conditions in Germany; there was actually very little resistance to Hitler and Naziism among the populace. What little resistance there was came mainly from Catholic priests and Protestant ministers, who were quickly arrested and thrown into concentration camps, where many of them died. There was a small student movement known as the White Rose that engaged in some anti-Nazi activities, but they were soon captured (many of them turned in by their parents!) and executed. In any event, this is a well made little piece and really deserves to be better known than it is. Check it out.

"Underground" is a good propaganda movie that came out of Warner Brothers in 1941. It's lacking major stars, but the story is certainly A list. Philip Dorn and Jeffrey Lynn star as German brothers on opposite sides. Dorn is a member of the underground, which uses a traveling illegal radio to broadcast to the people, while Lynn is a returning soldier who has lost his arm. He becomes interested in an attractive violinist, Sylvia (Kaaren Verne) who performs in a tavern, unaware that his brother knows her from the underground and that they are both members. This leads to problems as the Nazis close in.

Vincent Sherman does an excellent job of directing. The rest of the cast includes Martin Kosleck a a nasty Nazi, and Mona Maris as his assistant, also an underground member. The Dutch Dorn gives a very good performance, as does Lynn. The ending of the film is quite touching.

As someone on this site pointed out, the Germans let the Nazis come into power and didn't do much in the way of resistance. There was a strong French resistance, as well as the Yugoslav Partisans, the Polish Home Army, the Soviet partisans, the Italian CLN, the Norwegian Resistance, the Greek Resistance and the Dutch Resistance. One doesn't hear much about German resistance. Warner Brothers probably just assumed it was active.

A good movie.

This movie was made before the US entry into WWII. But, the story line clearly indicates the concerns we had with the Nazi party in Germany and their blatant disregard for the well being of their citizenry. There are no war scenes and only a couple of short action sequences but, despite this, the story moves at a very comfortable pace. Very good acting all around with Philip Dorn excelling as the leader of an underground group striving to keep the citizens informed as to the real aims of their Nazi leaders. He does this via a clandestine illegal radio operation which, of necessity, must continually move to various locales to transmit. Jeffrey Lynn plays Dorn's brother, a German soldier who, minus most of his left arm, returns home but is still a loyal German who is unaware of his brother's underground activities. This story is a good one and avoids most of the cliches that permeated many similar WWII movies. Martin Kosleck plays his usual role, that of an officious German officer but, even he, tones down his role and does not appear as menacing as he later became in other similar films. I enjoyed this 95 minute story and definitely recommend it to all fans of the suspense melodrama genre.

Quite honestly, I never had heard of this film before. And, having just watched it, much to my regret. It was made before U. S. entry into World War II. Yet, Hollywood was quite aware of the evils being perpetrated by the Third Reich. Coincidentally, the case is dominated by actors born in Europe. The story is not that new. Two brothers are on different sides of the spectrum in Berlin: one is a leader of the resistance movement, the other is a wounded German who maintains strong loyalty to the Reich. The film centers on how their worlds and visions collide, with a backdrop of the Nazis' trying to find and silence the resistance's radio broadcasts. The acting is first-rate all around. I suspect this would have been a 'bigger' film if Warner Brothers had used the 'A' team. All in all, a very good little movie.