The Man I Married

Most reviews of this film are appreciative and respectful, recognizing the professional production qualities and creditable acting, including that of Joan Bennett and Lloyd Nolan. In fact, Nolan's portrayal of the tough, clear-sighted newsman may be one of his best.

The reviews and billing do a disservice, however, by using the term propaganda to describe the film and story line. My mid-20th Century dictionary describes propaganda as a movement to spread a particular kind of doctrine, or a system of information to help or injure a person or group. It also suggests, while not always including, bias and exaggeration. In other words, it is untrue. As a contemporary with the film's production, I offer hat there is no deception here.

Growing up when this film was made, I knew numerous refugees from the Nazi system, both before and after World War II. Their stories attested with little variation to the authenticity of the incidents portrayed in "The Man I Married." Nazi policies and actions were then common knowledge directly or indirectly known --not suspected. Children, as I was then, know. Accounts of survivors dispelled any idea that the film was one of propagandistic excess. Any excess was that of the Nazi system. "Schindler's Lit" and "Counterfeit Traitor" are no less accurate. If you are a reader "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" will prove enlightening.

Keep this in mind also when entertaining thoughts that time can soften every period of ugly reality.

The Man I Married released in 1940 has its plot set in 1938 after the Reich had taken Austria and Czechoslovakia and the world was waiting out its last year of peace. Joan Bennett stars with Francis Lederer who may have rehearsed for this role playing the title role in Confessions Of A Nazi Spy the year before.

Lederer is a German who had settled in America and married an American girl Bennett and they have a young son in Johnny Russell. They hear that his father Otto Kruger is getting on in years and his business in the old country is falling apart. He wants his son to return to the old country and help straighten things out.

So Lederer packs his family up and returns to Germany and he get enthralled with Hitler. He's taken with the fine industrial machine that the Nazi state has made and feels pride in his nationality. His father of the older generation is not so impressed. Bennett is frightened by her surroundings and she gains a sympathetic ear in correspondent Lloyd Nolan.

She's got more problems than that. Lederer and her have grown apart and he's taken up with a Third Reich true believer in Anna Sten. You remember that Samuel Goldwyn made three attempts to make her a star and couldn't sell her. A pity because in The Man I Married she really stands out as the fanatical Nazi woman. She'd have made a great Magda Goebbels in a film.

The Man I Married was also unique in that it tackled anti-Semitism in a very dramatic climax scene. Darryl F. Zanuck and 20th Century Fox deserve a lot of credit for making this most timely film in 1940.

A seldom-known aspect of US history that most Americans don't know is that a law was enacted in the 1930s that made it illegal--YES, illegal for the studios to favor one side or the other in the European conflict that became WWII. Studios were forbidden to get involved and these companies all followed along with the law--seeing neutrality as a patriotic ideal. Part of it, I am sure, is that neutrality could insure that US films would STILL be rented in Europe (regardless who wins--neutrality guarantees the studios will deal with the victor). However, by late 1938 and into 1939, some brave studio execs started to balk at this. After all, the Nazis had proved themselves to be monsters--and the studios were beginning to take sides--law or not! While "The Man I Married" is not among the first of these anti-Nazi films from the US, it is one of the better ones and holds up well today.

Carol and Eric Hoffman (Joan Bennett and Francis Lederer) are living in the States when the movie begins. Eric was born in Germany but has lived in America a decade. Carol is an American--born and raised. The Hoffmans take their son to Germany for a visit and soon Mrs. Hoffman is aghast at the hate and viciousness she sees. What's worse...over time, she sees her husband buying into the Nazi rhetoric more and more. Pretty soon she's worried...can she even get out of Germany. And, more importantly, can she do so with her young son?

This movie doesn't pull punches. It talks about Dachau, prisoners being murdered in the camps and chalking it up to things like Apendicitis, Storm Troopers abusing non-Aryans and more. As I already said, though, it's not like any of this was much of a surprise to audiences, as by 1940 the war had been raging a year. Still, it's very well written and acted and holds up very well today. Nearly as good as contemporary films like "The Mortal Storm".

This is one of those early prophetic films seeing through Nazism completely long before their actual madness was commonly known or even suspected. Joan Bennett is married to a German in New York who wants to return to Germany to see about his father's business (Otto Kruger in one of his best roles), where he turns into a definite Nazi, to the great shock of Joan Bennett. It's a very unpleasant film, you feel the creeping horrors of Nazism invading your being and life as you like Joan Bennett follow the revelations of the tale, but dramatically it's an ingenious film, carefully building up an almost unendurable suspense, to reach a climax in the wonderful final scene at home. It is very intelligently written, and you follow the arguments and developments with constantly increasing anxiety and thrill, and what's worse - films like this are pertinent still today, since the same sneaking danger of dictatorships is something that history always has seen the return of.

With the nation of the verge of entering World War II, 20th Century-Fox head, Darryl Zanuck set out to make a series of films to keep Americans up to date on the rapidly changing shape of Europe. The Man I Married was one of those many films. The film was about the rise of Nazism in Germany and the devastating effects it would have on the relationship between Carol Hoffman, played splendidly by Joan Bennett, and her German-American husband, Eric Hoffman, played by Francis Lederer. The story involved their family visit in 1938 to Eric's homeland, where Eric comes to embrace the Nazi regime while his wife becomes horrified by it. This is a powerful film. It was highlighted by the inter-cutting of period news footage that showed the bigotry and brutality of the Nazi regime and Hitler's ugly brand of anti-Semitism. The insight this film shows is all the more remarkable when one considers that it was made before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It is most unfortunate that this film is not better known or on DVD. UPDATE: Now on DVD.