The Man I Married

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".

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.

This is really a very fine movie, something I did not expect from the leads, neither of whom have ever done much for me. If you watch it thinking of the time of its release - August 1940, by which time France had signed an armistice with Germany and Germany occupied two thirds of France while getting ready to start its assault on England - it seems particularly ominous.

The one part that could have used a lot more work in the script is explaining why Eric Hoffman, the male lead, would have fallen for the propaganda of the Nazi regime, especially after having lived in the U.S. for so many years. We never know if it is the ideology that has swayed him, or the attractive blonde (played well by Anna Sten).

The movie does a fine job of letting us see only slowly the horrors - some of them - of the Nazi regime, first letting us hear only the positive propaganda.

All the acting is good.

There is no real love story here, which, I suppose, is one reason the movie failed to leave a mark. But it is well-made, and must have come as a wake-up call to at least some Americans who believed, as so many still did in 1940, that the war in Germany was none of our business.

Definitely worth watching. You won't be bored.

Joan Bennett realizes there is a problem with "The Main I Married" in this 1940 film also starring Francis Lederer, Otto Kruger, Anna Sten, and Lloyd Nolan.

Bennett plays Carol Hoffman, an editor, happily married to a German, Eric Hoffman (Lederer), for 8 years. They have a son named Ricky (Johnny Russell) and live in New York City. In 1938, Eric learns that he needs to return to Germany to take care of some business concerning his father's factory, so Carol and Ricky come along.

Eric's feet no sooner touch Deutschland that he begins to take up the Nazi fervor, aided and abetted by an old friend, Greta (Sten). Carol is vocal about not liking what she sees, and Eric keeps telling her not to listen to propaganda.

Finally, Carol realizes the truth about her husband, and with the help of an American journalist covering Berlin (Nolan), she decides to leave Germany with Ricky.

Good movie, great cast, solid performances. I don't know what the atmosphere in 1938 was but somehow I don't think I would have been interested in a trip to Germany. And frankly, Carol had good dose of denial about Eric or she would have left shortly after they arrived.

Otto Kruger is excellent as Eric's father, who feels as if he's lived too long, and Sten gives a strong performance as the unlikable Nazi Freda. Lederer has long been a favorite actor of mine, and here he's handsome and charming as a man ultimately gripped by nationalism.

Bennett is a beautiful, glamorous American woman who realizes how bad things are, and she gives a strong performance, brave in her disapproval and determined not to expose her child to it.

Irving Pichel does a good job of directing, and there is actual footage of Germany in 1938 throughout the film.

The movie was released in August of 1940, so it was probably made after war was declared in Europe, which was in September 1939. The film The Mortal Storm, released in June 1940, talks of the German oppression but never mentions Jews or Nazis. It seems that the studio moguls wanted America to enter the war, and promoted the cause with the films they produced, becoming a little bolder with each film.