Skokie le village de la colère

He could have his pick of them but this is the only film role Danny Kaye took after a 12 year retirement of sorts.

He managed to sandwich in Skokie amid a slew of TV specials, tributes, and various other glorified career retrospectives. It would be his last significant work before the cameras, and it proved to be some of his finest.

The subject matter may seem corny or outdated to a young person, but not to anyone who knows the dark side of history the Nazis created.

And now here in a land where liberal communist sympathizers had been attacked at every turn for decades by the authorities, the conservative neo-Nazi party was enjoying a blind eye being turned to them. They were allowed to run rampant, particularly in America's East, and specifically in Illinois.

The cast, including the late Mr. Kaye, Kim Hunter, Ed Flanders and Lee Strasberg, is excellent and all turn in the fine performances that one would expect of actors of their sterling talent.

Naturally the old racist line turns up that goes "the only trouble with Hitler is that he didn't finish the job." But yes, that fact actually did mean not only "trouble" for his party, it meant the downfall of his entire regime - as well as the echoes of it here in America. Do not ignore the past, Skokie is saying, lest our apathy be mistaken for weakness.

These days, though, two decades after Skokie was filmed, we're keeping a much closer eye on Oregon than Illinois, but the message is the same - maintain constant vigilance upon those who would hide behind the Constitution in order to further the sickness of bigotry.

One of the better TV movies ever made about a current political issue. The issues are dramatized vividly - freedom of assembly vs. the rights of a community. The performances are consistently excellent. I would especially cite Danny Kaye, whose portrayal of quivering outrage is one of the great moments of his wonderful career. I was interested to read about the career of the screenwriter, Ernest Kinoy. Among his many credits are a couple of episodes of the excellent short-lived series "The Senator" (part of "The Bold Ones"), very much a "ripped from the headlines" series. So too with this movie.

To me, this was an excellent movie. This was one of my favorite movies of all time. Forget Schindler's list, to me this movie was a much better in certain aspects for emotion. One of the best scenes in this motion picture (one that in the 4 minutes it takes to play invokes more emotion from me as the viewer than all Schindler's list) is where Danny Kaye as Max Feldman answers his daughter's question about what happened to her grandparents. Max and his wife - holocaust survivors, have kept the horrors of the camps from their daughter. She has very little knowledge of what happened and at 13 or 14 she asks questions. Danny Kaye (Max) takes the time (against his wife's wishes) to finally tell his daughter. The strength and power of this single scene rests with the unemotional and matter of fact way that Max explains the nature of the death camp to his daughter. No emotion on the part of Max - - the character is breaking up inside yet is telling his daughter what the Nazis did to his parents in a manner to spare her the emotion. This while his wife is listening from around the corner quietly falling to pieces. You know the deep emotion that he has with the issues when he attends a meeting to discuss the question of Nazi's marching in Skokie with the vehemence and passion he holds on the issue. Yet he holds back this emotion with his daughter. Like I said, this few minutes of the movie is more powerful than the total Schindler's list - in my opinion. The full movie has its flaws, and covers the 1st amendment issues of American Nazi's right to march in detail, covering all sides of the issue. But this is a powerful movie and shows the depth of Danny Kaye's acting talents. A very surprising made for television movie about a very interesting topic. It is well done and very unlike Hollywood today.

This film is based on actual events that occurred around 1977-1978 in the small village town of Skokie which is located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, neighboring the City of Chicago's northern border. It is a story about a group of National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U. S. 43 (1977), arising out of what is sometimes referred to as the Skokie Affair, which was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court dealing with freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

The film concentrates more or less on the disgust of the majority of the towns residents who wanted no part of the likes of the National Socialist Party who threatened to lead a parade through the village of Skokie in their Neo Nazi uniforms wearing swastikas.

As like most people who have learned about the Holocaust I can appreciate how any reminder of that period of time in our history although never to be forgotten should not be glorified by any party or individual. This may be a film that circles the drain about free speech, but the only speech that was prevalent was angry and long winded and took away from the critical point between two groups of very different opinions.

Some very distinguished actors provided the film its credibility but I believe the film would have been better with fewer long winded speeches from only one side of the conversation.

I give the film a passable 5 out of 10 IMDb rating.

Deep thinkers will be fascinated, appalled and intrigued, all those reactions at the same time, with "Skokie", movie based on a true story that for the most part we wished it could be an very imaginative fiction. It retells the events surrounding an American Nazist group who decided to march on the streets of Skokie, a town whose majority of habitants consists of Jewish people, most of them Holocaust survivors. If only the story would stop right there because you already have one major conflict to give your food for thought.

There's a whole tension involved, politically specially, since the town's mayor is trying to make anything to secure his citizens that such march won't occur and if it does happen no violence will take place. The Nazi leader (George Dzundza) says it's his right as an American citizen to have his free speech; the Jewish community are really afraid of such atrocious act, harmful enough just in being thought about it; and they already made clear that if that march occur they won't stand there peacefully, they'll react against it with all of their forces. As one of the most respected leaders (Danny Kaye) says: "We'll attack them with baseball bats!".

The case goes to court where it will be decided if such rally is valid or not and if hurts the freedom of speech rights. This is where the story gets really interesting, unbelievable yet it's the truth, one of those life ironies that can't be easily understood: the American Nazi's decided to file a lawsuit against the Jewish community of Skokie by calling on their behalf the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to help them, and they're getting represented by a Jewish lawyer (John Rubinstein) who firmly believes that the law must be respected above all, he sees that there is interference with free speech and he decides to go forward with this process, which goes against what most of his associates think, creating a difficult problem in the union since the majority of people who support them are Jewish just like him and they wouldn't want to be known as the ones who defended people who go against everything they are and stand for.

Only with such plot and presentation of facts "Skokie" would already be something to be seen. But the cast makes it more involving, a true must-see. Carl Reiner, Eli Wallach and Brian Dennehy are great in the supporting roles, and veteran Lee Strasberg steals the show with just one scene in one of his final performances. But the main focus of our attention is comic Danny Kaye, playing a dramatic role of many dimensions, a man who went through a lot in his life, only trying to live peacefully but when hearing about the rally he's very vocal against it, and decides he won't tolerate that. Some find his performance a little over-the-top but it's not. It's very effective, one of the greatest things about this film.

Here's a quality TV film, very well made and with plenty of things to say about ethics, laws interpretations (they're never so black and white/right or left as one can imagine it is). The whole argument of what free speech really is and the rights of certain groups against others, it's very provoking to see and deal with it. 10/10