Escape Route to Marseilles

Studies of Germany's recent fascist past - especially from film-makers on the left - are notorious for their length (e.g. Confessions of Winifred Wagner), but this would put even Hans-Jürgen Syberberg to the test. Basically, it's an analysis of how people escaped from Occupied France through the so-called Free Zone to Marseilles and, with a lot of luck, abroad by sea. But the film also aims to point the significance of these events for all those involved in resistance activities today. Mixing documentary, interview and newsreel footage, but deliberately avoiding the 'dramatic' aspects of the mass exodus, this quasi-documentary is comprehensive to the point of pedantry and sober to the point of solemnity, lacking the essential irony that made Kluge's The Patriot such an entertaining yet progressive treatise on 20th century German history. Overburdened by a sense of expiation, and unrelieved by any feeling for accessible film-making.