The Mortal Storm

One of Hollywood's invariably slightly embarrassing attempts to get to grips with the Nazi peril. Set in an all-American small town in Germany on the eve of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of the Third Reich, with the narrator pontificating about 'the mortal storm in which man finds himself today', it constantly teeters on the brink of absurd naiveté, kept more or less on balance by skill, sincerity and good intentions. The film is almost retrieved by the touching Sullavan/Stewart love affair, shaping up to be one of those incandescent romantic visions transcending reality that is the mark of a Borzage film. The fact that it doesn't quite work that way is probably because almost the entire film was directed, uncredited, by Victor Saville.