The Aryan Couple (2004)
Country: GB/US
Technical: col 119m
Director: John Daly
Cast: Martin Landau, Judy Parfitt, Kenny Doughty, Caroline Carver, Danny Webb, Steven Mackintosh
Synopsis:
In Hungary during the war, a Jewish couple working for the resistance movement, and masquerading as Aryans, find their safety compromised when their employer, a wealthy Jewish industrialist, negotiates a deal with Heinrich Himmler to secure transport for his family to Palestine, or is it Switzerland?
Review:
The only kind of Holocaust drama that gets itself made, it seems, is one about those who survived, so this one salves its conscience early on with footage from around the Auschwitz museum and a sequence showing a trainload of Jews being embarked by Eichmann. 'Inspired by true events', it says, and indeed it does let inspiration get the better of it, while the handling mostly fails to inspire anything very much. The couple themselves are a pretty unimposing pair, given dialogue of at times jaw-dropping banality (producer Daly wearing too many hats here), and their case is not helped by the film's neglecting them for long stretches to flesh in the background surrounding the Landau character. The Schindleresque music tries too hard to tug at our heartstrings, emphasising the mismatch between what we see and what we feel, and the screenplay calls for some fairly stupefying suspensions of disbelief. Lighting camerawork, editing and blocking are of televisual quality and, with the exception of the ever-professional Parfitt and Webb's enjoyable turn as Himmler, the acting is of similar tenor.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col 119m
Director: John Daly
Cast: Martin Landau, Judy Parfitt, Kenny Doughty, Caroline Carver, Danny Webb, Steven Mackintosh
Synopsis:
In Hungary during the war, a Jewish couple working for the resistance movement, and masquerading as Aryans, find their safety compromised when their employer, a wealthy Jewish industrialist, negotiates a deal with Heinrich Himmler to secure transport for his family to Palestine, or is it Switzerland?
Review:
The only kind of Holocaust drama that gets itself made, it seems, is one about those who survived, so this one salves its conscience early on with footage from around the Auschwitz museum and a sequence showing a trainload of Jews being embarked by Eichmann. 'Inspired by true events', it says, and indeed it does let inspiration get the better of it, while the handling mostly fails to inspire anything very much. The couple themselves are a pretty unimposing pair, given dialogue of at times jaw-dropping banality (producer Daly wearing too many hats here), and their case is not helped by the film's neglecting them for long stretches to flesh in the background surrounding the Landau character. The Schindleresque music tries too hard to tug at our heartstrings, emphasising the mismatch between what we see and what we feel, and the screenplay calls for some fairly stupefying suspensions of disbelief. Lighting camerawork, editing and blocking are of televisual quality and, with the exception of the ever-professional Parfitt and Webb's enjoyable turn as Himmler, the acting is of similar tenor.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col 119m
Director: John Daly
Cast: Martin Landau, Judy Parfitt, Kenny Doughty, Caroline Carver, Danny Webb, Steven Mackintosh
Synopsis:
In Hungary during the war, a Jewish couple working for the resistance movement, and masquerading as Aryans, find their safety compromised when their employer, a wealthy Jewish industrialist, negotiates a deal with Heinrich Himmler to secure transport for his family to Palestine, or is it Switzerland?
Review:
The only kind of Holocaust drama that gets itself made, it seems, is one about those who survived, so this one salves its conscience early on with footage from around the Auschwitz museum and a sequence showing a trainload of Jews being embarked by Eichmann. 'Inspired by true events', it says, and indeed it does let inspiration get the better of it, while the handling mostly fails to inspire anything very much. The couple themselves are a pretty unimposing pair, given dialogue of at times jaw-dropping banality (producer Daly wearing too many hats here), and their case is not helped by the film's neglecting them for long stretches to flesh in the background surrounding the Landau character. The Schindleresque music tries too hard to tug at our heartstrings, emphasising the mismatch between what we see and what we feel, and the screenplay calls for some fairly stupefying suspensions of disbelief. Lighting camerawork, editing and blocking are of televisual quality and, with the exception of the ever-professional Parfitt and Webb's enjoyable turn as Himmler, the acting is of similar tenor.