Mr. Emmanuel

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Movie
Original title Mr. Emmanuel
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1944
length 97 minutes
Rod
Director Harold French
script Louis Golding ,
Gordon Wellesley
production William Sistrom
music Mischa Spoliansky
camera Otto Heller
cut Alan Jaggs
occupation

Mr. Emmanuel is a British film drama directed by Harold French from 1944, about the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Louis Golding , who also wrote the screenplay. Felix Aylmer played the title role.

action

Isaac Emmanuel is an elderly man who lived a decent life in tranquil Doomington in 1930s England. Ever since he scaled back his involvement in Jewish welfare, Mr. Emmanuel has been looking for new fields of activity. One day he receives a letter from a friend. In this, the sender asks to visit him, as he is looking after three German-Jewish young people. You came to England some time ago as part of the rescue of children from Hitler's Germany. Bruno Rosenheim is one of them. The boy has been in despair since his father's death because his mother was unable to accompany him to England. He has not heard from her since then, and no letter has ever reached him. The woman is considered missing. Mr. Emmanuel is very struck by the boy's sadness. Since he himself once fled from Russia before the pogroms raging there , Mr. Emmanuel has a lot of understanding for the needs of little Bruno. As a British citizen, he feels safe and, although a Jew himself, decides to travel to Germany to find Bruno's mother.

In Berlin, Mr. Emmanuel begins his inquiries and underestimates the danger of such questions about the mother of a Jewish child in Germany at that time. The respondents turn out to be very closed and give hardly any information, there is a haze of omnipresent fear above everything. The police and an escape aid organization are not exactly helpful either, but the Gestapo gets wind of Emmanuel's research and in turn begins to pursue the English Jew. The old man is arrested and questioned about his intentions. Sometimes he is suspected of being a spy, then again a sympathizer of the communists. Believing that his British passport would protect him, Mr. Emmanuel underestimates the means the Gestapo is willing to use to get rid of someone who is unwelcome. Suddenly the old man is accused of killing a high-ranking Nazi official. Now even the British embassy can no longer help him. Mr. Emmanuel finds himself behind bars and soon fears the worst. Right next door, a fellow inmate is tortured and then dragged away to be executed.

Unexpected help comes in the form of the attractive nightclub singer Elsie Silver. She is half Jewish and knows Mr. Emmanuel from the time she lived in England herself. The young woman is a celebrated star in the Reich capital, obviously nobody knows about her Jewish roots. Elsie's contacts with politics and the police do not help at first. With the support of a high-ranking Nazi official who shows more than just artistic interest in Elsie, the entertainer finally manages to get Mr. Emmanuel's release. He is encouraged to leave Germany within the next twelve hours. But Mr. Emmanuel is still fearless and desperately wants to fulfill the assignment given to him. Again he goes in search of Bruno's mother. In fact, he can find her, but this encounter is more than sobering. She has finished her old life and forgot about her Jewish child. Instead, she has become the wife of a high-ranking Nazi and denies both her own being Jewish and the existence of her son. Deeply sad, Mr. Emmanuel returns to England and tells Bruno that his mother has since passed away.

Production notes

Mr. Emmanuel premiered in London on October 2, 1944, and was released in the United States at the beginning of the following year. You could never see this film in Germany.

Original author Louis Golding (1895–1958) incorporated some autobiographical elements into the story; so he was also a Jew with Russian (today: Ukrainian) roots.

For the popular supporting actor Felix Aylmer as Mr. Emmanuel, this film was one of the very rare opportunities in his life to carry a film on his own. The future top star Jean Simmons , then just 15 years old, played his second film role here. Norman G. Arnold was responsible for the film construction. The future cameraman Ernest Day made his film debut here at the age of 17 as a camera assistant.

Reviews

Bosley Crowther called on January 8, 1945 in the New York Times Mr. Emmanuel a "simple and disturbing little film" that was the "sharpest condemnation of Nazi 'culture'" and also praised Felix Aylmer's performance.

Halliwell's Film Guide characterized the film as "a simple but fairly effective and unusual story".

In Felix Aylmer’s biography, the film’s large lexicon of people praised the main actor, who gave “a touching portrait of an old Jew” and in Harold French’s biography called the film a “moving drama”

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 684
  2. ↑ Kay Less : The large personal dictionary of films , Volume 1, p. 198. Berlin 2001
  3. ↑ Kay Less: The large personal dictionary of films, Volume 3, p. 102

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