23 May Underground
Underground, 1941 WWII Movie starring Philip Dorn
(1941) I am always interested by the movies that were filmed at the very beginning of the war when our country was watching from afar. This is the story of two brothers … one who has just returned from the front and is loyal to the Nazi party, and the other who is an active member of the resistance.
Even though now we are familiar with what was happening then, the movie goers in 1941 probably were not. I generally pull up the original New York Times review, and in 1941 the reviewer’s opinion was that “the characterization of the Gestapo agent is in the film too coldly inhuman to be credible, and his actions frequently pass the limit beyond which brutality can be shown on the screen.”
Hah! Of course, now we know that the brutality shown in this movie was only a preview of much worse to come.
In the original trailer for the movie (watch it here at Turner Classic Movies) Eric Severeid, very young and very handsome, announced to the American public that the German resistance was happening just as shown in this film, “Underground.” Severeid was all over Europe during WWII, working under Edward R. Murrow.
No Comments