Pastor Hall | |
---|---|
Directed by | Roy Boulting |
Written by | Leslie Arliss Anna Reiner Haworth Bromley John Boulting Roy Boulting Miles Malleson |
Based on | the play Pastor Hall (1939) by Ernst Toller [1] |
Produced by | John Boulting |
Starring | Wilfrid Lawson Nova Pilbeam Marius Goring Seymour Hicks |
Cinematography | Mutz Greenbaum |
Edited by | Roy Boulting |
Music by | Charles Brill Hans May (as Mac Adams) |
Production company | Charter Film Productions |
Distributed by | Grand National Pictures (UK) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 95 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | £25,000 [2] |
Pastor Hall is a 1940 British drama film directed by Roy Boulting and starring Wilfrid Lawson, Nova Pilbeam, Marius Goring, Seymour Hicks and Bernard Miles. [3] The film is based on the play of the same title by German author Ernst Toller who had lived as an emigrant in the United States until his suicide in 1939. [4] The U.S. version of the film opened with a prologue by Eleanor Roosevelt denouncing the Nazis, and her son James Roosevelt presented[ further explanation needed ] the film in the US through United Artists. [5]
The film was based on the true story of the German pastor Martin Niemöller who was sent to Dachau concentration camp for criticizing the Nazi Party. In the 1930s, a small German village, Altdorf, is taken over by a platoon of stormtroopers loyal to Hitler. The SS go about teaching and enforcing 'The New Order' but the pastor, a kind and gentle man, will not be intimidated. While some villagers join the Nazi Party avidly, and some just go along with things, hoping for a quiet life, the pastor takes his convictions to the pulpit. Because of his criticism of the Nazis, the pastor is sent to Dachau.
The New York Times reviewer wrote that "not until Pastor Hall opened last night at the Globe has any film come so close to the naked spiritual issues involved in the present conflict or presented them in terms so moving. If it is propaganda, it is also more...In its production the film is mechanically inferior. The sound track is uneven, the lighting occasionally bad. But in its performances it has been well endowed. Much of the film's dignity and cumulative emotion comes from the fine performance of Wilfrid Lawson as the pastor." [6] TV Guide called the film "far less heavy-handed than most wartime films Hollywood cranked out after Pearl Harbor." [5]
Dachau is a town in the Upper Bavaria district of Bavaria, a state in the southern part of Germany. It is a major district town—a Große Kreisstadt—of the administrative region of Upper Bavaria, about 20 kilometres north-west of Munich. It is now a popular residential area for people working in Munich, with roughly 45,000 inhabitants. The historic centre of town with its 18th-century castle is situated on an elevation and visible over a great distance.
The Night of the Long Knives, also called the Röhm purge or Operation Hummingbird, was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as "Brownshirts". Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm – the so-called Röhm Putsch.
The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic. Approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 15 Nazis, four police officers, and one bystander.
Ernst Julius Günther Röhm was a German military officer and a leading member of the Nazi Party. Initially a close friend and early ally of Adolf Hitler, Röhm was the co-founder and leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing, which played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power. He served as chief of the SA from 1931 until his murder in 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives.
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Bernhard Lichtenberg was a German Catholic priest who became known for repeatedly speaking out, after the rise of Adolf Hitler and during the Holocaust, against the persecution and deportation of the Jews. After serving a jail sentence, he died in the custody of the Gestapo on his way to Dachau concentration camp. Raul Hilberg wrote: "Thus a solitary figure had made his singular gesture. In the buzz of rumormongers and sensation seekers, Bernhard Lichtenberg fought almost alone."
Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl was a German American businessman and close friend of Adolf Hitler. He eventually fell out of favour with Hitler and defected from Nazi Germany to the United States. He later worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt and was once engaged to the author Djuna Barnes.
The following events occurred in April 1945:
Hotel Berlin is an American drama film made by Warner Bros. in late 1944 to early 1945 starring Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine, Raymond Massey and Andrea King. Directed by Peter Godfrey, it set in Berlin near the close of World War II, and is based on the novel Hotel Berlin by Vicki Baum.
Wilfrid Lawson was an English character actor of screen and stage.
The Night of the Long Knives was a purge in which Adolf Hitler and the regime of Nazi Germany targeted members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, as well as past opponents of the party. At least 85 people were murdered in the purge, which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.
Nuremberg is a 2000 Canadian-American television docudrama in 2 parts, based on the book Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial by Joseph E. Persico, that tells the story of the Nuremberg trials. Actual footage of camps, taken from the documentary Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps (1945), was included in this miniseries.
Mauterndorf Castle is a castle in the municipality of Mauterndorf, in the Austrian state of Salzburg. It is situated at an altitude of 1,138 metres (3,734 ft).
Events in the year 1933 in Germany.
The Hitler Gang is a 1944 American pseudo-documentary film directed by John Farrow, which traces the political rise of Adolf Hitler. Described as a "documentary-propaganda" film by its studio, Paramount Pictures, the historical drama is based on documented fact and marks the first serious effort to portray Hitler in film. The filmmakers chose to avoid casting stars in the lead roles, assembling instead a remarkable company of lookalikes to play Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Göring, and other leading Nazis.
The Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration incarcerated clergy who had opposed the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. From December 1940, Berlin ordered the transfer of clerical prisoners held at other camps, and Dachau became the centre for imprisonment of clergymen. Of a total of 2,720 clerics recorded as imprisoned at Dachau some 2,579 were Roman Catholics. Among the other denominations, there were 109 Protestants, 22 Orthodox, 8 Old Catholics and Mariavites and 2 Muslims. Members of the Catholic Society of Jesus (Jesuits) were the largest group among the incarcerated clergy at Dachau.
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