The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

For several years now I've resisted watching Mark Herman's film, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," having read a number of mixed reviews and thinking I knew what to expect. Once again, I was wrong.

Newly promoted Nazi officer, Ralf (David Thewlis), moves his young family (wife, Vera Farmiga, son Bruno, Asa Butterfield, and daughter Gretel, Amber Beattie) from their comfortable Berlin home to a large manor in the countryside near the concentration camp he is now commandant of. The family adjusts except for Bruno who suffers from ennui and loneliness.

In an act of defiance to not go out back, Bruno escapes the confines of the home and after wandering through the woods arrives at the electric fence of the came whereupon he meets, an eight year old Jewish boy, Schmeul (Jack Scanlon). Despite the barricade of the fence, the boys strike up a friendship though neither understands the positions they are in or why their lives are so dissimilar.


A tutor is brought in for Gretel and Bruno, but all they are taught is propaganda, and the history of The Fatherland retold through Nazi eyes and lies. Bruno can't comprehend any of it, but 12 year old Gretel (who has an eye for a teenage Nazi soldier assigned to her father) buys into all of it with a chilling, coldblooded fascination.


We witness what appears to be daily bucolic life in the country, punctuated by terrifying brutal inhumanity towards the Jews (who Bruno is repeatedly told are not really people).

Kept in the dark as to her husband's business, the Commandant's wife begins putting the pieces of the terrible puzzle into place, reacting in horror. It's clear she wants no part in any this and can barely face her husband whose atrocities she can only imagine. Farmiga performance here is remarkable and heartbreaking as she tries to remove her children from the madness.


From this point on the story hurtles with an inexorable deftness to its final, inevitable tragedy.

Herman gets great results from the cast, nowhere more so than from his two juvenile leads.

Like the storytelling itself, James Horner's score nudges us into the film with its gentle opening motif that expands, contracts, and floats before screeching into the films finale.

Lacking the sensationalism of many anti-war films (particularly WWII films) "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" packs as strong an emotional punch to the gut as any in recent memory.

The Seventh Cross:

I just finished watching one of those movies I've been meaning to see (from an endless list: Fred Zinnemann's 1944 classic, "The Seventh Cross," and what a powerful, emotionally gripping experience it was.

For most of the story, it's about as bleak a tale as can be, Nazi Germany in 1936, and the hunting down of seven escaped prisoners of a concentration camp, the evil commandant of the camp having seven crosses erected (from trees) on which to hang each of the escapees. The prisoners represent (quoting Wikipedia) "a cross-section of German society: a writer, a circus performer, a schoolmaster, a farmer, a Jewish grocery clerk, and two prisoners who are apparently political activists. One is George Heisler (Spencer Tracy) and the other his mentor Wallau (Ray Collins), the leader of the group."

The film employs a marvelous sort of "ghost" device in having Wallau, who is the first to be captured, tortured and murdered, narrate in a voice over the entire film. His voiceover speech as he dies (silently) is gut wrenching and though hopeless for himself, wills his spirit to live in order to hep his friend, Heisler and restore his faith in humanity, despite the beasts of the world, i.e., Nazi, Germany.


Heisler has given up on mankind, is world weary, browbeaten and exhausted to the point of near death, but somehow never gives up. Tracy brings a quiet desperation to the role that is profoundly moving. The second half of the film features well-deserved Oscar-nominated performance from Hume Cronyn, as Heisler's old friend Paul, along with his wife, Liesel -played by Jessica Tandy.


It was shown on TCM as part of a tribute to cinematographer Karl Freund, the evening having begun withMetropolis. While I'd known his work there (and now The Seventh Cross), I hadn't realized until last night Freund moved to Hollywood, where he was persuaded by Desi Arnez to become the cinematographer for "I Love Lucy" locking in 151 episodes! I always did think Lucy might be the False Maria!

Having just finished listening to Das Rheingold,live from Bayreuth beforehand, it was almost impossible not to hear a lot of Wagner's opera in Roy Webb's score - which runs almost nonstop throughout the entire length of the film.

I'm not sure when this airs again, but I'd catch it if I were you! Powerful, stuff.