The Mortal Storm

Plays as part of a Double Feature with PRISONER OF PARADISE on 5/6/18 at the Ahrya Fine Arts.

PRISONER OF PARADISE 12 PM
followed by a 30 minute panel with Stuart Sender, co-director of Prisoner of Paradise and Robert Scheer, progressive journalist
THE MORTAL STORM 2:30 PM
followed by a 30 minute panel with Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive

Buy a ticket to see THE MORTAL STORM and come early to see the first one for free!

The film that caused Hitler to ban all MGM films from Germany!

The Mortal Storm is a 1940 drama from MGM, directed by Frank Borzage and starring Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. The film examines the impact of fascism as it develops in Germany in the 1930s. It also features Robert Young, Robert Stack, Frank Morgan, Dan Dailey, Ward Bond and Maria Ouspenskaya. One of the few anti-Nazi Hollywood films released before America's entry into World War II, The Mortal Storm stars Stewart as a German who refuses to join the rest of his small Bavarian town in supporting Nazism. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called it "magnificently directed and acted ... a passionate drama, struck out of the deepest tragedy, which is comforting at this time only in its exposition of heroic stoicism,” and John Mosher of the New Yorker praised the film's story for being presented "without any theatrical nonsense” adding "What is outstanding about Frank Borzage's direction is its restraint. The cruel story is told without any of the highlights of horror. We feel that what lies behind is worse than what we are shown.”

PRISONER OF PARADISE
The harrowing story of Kurt Gerron, the beloved Jewish actor in Weimar Germany who made an infamous propaganda film for the Nazis extolling the Theresienstadt concentration camp, only to bemurdered at Auschwitz.