Director: Irving Pichel
Year: 1940
Rating: 7.0
This is rather a remarkable film if you put it into context. From the title
one might expect a romance, but this is far from that. This is a furious
attack against fascism and Nazism in 1940. What is surprising about that
is Hollywood was very restrained until war was declared in 1941 about criticizing
Germany. For one thing Germany was a big film market and for a second the
Congressional isolationists in America - you know the America First folks
- demanded that Hollywood not in any way try and influence American sentiment
against Germany. The films Blockade made in 1938 and Foreign Correspondent
in 1940 were clearly anti-Fascist but in neither case was Germany or Spain
actually named. In Hollywood films played in Germany the names of the Jewish
people in the credits were excised out.
In The Man I Marry, Germany is very much named. And Hitler and Goebbels and
concentration camps (Dachau) and Jews. I don't think this got an opening
in Germany! In America Joan Bennett is married to a very nice German man
(Francis Lederer - who left Europe in the early 1930's to get away from what
he saw coming) and they along with their son go to Germany to settle some
financial affairs. While there Lederer is swept up in the New Germany with
their Volkswagens and factories and military. Soon he is giving the old Heil
Hitler salute with enthusiasm. Bennett who hates what she sees just wants
to go home but he decides to stay. In a sense she is America being woken
up to the evil that was taking place far away in Germany.
She gets help from an American correspondent (Lloyd Nolan) who in a bit of
dialogue is extremely prescient - Hitler is a madman who the world has never
seen the like of since Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. He wants to conquer
the world. He will never be satisfied. He doesn't want to just destroy the
democracies in Europe but ours as well. He will lose but he will leave blood
behind all over the world. I saw this film mentioned in the documentary Red
Hollywood. It is up on YouTube I think. Produced by Warner Brothers after
Jack Warner basically said fuck it to the isolationists.
