Marsha Testifies

The film opens on a statement that we are about to see the future. The War is over. The Nazis who victimized millions of people are being held responsible for their actions. A trial is being held, and among the accused is Wilhelm Grimm (Alexander Knox). Present in the court are three of his victims who survived: Father Warecki (Henry Travers), the local Catholic priest; Karl Grimm (Erik Rolf), his brother; and Marja Paierkowski (Marsha Hunt), his one-time fiance. The film promises the fate of the criminals: None Shall Escape (1944)

I'd not heard of this film until it was aired at the TCM Film Festival last year. A friend went to see it, and suggested I might want to seek it out; unfortunately, it has not been available on any media format, nor has it been aired on any television station. Recently, the film was released to Blu-Ray, and I was able to get a copy. If you've not seen None Shall Escape, try and find a copy (perhaps from your local library). It's a fascinating look into the past.

The movies was released in February of 1944 - four months before the D-Day invasion. The Germans had just won two major victories in Italy (at Cisterna and Anzio Beach), and the final outcome of the war was still in doubt. There had been other anti-Nazi films: The Great Dictator (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940), To Be or Not To Be (1942), All Through the Night (1942), but this was the first to attempt to show what was happening to Jews in Europe. It was also doing something else that was unique - looking to the end of the war and assuming the Allies would win - a bold statement in 1943 and early 1944!

The flashbacks which tell the story of Wilhelm Grimm's rise in the Nazi machine begin in 1919. The First World War has ended badly for him: his dreams of German glory have been destroyed, and he has lost a leg. He sees himself as less than a man, not only because of his disability, but also because he has been forced to return to Poland. Grimm despises the people he lived with before the war, including his fiance. He blames his hatred on the fact that the town will only see his injury. That the people of Lidzbark welcome him back, and that a woman like Marja could love him show the audience that, before the war, he seemed a good man. Clearly, he is no longer, and Alexander Knox plays him as one dead inside. The monster that was created by the war is only encouraged by the rise of National Socialism, and Mr. Knox is not afraid to display the evil that must have been buried below the surface. 

Marsha Hunt exudes an inner strength as Marja. The man she loved is, for all intents and purposes, dead. And with the beginning of the Second World War, she watches everything that she knows get plowed under by the reign of this horrible man.  She plays Marja with dignity; Marja never pities Grimm, but eventually she loathes him, and what he has become. His crimes are horrors, even before he becomes an officer with the Nazis, and Marja must acknowledge that the only way to save herself and her people is to abandon a man she once loved.

Also in the cast is Henry Travers as the local priest and Richard Hale as Rabbi David Levin. The two prelates are friends, and work for the good of their populations. It's a nice touch to present the religious leaders as a team, rather than as rivals for converts.

None Shall Escape was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Story (AFI Catalog) for writer Lester Cole (who was later blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten). Columbia chief Harry Cohn wanted Paul Lukas in the part of Grimm, but director Andre de Toth wanted Alexander Knox. It was released as a B movie, and reviews at the time were mixed - Bosley Crowther of the New York Times (of course) hate it, calling it "bombastically directed" and "dishing out thick, dark gobs of anguish;" while the Hollywood Reporter was glowing (TCM article).

Regardless, it is an important movie.  In her book Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust,  Annette Insdorf  says the film is "revelatory in its inclusion of the genocide of the Jews [and] prescient in its depiction of the postwar trial of an SS leader."  As Stan Taffel, in this 2016 interview said "This film is relevant in the 21st Century and it will be relevant in the 22nd Century. As long as people care about who they are and what they are and how they are, this film is relevant."  I'll leave you with a trailer and this discussion of the film by Marsha Hunt:


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This post is part of the Great Villain Blogathon. Go there to read the posts of the #Villains2019 participants.