Most of the anti-Nazi propaganda coming out of Hollywood circa 1943 was set on the battlefront; this RKO programmer avoids the battlefield and limits the military to stock footage, but it's more powerful and engaging than many a contemporary war picture. Set at an American school in Berlin, it takes a while to establish why the two young leads (Bonita Granville and Tim Holt) speak in unaffected English while all around them sport comic-Nazi accents, and it's a little jarring at first to see the Hitler-youth children behaving like sitcom Americans ("Aw gee, can't we study outside?"). But once the propagandistic plot points kick into gear it becomes a real rouser, with the good American teacher (Kent Smith) trying to track down Granville through her appropriation, exploitation, and eventual sad end with the Nazis. It's surprisingly brutal in spots, and it's not afraid to have an extremely downbeat ending for its day. Director Edward Dmytryk and his DP appear to have actually studied Leni Riefenstahl for some of their compositions, and while the morality is very black-and-white (Nazi=evil, everybody else=good), for once that doesn't feel simplistic.
Review of Hitler's Children
