Donald Davis

This film--covering the last years of Stefan Zweig's life--is an outstanding portrayal of an exiled and great writer whose German language and literary output were stolen from him by Hitler, and who, in despair, finally commits suicide in Petropolis. The tension in the film arises from Zweig's refusal to speak out against the Nazi dictatorship by insisting that political views were not a writer's vocation, especially when absent from the actual experience in Germany. This stand is made all the more painful because Zweig is a Jew who believes he has risen above his origins and belongs to an international writer's elite. Nevertheless, he find that there is no escape in a world of virulent anti-Semitism. The scenes where Zweig is confronted with this dilemma at the PEN conference in Buenos Aires (1936) are particularly compelling as are those of his retreat to the former Brazillian imperial capital of Petropolis. Kudos to Josef Hader and, as always, to Barbara Sukowa, with a nice performance by Aenne Schwarz!