Prisoner of Paradise
Encyclopedia
Prisoner of Paradise is a 2003
Canadian documentary film
directed by Malcolm Clarke
and Stuart Sender. The film tells the true story of Kurt Gerron
, a German-Jewish cabaret and film actor in the 1920s and 1930s who was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp
where he was commanded to write and direct a Nazi propaganda
film.
. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Gerron was a well-known cabaret and film actor in Berlin
. He sang the song Mack the Knife
in the initial production of The Threepenny Opera
and appeared in a supporting role in Josef von Sternberg
's classic German sound film The Blue Angel, co-starring Marlene Dietrich
. When the Nazis were in power, Gerron remained in Germany
, in spite of serious requests from Josef von Sternberg
and Peter Lorre
that he should leave the country. Later, Gerron moved to Paris
and Amsterdam
in order to continue his entertainment career, and was in the end captured by the Germans in 1943 and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp
located near Prague
. At the time, this camp was being used by the Nazis with the purpose of propagating and fabricating a situation that the Jews were not being ill-treated . Gerron was recruited there to write and direct a 23-minute The Führer Gives a City to the Jews
, which is a sanitized propaganda film depicting the concentration camp as a "wonderful" place. Despite his cooperation, Gerron was subsequently sent to Auschwitz concentration camp
where he and his wife were eventually murdered.
presentation in Canada; the film is a Montral production, in association with BBC
, PBS, SODEC, and the Canadian cable television specialty channel History Television
. The script was written by Malcolm Clarke
and the film was narrated by Ian Holm
. The documentary was released theatrically on December 12, 2003. A DVD version was released on April 12, 2005.
gave Prisoner of Paradise a score of 70 out of 100. Variety magazine called the film "an important and smoothly mounted meditation on moral choices within the entertainment biz."
Charlotte Observer 's reviewer Lawrence Toppman praised the film, stating that "its uniqueness lies in its juxtaposition of happy faces and unhappy realities, of fleeting expressions of art and culture undone by daily brutality." The press widely agreed that the documentary exploited a new and unexpected aspect of the Nazi war against the Jews. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly
gave the film a B, and added that the film "reveal[ed] a queasy corner of the Nazi mind that tried to imagine a concentration camp as it fantasized the inmates might have." According to Hollywood Reporter, the distinction between Prisoner of Paradise and previous films of the same topic is that "it tells a morality tale of a man whose hubris partially led to his downfall and whose willingness to work for his Nazi overseers resulted in one of the most notorious propaganda films of the era."
Along with the good reviews, Prisoner of Paradise also received mild criticism regarding the analysis of why Gerron agreed to direct the Nazi propaganda
film The Führer Gives a City to the Jews, with New York Times commenting that the film "seems to just drift to a close rather than pronounce an end. This can be a result of wrestling with a daunting subject and not being up to its demands."
. Director Malcolm Clarke
won the Directors Guild of Canada Award; he and Stuart Sender were also nominated for the 2003 Directors Guild of America Award.
2003 in film
The year 2003 in film involved some significant events. Releases of sequels took place with movies like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Pokémon Heroes, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,...
Canadian documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
directed by Malcolm Clarke
Malcolm Clarke
Malcolm Clarke was a British composer, and a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for 25 years from 1969 to 1994.Clarke proved somewhat controversial when he joined the workshop, due to his views that Radiophonic music should be, in his words, "fine art," a philosophy that was not shared by...
and Stuart Sender. The film tells the true story of Kurt Gerron
Kurt Gerron
Kurt Gerron was a German Jewish actor and film director.-Life:Born Kurt Gerson into a well-off merchant family in Berlin, he initially studied medicine but was called up for military service in World War I. Seriously wounded he qualified as a military doctor of the German Army...
, a German-Jewish cabaret and film actor in the 1920s and 1930s who was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp was a Nazi German ghetto during World War II. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terezín , located in what is now the Czech Republic.-History:The fortress of Terezín was constructed between the years 1780 and 1790 by the orders...
where he was commanded to write and direct a Nazi propaganda
Nazi propaganda
Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...
film.
Content
The documentary is a chronicle of the life and career of Kurt GerronKurt Gerron
Kurt Gerron was a German Jewish actor and film director.-Life:Born Kurt Gerson into a well-off merchant family in Berlin, he initially studied medicine but was called up for military service in World War I. Seriously wounded he qualified as a military doctor of the German Army...
. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Gerron was a well-known cabaret and film actor in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. He sang the song Mack the Knife
Mack the Knife
"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife", originally "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English, The Threepenny Opera. It premiered in Berlin in 1928 at the...
in the initial production of The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
and appeared in a supporting role in Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...
's classic German sound film The Blue Angel, co-starring Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
. When the Nazis were in power, Gerron remained in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, in spite of serious requests from Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...
and Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
that he should leave the country. Later, Gerron moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
in order to continue his entertainment career, and was in the end captured by the Germans in 1943 and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp was a Nazi German ghetto during World War II. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terezín , located in what is now the Czech Republic.-History:The fortress of Terezín was constructed between the years 1780 and 1790 by the orders...
located near Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
. At the time, this camp was being used by the Nazis with the purpose of propagating and fabricating a situation that the Jews were not being ill-treated . Gerron was recruited there to write and direct a 23-minute The Führer Gives a City to the Jews
Theresienstadt (film)
Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet was a black and white projected Nazi propaganda film shot in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt....
, which is a sanitized propaganda film depicting the concentration camp as a "wonderful" place. Despite his cooperation, Gerron was subsequently sent to Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
where he and his wife were eventually murdered.
Production and release
Prisoner of Paradise was produced for the Cineplex Odeon FilmsCineplex Odeon Films
Cineplex Odeon Films was the film distribution unit of the Canadian cinema chain Cineplex Odeon Corporation....
presentation in Canada; the film is a Montral production, in association with BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, PBS, SODEC, and the Canadian cable television specialty channel History Television
History Television
History Television is a Canadian English language Category A specialty channel that presents programming about history and some non-historical programming of military, science and technology interest. It is owned by Shaw Media. Its French language counterpart is Historia.The channel operates two...
. The script was written by Malcolm Clarke
Malcolm Clarke
Malcolm Clarke was a British composer, and a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for 25 years from 1969 to 1994.Clarke proved somewhat controversial when he joined the workshop, due to his views that Radiophonic music should be, in his words, "fine art," a philosophy that was not shared by...
and the film was narrated by Ian Holm
Ian Holm
Sir Ian Holm, CBE is an English actor known for his stage work and for many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear...
. The documentary was released theatrically on December 12, 2003. A DVD version was released on April 12, 2005.
Critical reaction
The documentary received generally positive reviews by the press. MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
gave Prisoner of Paradise a score of 70 out of 100. Variety magazine called the film "an important and smoothly mounted meditation on moral choices within the entertainment biz."
Charlotte Observer 's reviewer Lawrence Toppman praised the film, stating that "its uniqueness lies in its juxtaposition of happy faces and unhappy realities, of fleeting expressions of art and culture undone by daily brutality." The press widely agreed that the documentary exploited a new and unexpected aspect of the Nazi war against the Jews. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
gave the film a B, and added that the film "reveal[ed] a queasy corner of the Nazi mind that tried to imagine a concentration camp as it fantasized the inmates might have." According to Hollywood Reporter, the distinction between Prisoner of Paradise and previous films of the same topic is that "it tells a morality tale of a man whose hubris partially led to his downfall and whose willingness to work for his Nazi overseers resulted in one of the most notorious propaganda films of the era."
Along with the good reviews, Prisoner of Paradise also received mild criticism regarding the analysis of why Gerron agreed to direct the Nazi propaganda
Nazi propaganda
Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...
film The Führer Gives a City to the Jews, with New York Times commenting that the film "seems to just drift to a close rather than pronounce an end. This can be a result of wrestling with a daunting subject and not being up to its demands."
Nominations and awards
The film received a nomination for Best Feature Documentary at the 75th Academy Awards75th Academy Awards
The 75th Academy Awards honored the best films of 2002, were held on March 23, 2003, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. It was produced by Gil Cates and hosted for the second time by Steve Martin....
. Director Malcolm Clarke
Malcolm Clarke
Malcolm Clarke was a British composer, and a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for 25 years from 1969 to 1994.Clarke proved somewhat controversial when he joined the workshop, due to his views that Radiophonic music should be, in his words, "fine art," a philosophy that was not shared by...
won the Directors Guild of Canada Award; he and Stuart Sender were also nominated for the 2003 Directors Guild of America Award.