'Secret Courage' is too much info
Film's drama cluttered by research
One of the mistakes writers sometime make is to lose sight of the story you're telling. You've gathered so much information in the research process that you want to get it all into the final product. The result is unfocused and the story you set out to tell gets buried in the process. Such is the case with the 2005 locally produced film "Secret Courage: The Walter Suskind Story."
There is an incredible story here that needs to be told. Suskind was a German Jew who managed to get out of Germany in 1938 on a Dutch passport and made a new life with his wife in Amsterdam. He thought he'd be safe there, but two years later the Netherlands fell. New anti-Jewish laws were the first steps on the road to ghettoization and subsequent deportation to the death camps.
Suskind, who had worked as a salesman, now began the greatest sales pitch of his career. He was part of the "Jewish Council" appointed by the Nazis to oversee the removal of the Jews. Using his fluent German and outgoing personality, Suskind befriended the German put in charge of the occupation.
Many Jews believed he was a collaborator. He was, in fact, putting together an operation that would rescue an estimated 800-1000 Jewish children by spiriting them away and putting them in the care of non-Jewish families. The Germans never suspected a thing.
Suskind's life came to an unhappy end. In 1943, when the deportation was complete, he was offered the opportunity to go underground, but he opted to go to the prison camp where his wife and young daughter were being held and planned to rescue them. He ever had a letter from his "friend," the head of the Dutch occupation. It was for nothing. Suskind and his family all perished at Auschwitz.
The film does important work in putting the spotlight on this largely unknown hero. The problem is that in gathering interviews with those who knew him and those he rescued, the filmmakers have enough material for several documentaries -- one on the fate of Holland's Jewish community, one on what happened to the children who were rescued, one on Suskind himself -- and they attempt to squeeze them all into one film.
Suskind disappears from the narrative for long stretches, and the focus keeps shifting. The material is rich, with many of the subjects (all speaking in English) having interesting things to say. Without a strong narrative thread, though, the whole is less than the sum of the parts.
"Secret Courage" pays tribute to Walter Suskind, but it's a tribute that gets lost among the multiple stories being told.
Daniel M. Kimmel, a Boston-based film critic and author, lectures widely on a variety of film-related topics and can be reached at daniel.kimmel@rcn.com.
"Secret Courage: The Walter Suskind Story" is available through the National Center for Jewish Film for $36. Public performance rights separately available. Call (781) 736-8600 or go to www.jewishfilm.org.
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