Varian Fry rescues more than 2,000 artists from Nazi persecution during World War II.Varian Fry rescues more than 2,000 artists from Nazi persecution during World War II.Varian Fry rescues more than 2,000 artists from Nazi persecution during World War II.
- Awards
- 2 wins & 4 nominations
- Eileen Fry
- (as Susie Almgren)
- Ballroom Woman
- (as Maitreya Frieman)
- Ballroom Man 2
- (as Christopher Maccabe)
- Director
- Writer
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- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- GoofsNear the beginning of the movie, Varian is holding the "Foreign Affairs" book differently depending on the camera angle.
- Quotes
Varian Fry: ...Not much time to react. But, react we must. What we do now, how we rise to the challenge will be how our children will judge us. The Darkness descending over Europe might keep the night for a thousand years. You ask me, Why the intellectuals? Because it is precisely the artists, poets, and writers who the Nazis hate the most for they are the keepers of the soul of Europe. The best of that civilization. If their voices be stilled, then who will sound the call to the rest of the world? You ask me, How will I get them out? I cannot say, for sure not today. But, if I have to bring them out one at a time on my back, or in the water, or over the Pyrenees, then that is what I will do because I am an American. Because my country has been a beacon to the world, a messenger of Liberty. To fail these people now would be to fail my country and fail my conscience. Do I ask, Would you take up arms? No, I ask only that you reach into your pocket to share some of the plenty that America has showered onto you to save a few persecuted men and women for whom their moment of God-given freedom is but a distant dream.
I've no problem with the alteration of some facts in order to make a more compelling story. Thus, the fact that Chagall and his wife did not make the trip with Werfel and Heinrich Mann but went at a different time, or that there were actually up to a dozen people working with the committee (many of them European), or that Fry hardly ever personally escorted any of the people into Spain, I see as normal poetic license.
However, to say that the Miriam Davenport character is a composite - but then to steal the name of a real person who died during the production in order to present a terribly ugly and false portrait of her, is not forgivable. From what I've read (including her journal), the real Davenport was a very young, sweet idealistic person whose fiance was trapped in Yugoslavia, not the coarse, promiscuous and tough creature given this name in the movie - (and given a fictitious physical ailment).
And to make Fry a bizarre, hesitant, effete man who affects a dandy's guise - is absurd. Again, from what I've read, the real Fry was smart, straightforward, strict, and decisive. (And he didn't die penniless, but was teaching classics at a New England prep school).
No one in the movie addresses the central moral question - why should the lives of those in the arts be more precious? The vast majority of those saved, had done their best work long before (Arendt is the obvious exception) - they weren't being saved for their future contributions so much as their past. Would it not be at least arguable that those saved should be those who were most involved in charitable works, had the greatest "heart"? Or that those saved should be those whose past indicated the most practicable help to the U.S. should it get into the war? Or that those saved should be those who had the closest family relation to American citizens? The movie's failure to address these questions - and blithe assumption that those in the arts are simply superior to the rest of us, so their very lives are more worthy of preservation - is deeply annoying.
Moreover, the movie fails to convey any sense of the value of the particular people saved. We need to know why these particular people are so important to Fry and others. Why could they not give the viewer a sense of the writing of Heinrich Mann, Feuchtwanger or Werfel? Why could they not show a single canvas of the work of Duchamps, Ernst or Chagall? Why could they not show some of the sculpture of Lipschutz? The political musings of Arendt? We need to know why these people are so critical.
This movie is dull. Those who like it on this board seem really to be responding to the idea of a movie about Fry's work - or to be (quite justly) praising what he and others in the committee did. Since the central drama of the personalities involved is so falsely presented, it's far far better to simply read about them.
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- Varian's War
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