Wilfred Lawson | First Impressions

Pastor Hall (Roy Boulting, 1940)/ Obsession (Edward Dmytryk, 1949)

Richard I talk about two films screened recently at Cinema Rediscovered in Bristol, that will be touring around art cinemas this Autumn and will also be released through Indicator.

PASTOR HALL is an early anti-Nazi film that somehow feels very timely now. A small village in Germany, a happy recognisable place, patriotic, is taken over by a platoon of stormtroopers and suddenly young women are being brutalised, jews have their homes destroyed and even the Pastor is in trouble. Based on a true story about how German pastor Martin Niemöller got sent to Dachau concentration camp for criticising the Nazi Party. In the podcast we discuss how the film raises questions of morality, ethics, collaboration, resistance, how easily it lends itself to current events in the US now, and how much people knew about concentration camps then.

OBSESSION is a British noir in which Robert Newton kidnaps his wife’s lover to murder him at a later date and commit the perfect crime. It’s directed by Edward Dmytryk (FAREWELL MY LOVELY, CORNERED, CROSSFIRE) then on the run from the House of Un-American Activities and finding temporary shelter in the UK. We discuss it as a noir, as a British film, and praise the way the film uses the bombed out setting, London in ruins as setting for a life in ruins, an Empire dissolving and Americans walking ‘our’ streets and stealing ‘our’women.

Two old films that feel newly relevant and are worth looking forward to.

The podcast may be listened to here: