The big mystery about this movie is its release date of 1944. The movie is based on Louis Golding's popular novel `Magnolia Street' from the early 1930s, which dramatized the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany before the war. So why turn the novel into a movie in 1944 near the end of the war, when the Holocaust had already happened and the persecution during the 1930s had been massively overtaken by later events? True, even in 1944 the western public may not have been aware of the full horrors of the Holocaust , but they were certainly aware that things had deteriorated far beyond the problems of a decade earlier. One can only assume that this movie might have been sitting in storage for a good many years before anyone had the courage to release it, and by then it had become so outdated as to be almost irrelevant.
Of course one can't question it's good intentions, but it's certainly no masterpiece. The main character is a childishly naive old man who blunders from one error of judgment to another like a highly principled Mr Magoo, recklessly putting himself and others in the path of danger.
Perhaps it did some good in its day, helping to prepare the public for the vastly greater horrors about to be revealed. But if it's holocaust history that you want, you might as well face the harsh reality which is now readily available in books or museums, instead of getting sentimental over this misty-eyed fantasy.
