User Reviews

You would think that a film about refugees fleeing Nazi Europe would sustain interest.

Surprisingly, this film is utterly dull. Francis Lederer, a Jew in real life, who fled the Nazi onslaught, as was the case with so many European actors, plays a pianist who was arrested by the Nazis for playing music which was forbidden by the regime. Tortured, he suffers from amnesia.

Meanwhile, he and his wife have fled to Guadalupe by 1940. She has gone with her parents and while he plays his music, his wife lies terminally ill in a bed. Her mother acts like the typical Jewish mother sobbing and bemoaning the fact of what has happened to her daughter. Unknown to all, they don't know that each other is there until it's too late.

J. Carrol Naish steals the film with a solid performance as an Italian captain in conflict with his own brother.

The picture does not sustain you. With the horns constantly blowing from the ships at sea, you can lose your concentration. Come to think of it, that's not exactly bad with this turkey.

Certainly the most off-beat of the wartime splurge of anti-Nazi pictures, this is an extraordinary and brilliant film, an experience so unforgettable, you will remember all this (either for or against) to your dying day: The two brothers, proprietors of a murder boat, so vividly portrayed by Alexander Granach and J. Carroll Naish (who is a little inclined to over-accent the accent) and their enervating idea that you cannot kill a madman because he is really two people (with its shattering climax); the beautifully played piano solos; the haunting fog-shrouded photography by Eugene Schufftan; and the relentlessly probing direction of Arthur Ripley making magic of the necessities for small-budget filming.

ANOTHER VIEW: "Voice in the Wind" does not impress so much on a second viewing. In fact it often seemed slow-moving, torpid, over- talkative affair. True, some marvelous ideas are broached in the dialogue, but a lot just seems to be marking time. Whole slabs could be cut to advantage, e.g. a great deal of J. Edward Bromberg's rhetoric. And Francis Lederer overacts atrociously. There's no denying, however, the innate power of many of the scenes, and the sheer originality of some of the film's subsidiary themes. The powerful scene in which Granach attacks a woman on the pier with its background sound effects of whistling and laughter, its moody atmosphere and photography, can never be forgotten. (Schufftan undoubtedly photographed the entire film with Dick Fryer pinch- hitting for him in the credits to satisfy the A.S.C.)

On the whole, on a second time around, Ripley's direction does not seem as inventive and hard-hitting. True, it's skillful and moody, but it does tend to emphasize close-ups. On a repeat viewing too, the movie's shoe-string budget does become more apparent. It was reportedly shot on a tight 12-day schedule – and I can well believe that statement!

In this case, the Reich has taken over Czechoslovakia, and for Czech piano player Francis Lederer, that's an instant tragedy because he can't play the beautiful music of his favorite non-German composers. This leads to the powerful scene when Lederer is being accused of defying German orders with threat of arrest and he tells the German officer that he hates the music of other nationalities because it's beautiful and the Nazi code does not believe in anything beautiful, only ugly.

It's that truth that guides this important yet forgotten World War II melodrama to its message as Lederer finds out when he becomes a refugee in Guadalupe where he finds the same feeling from the nasty J. Carrol Naish, showing hatred of the music that Lederer plays, showing no emotion outside his playing.

Naish snarls with a joker like laugh, reminding me of Claude Rains at his maddest in "The Invisible Man". His cackling and ill treatment of everyone around him (including a nephew who loves to whistle) shows a man either made mad from the war (and believing Lederer to be crazy) or an already rotted soul, a sign that Nazi like evil has not left the earth even though the Nazi's were no longer in power.

This is an engrossing independently made war drama with a mesmerizing performance by Lederer who had played his own share of villains and here does seem like he could snap and kill at any minute. The photography is terrific, and the editing really tight. The music is nicely scored, and it really says something about the Germans seen here being angry over music that they couldn't claim as theirs. This is one of those war movies that really makes you think and shows that just because the physical war is over, the war inside really is never over.

Since you'll never see this rare film,

*SPOILERS*

Here is a short synopsis:

The film begins with a voice over about escapees from the war in Europe. On the island of Guadalupe in 1944 refugees wait and hope to enter the US. The Guadalupe government warns the refugees not to pay money to smugglers who will take their money and kill them at sea. One group of these smugglers consist of the three brothers Angelo, Luigi, and Marco who regularly rip-off the refugees. [The brothers seem like a twisted version of the Marx brothers - they are suppose to be Portuguese but they have bad Italian accents. Angelo is Groucho without the wise cracks, Luigi is like an evil Chico, and Marco is like Harpo, without the Harp, as he only hums and whistles (he only speaks once in the film)].

Anyway, this crazy guy called by the villagers "Hombre or The Insane One" lives with the brothers and his only talent is that he plays the piano in the local abandoned bar. His playing bothers the brothers to no end. Hombre stares into space and remembers....

A flashback reveals that Hombre is actually Jan Volny, a Czech pianist engaged to Marya. After a concert where he plays a forbidden piece the Nazis arrest him but not before he sends Marya away to Paris. During the interrogation, a commandant hits Jan on the head with a candleholder and causes him to become bug-eyed, giving him amnesia. On the train to the concentration camp, he is given a harmonica and starts to play the forbidden piece. Immediately the two Nazis guarding him attack him. Fighting them off, he knocks them out and escapes. Next thing you know he is hiding in Lisbon and watches the three Portuguese? brothers mentioned earlier beat a woman up (we never find out why).

Back at the bar Hombre (Jan) begins to play the forbidden piece again on the piano. Across the courtyard Marya (Somehow she is in Guadeloupe also) hears the music and thinks it might be her lost love Jan. She runs down into the courtyard and quickly collapses. Jan hears her collapse and goes out into the courtyard and finds her. He slowly begins to remember her and takes her back to the people she is staying with. He staggers away, confused, back to the bar. Luigi enters the bar enraged that Hombre is playing piano again, shoots him. In comes Angelo who is angry that his brother killed? Hombre. They fight and look down to see that Hombre has disappeared. Luigi then grabs a knife and kills Angelo.

Jan goes back to Marya's apartment and cries over her body. She has died of pneumonia. In voice over, Marya vows that she will wait for Jan.

End of film. Very weird and really what was the point?

This is a poverty row production that was made by PRC and distributed by United Artists. Although it might have received the benefit of an increased marketing budget with UA pushing it towards an Oscar nomination for its scoring, that still does not mean it is anything more than what it really is: a low-budget affair. It might have begun with a good idea but lacks the overall polish required to draw us in and keep us fully engaged.

The biggest issue I have with VOICE IN THE WIND is the belabored pacing, and the fact that it is all so grimly forced. There is not one humorous supporting character, unless you call the operator of a murder boat (Alexander Granach) funny when he slaps a woman around on the dock. He implies he's striking her the way he would imagine sharks might attack her if he tossed her into the water. Such treatment pales in comparison to the brutality suffered by the main character (Francis Lederer) at the hands of Nazis back in native Czechoslovakia.

Lederer is a pianist who ran afoul of the Third Reich when he performed a forbidden piece of music at a public concert. He was separated from his wife (Sigrid Gurie), then interrogated and beaten. On his way to a concentration camp which we never see because there wasn't enough money to build such a set, he goes crazy and attacks the Nazi guards riding with him on a train. This somehow leads to his escaping with amnesia and winding up in Portugal.

We are not shown how he reached Lisbon since the story quickly jumps ahead. The focus abruptly shifts to Granach's character, whose job it is with his brother (J. Carrol Naish) to smuggle refugees from Europe to the Caribbean island of Guadalupe where they'll wait for a way to get into the U. S. Granach and Naish are extremely dangerous men, and Lederer's fate is sealed when he travels to Guadalupe with them.

Meanwhile, Gurie has also fled to Guadalupe-- great coincidence there-- with a couple of friends (J. Edward Bromberg & Olga Fabian). She has no idea her amnesiac husband is just down the street at a bar playing piano. She hears a haunting tune, and it causes her to think of him. For his part, Lederer still has no idea what his own identity might be or that the wife he had been separated from is only a block away.

The sets are sparsely furnished, and we are supposed to realize how poor and desperate people in Guadalupe are. The stark environment is contrasted with flashbacks where we see Lederer & Gurie's earlier married life in Prague, when they were more affluent.

There is so much cutting back and forth between the past and the present that if one is not paying close attention, it might get rather confusing. The filmmakers make the mistake of ending a flashback and returning to the present with a different character that the one remembering what had happened, which is ridiculous. Adding to the uneven nature of the film is the overuse of pathos in a story that could have been told with a tiny bit of hope.

The music and the acting is as somber as it gets. And of course, Gurie is dying of pneumonia to up the drama, and when she goes out in search of the hombre playing the music, she cannot cross a street without collapsing. Then Lederer comes along and before he can help her, he gets distracted by Naish who stabs him. This leads to the unhappy couple dying on the same bed together. It's too much. But, hey, at least they had Prague.