Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Jason Robards | ... | Henry Strauss | |
Christien Anholt | ... | Hans Strauss, as a young man | |
Samuel West | ... | Count Konradin von Lohenburg | |
Françoise Fabian | ... | Countess von Lohenburg | |
Maureen Kerwin | ... | Lisa | |
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Dorothea Alexander | ... | Old Countess Gertrud |
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Frank Baker | ... | The Zionist |
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Tim Barker | ... | Zimmermann - a teacher |
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Imke Barnstedt | ... | Girl in Tax Building |
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Gideon Boulting | ... | Prince Hubertus |
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Alan Bowyer | ... | Bollacher |
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Jacques Brunet | ... | Count von Lohenburg |
Rupert Degas | ... | Muller | |
Robert Dietl | ... | Gardener at Old Grafin's | |
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Luc-Antoine Diquéro | ... | Young Lover |
Two young boys from very different backgrounds become friends in 1933 Stuttgart. However, they don't realize how different they are until much later as one is the son of a well-to-do Jewish doctor and the other the son of a German aristocrat. After that summer and the election of Hitler, things change as anti-semitism gains fervor. After the core of the film deals with that era, the film flashes to the present and the Jewish man now returns to his boyhood home and seeks his old friend with some surprises. Written by John Sacksteder <jsackste@bellsouth.net>
Obviously deeply felt by both writer and director, immaculately designed on what seems to be a lavish budget by veteran Alexander Trauner (who appears early on playing the caretaker) and photographed in widescreen suffused in a nostalgiac glow by cameraman Bruno De Keyzer. The leisurely pace at which 'Reunion' unfolds conveys something of the gradualness with which the appalling reality overwhelms its characters, although the slow-burning first hour is disrupted by jarringly emphatic black & white inserts to keep reminding the audience of the calamity about to strike (as if they needed such nudging). Konradin's credulous willingness to give a demagogic snake-oil salesman like Hitler the benefit of the doubt - "He really impressed me. He is totally sincere. He has such... he has true passion. I think he can save our country. He is our only hope." - however remains depressingly familiar today.
But for the final, very abrupt, 'surprise' ending to work, the audience is assumed not to be able to recognise the ferrety face of Roland Freisler, occasionally seen although never identified by name (and ironically - as played by Roland Schäfer looking remarkably like John Malkovich in heavy eye-liner - relatively restrained compared to the actual bellowing maniac preserved for posterity in newsreels). And would it really have taken over forty years and a trip all the way back to the very school in Stuttgart were they were originally pupils for Henry to only now learn Konradin's fate?