The Master Race (1944) Online

Based on the title and the first few minutes, this looks like it will be a kind of "Boys from Brazil" story about Neo-Nazis out to reclaim the world, but it's actually a rather run-of-the-mill WWII propaganda melodrama of betrayal and loyalty. George Coulouris plays von Beck, a Nazi general who leads a group of "inner circle" Nazis on the eve of Germany's surrender (the movie was released after D-Day but before the actual surrender). Glad to leave the weakened Hitler behind, the group goes underground, intending to get new identities and foment dissent among the liberated peoples of the former Third Reich. In Belgium, Coulouris pretends to be his brother, moves in with his sister-in-law and her daughter (who were seen as collaborators by the villagers), and tries to derail the Allies to return the land to nomality. Paul Guilfoyle (father to the Paul Guilfoyle who currently plays Brass on CSI) is Coulouris' first conquest in his propaganda battle. Lloyd Bridges is a former concentration camp prisoner and Nancy Gates is his girlfriend. The most interesting character is Helena, played by Osa Massen, who was raped by a German soldier and subsequently bore a child (Gigi Perreau in a wordless performance). The two have become semi-outcasts, seen as tainted by Nazi blood. There is some nice use of light and shadow in some scenes but aside from its interesting set-up, nothing very exciting goes on. After the opening, we never see any of the other "inner circle" Nazis and the whole film becomes a story of the villagers struggling to trust each other again. One of the worst lines of dialogue in any WWII movie occurs here when Bridges has to say, at an inspiring moment, "When the Lord made people, he had a great idea!" Massen is the best actor in the picture, even though she is saddled with having to look wide-eyed and sinister for the first half of the film until her secret shame (which we guess early on) finally comes out.

Director Biberman is remembered today, if at all, for being one of The Hollywood Ten – film people who defied the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and ended up in prison: consequently, his career numbered very few films – two ‘B’ thrillers made previous to this and two more (albeit higher-profile) titles after it; I myself had watched the best-regarded of the lot, SALT OF THE EARTH (1954), some time ago.

The two films clearly state where his political sympathies lie – given their celebration of collectivism during periods of turmoil (in the case of THE MASTER RACE, it obviously deals with WWII and, specifically, the ferreting of Nazi criminals and local collaborationists in Belgium once the Allies turn up to liberate the country). Unsurprisingly, all of this gives way to a lot of speechifying – though the war elements render the whole more palatable than was the case with SALT OF THE EARTH (which concerned a prolonged strike at a New Mexico mine-field); the narrative, in fact, throws in everything but the kitchen sink (with plenty of twists and turns along the way) – and, while the characters may come across as stereotypes at times, solidly professional production values (the film was made by RKO at its prime) carry it through.

The cast is modest yet effective – principally George Coulouris in one of his best roles as the Nazi Colonel (the film starts off with him disbanding his chain of command when it becomes clear that the Germans were losing the war) who passes himself off as the patriotic brother of a traitor who has been executed (in this respect, it’s the Hollywood equivalent of Britain’s WENT THE DAY WELL? [1942]). The latter’s surviving wife and daughter are having a hard time coping with this fact, being themselves under a cloud of suspicion – and the German is thus able to observe both sides with relative ease (since he obviously now professes to denounce Nazism, while at the same time rousing gullible locals into resisting the Allies’ help by making them out to be just another group of tyrants!). The more prominent among the ranks of the latter are Stanley Ridges as the American Major in command of the country’s reconstruction and Carl Esmond as a rugged but cheerful Russian officer with medical experience.

One other important female character is that played by Osa Massen, a local girl who succumbed to the advances of a German officer – a relationship which has even produced a child – while her fiancé and brother (Lloyd Bridges, himself in love with the niece of the man Coulouris has replaced!) went to war. There’s much conflict and heartache at the core of such sensitive issues – but understanding, forgiveness and hope for the future eventually prevail. Incidentally, we also get a repentant Nazi (now being held in the same concentration camp where the Belgians had been incarcerated not long before) and it is he who brings about Coulouris’ downfall; the latter had already committed murder and also ordered the destruction of the prison, ostensibly as an act of retribution against the Nazis but really to blame the locals for it – thus causing discord between them and the Allies! The film remains interesting today for its uncompromising and intimate look at the ravages of war, made with relatively few concessions to Hollywood conventions – displaying instead courage, conviction and a passion rarely felt in this type of genre offering.

****SPOILERS**** The movie "The Master Race" was put into production just after D-Day, June 6, 1944, and was released in September 1944 some three months later. The movie trying to anticipate and predict the end of the Second World War in Europe which took place some eights months later in May 1945.

As the war is about to end with the German War-Machine in shambles and Germany completely destroyed there's a group of elite Germans planing the next step in their efforts to conquer the world. One of these German elitists Col. Von Beck, George Coulouris, lays out the plan for future German conquests. Telling his cohorts that Hitler and his National Socialist regime was a failure and that Hitler wasn't really his own man but was controlled by Von. Beck and his German elitists. Now that the war and the Hitler government is coming to an end in the flames that that it unleashed on the world that the allies "Shall have him".

Beck tells of a plan for the German elitists like himself to infiltrate into the European population and formant the hatred and bitterness of the peoples that their among. This will destroy the allies as well as those countries themselves and in the end that hatred will bring them the victory that Hitler and his Nazis failed to achieve.

Col. Beck taking the name of Ferdinand Varin, a dead Belgium freedom fighter, goes to the Belgium town of Kolar where his, Varin's, brother Ernst lived with his wife Martha and daughter Nina. Col. Beck by black-mailing Martha about her husband being a Nazi collaborator is allowed to live in her home. Right away Beck/Varin takes a very amorous liking to young Nina and that turned out in the end to be his downfall.

Trying to formant hate and resentment against both the conquering allies as well as the defeated Germans Beck/Varin plays both sides against each other. The Belgium people dislike of being occupied by the US/UK troops as well as their hatred of their former occupiers the German who are in a POW camp outside of Kolar. That hatred by the towns-people of both the allies and Germans boomerangs against them by turning the allies as well as the captured Germans on them which is just what Beck/Varin wanted.

As far-fetched as the movie seems to be there was in reality a real fear among the allies about a similar and even more deadlier German sub rosa operation right up to the allied top military officer in the European theater of war ,Gen. Eisenhower. It was suspected that the German were planing to start guerrilla type operations using para-military units called "Werewolves" against the US/UK/USSR troops back then in 1945 when the regular German military forces were defeated.

It turned out later that Beck/Varin found out that there was a German POW pvt. Altmeier, Eric Feidary, who knew and could identify him so he had one of his un-suspecting stooges in the town of Kolar Josef Katry, Paul Guilfoyle, who he got to violently hate the Germans, blow up the German POW camp in the town so that he would kill pvt. Altmeier. Altmeier survived the explosion but in the meantime Beck/Varin's lust for pretty Nina got the best of him. Beck/Varin tried to sexually assault Nina only to have her mother Martha catch Beck/Varin in the act and then tell him that she's going to report him to the allied military authorities as a German spy which had Beck/Varin murder her to keep her from talking.

Captured as he tried to make a run for it by US troops Beck/Varin is brought back to the Allied top official in the town Maj. Carson's , Stanley Ridges, headquarters. Beck/Varin then claimed that Martha was a spy for the Germans and that Katry was the one who blew up the German POW camp to save his hide. Surprise, surprise,surprise who do you think just happened to be at the allied headquarters; a number of surviving German POW's from the explosion including pvt. Altmeier himself!

Altmeier, though badly injured and looking like a mummy, lifted himself up off the stretcher that he was lying on and identified Beck as a German officer. Just then another German POW whacked him in the throat killing him. Beck is at once arrested tried sentenced and shot as a German spy, all this before you could say Geronimo. With that we see all the people of the new and free but devastated Europe holding hands and working together to re-build that continent and make it a better place to live for future generations.

Odd but interesting film made during WWII that still holds up in it's innovating ideas about man's inhumanity to man which goes far beyond Hitler and his Nazi party. Which is sadly evident after some 60 years of wars and bloodshed all over the globe, since the movie "The Master Race" was released, shows.

This film unfortunately is a corny and inferior one, which is a terrible shame, because the subject deserved an excellent treatment. The subject is the fate of Nazism at the end of World War II. From 1944, Nazism began a process of planned 'metastasis', a word which I take from oncology to compare its spread to that of cancer cells when the central tumor is abandoned as the main base of the disease and the cancerous cells spread throughout the body. This is shown in this prescient early film, at the beginning of the story, where officers of the Wehrmacht are given sealed instructions and false identities to spread themselves throughout the world and work in secret for the restitution of Nazi ideals in the future. George Coulouris plays the wicked Colonel von Beck who presides over this, and is the villain of the film. It was not the Wehrmacht officers who did this in reality, but the SS. And the process was set up and presided over by Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann. Some conspiracy theorists suggest that Bormann got away and that his 'skull' which was found was not really his. We do not need to concern ourselves with that issue here. When the Allies got to Berlin they found the Berlin Treasury empty. All the gold of conquered Europe had been stored there. It was never found. Its value today would be trillions of dollars. The ingots had apparently been hidden in poisonous chemical tanks of the chemical company I. G. Farben (the main foreign 'front' for the Gestapo throughout the 1930s and the War), since gold cannot be damaged by any chemicals, and only the unstable mixture of two separate acids known as aqua regia can dissolve it. The gold was shipped out to safe havens like Sweden, Chile, and Argentina, over a period of time. Nobody opens poisonous chemical tanks to inspect what might be at the bottom. Apparently, ten percent of the gold was meant to be permanently stored as a 'backup' and still is stored. The rest has over the decades been used by the metastasized Nazis to buy international corporations and banks and attempt to achieve economic dominance and power, with a collection of bribed 'tame politicians' to assist them along the way. Many of their collaborators do not even know that they are working for metastasized Nazis, because all the collaborators care about is the money. The new Nazi Internationalists threw the Hitler cult overboard, just as shown in this film. The film was written and directed by Herbert J. Biberman, an inferior writer and director in Hollywood who had been a member of the Communist-leaning theatrical group in New York known as 'the Group'. He was later blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. It appears that he was a member of the Communist Party. Certainly, the corny creation of a hero of the Soviets as a character in this film is the kind of nonsense one expects of political hacks when they get too carried away making movies, and cannot resist inserting some propaganda into a film which then makes the story partially absurd. I mention all of this because it appears that Biberman was given some accurate information about what the SS were up to in their programme of 'Planned Metastasis', and I believe it must have come to him from the Soviet agents by way of Party contacts. How else could he possibly have concocted this story so early on, as even today people are still figuring out what really happened? Therefore, Biberman was performing a genuine service by informing the public of the process at this early date. But he did so with such lack of skill and talent, and with such adolescent propagandistic fervour, that the film has made no lasting impact, and its message was lost. The unlikely spot of Kolar, Belgium, is chosen as the supposed location of all the action, if you can call it action. The film contains a fine performance by the Danish actress Osa Massen as a German woman who has been raped by German soldiers and borne a child who has no name because of the shame. Lloyd Bridges plays her husband who returns and struggles to come to terms with the situation, but his performance is mediocre, as there is not much in the script and even less in the direction to give him much to do other than to wrinkle his brow and look earnest from time to time. This film could and should have been an impressive one, but it is not. Someone should try this theme again, and make it work this time.

When Nazi George Coulouris realizes that the war seems to be a lost cause for the third Reich, he takes on the job of moving into a community now under American command where his duty is to create dissension to create the next wave of fascism. He finds mixed loyalties, resentments among the villagers and uses that to create more tensions and raise the growing resentments towards each other's individual political ideals. Crafty on the inside but with a facade of gentility, he really gets close to achieving his evil plans.

Like Walter Slezak in the same year's "Lifeboat", Coulouris cleverly uses words to manipulate and passive aggressively twist the knife of doubt. The opening scene gives the impression that this is supposed to be in the future, following a recent trend of several films to show "what ifs" that predict the future, some with remarkable accuracy.

The cast is filled with mostly unknowns or rather obscure character actors, the most well known being future star Lloyd Bridges. Osa Massen, who played mostly obnoxious femme fatales with nefarious plan, is quite gentler here, and more subtle than normal. This doesn't show the outwardly evil side of the Nazi party but the subtle plotting deep inside that stirred things up and made them a powerful enemy in the first place. It takes a while to find your way with each of the characters, but once you are in, you will find yourself hooked.

The story is about a group of Nazis who try to blend in the with locals in the waning days of the war. One in particular, Colonel Von Beck (George Coulouris) is the star of the film...and his methods seem bent on sowing discontent and chaos. Can the Allies figure out who this man is before it's too late?

According to IMDB, this film was rushed through production in order to capitalize on the recent Allied invasion of France. And, while I watched, the film did have a hurried feel to it. It wasn't due to the acting or music or cinematography but the story itself...a story that seemed like it needed a re-write as some of it was a bit rough. Some examples of how heavy-handed and shallow some of the scenes were would be the incredibly over-idealized Russian doctor as well as the church scene. In addition the film uses one of the worst cliches in film history...a person telling the evil person that they are going to turn them in to the authorities! You just KNOW what's gonna happen to this woman!

By the way, despite me not enjoying the story, George Coulouris was wonderful as the Nazi agent...and he was always excellent in playing awful characters.

1944 and the Allies are pushing the Germans back on all fronts. In a last-ditch attempt to prolong the Third Reich and impose their will upon the world, the Nazis come up with a diabolical plan. Agents are sent to soon-to-be-liberated towns with the intention of blending in with the local population and turning them against the Allied liberators. One such agent is Colonel Frederick Von Beck. His aim is to sow seeds of distrust and revolution among the inhabitants of a small Belgian town.

Very original central plot, giving the movie heaps of potential. However, unfortunately, the year of release gives away how things develop from there. Being made during WW2 meant this was going to be a propaganda film. This doesn't have to be the death knell for a film - it is possible to make a propaganda film that remains watchable decades after the war has ended.

Unfortunately, this is not an example of such a movie. Incredibly one-dimensional and heavy-handed in its propaganda, there is no subtlety here. The Germans are evil to the nth degree. Even the Russians are portrayed as angels - anything for the war effort. Quite over-the-top in the extremeness of the propaganda.

This isn't the worst of it. A stark black-and-white good vs evil film could still have been entertaining. However, there's really not much action. Instead, we have speeches upon speeches, none of which say anything new or edifying - it's all stuff we already know: the Nazis are bad, fascism is bad, people need to be free, etc. Yet, every chance is grabbed to jam in a speech. What should have been one line in a dialogue turns into a several-minute monologue.

It's all so tedious and preachy.

Herbert Biberman (1900-1971) is the writer and director of this 1944 film. Biberman was a member of the left wing theatre group in New York City and was married to Gale Sondergaard. Both Biberman and Sondergaard were victims of the HUAC "red scare" – Biberman served time in prison and both were blacklisted.

This was his third film as director, fifth as a writer.

Lloyd Bridges (1913-1998) has a minor role in the film. Bridges too was briefly blacklisted but turned around and would be a staunch right wing presence.

(Doc) Robert Golden produced the film. He also produced "Hitler's Children" (1943) which was directed by Edward Dmytryk, another director imprisoned during the HUAC trials. "Hitler's Children" was the most successful film for RKO, even surpassing King Kong, and led to this film being made.

From the film there aren't many obvious communist themes, but there is a sympathetic Russian soldier and there is a lot of emphasis on people working together. The film is ardently anti-Nazi.

George Coulouris (1903-1989) gives the best performance of his career. Osa Massen (1914-2006) is excellent.