The central figure in this series is Felicitas Woll, a young nurse in a Dresden hospital who secretly helps a wounded British pilot, John Light, out of simple decency and then falls in love with him, despite her imminent marriage to a rather stiff doctor. It's all about her. And she carries it off nicely, cheerfully for the most part. If at first she looks a little chubby, after a few minutes of exposure she comes to resemble Meg Ryan with her gay smile. She has the most engaging nose too. Unremarkable except at its tip where its ordinary slope forms an impudent lump.
It's a lengthy miniseries mostly in German with English subtitles. I wish more Americans were able to see this because it's intelligent, and many American's don't seem to get out much, and the younger among us don't hear much about Dresden. They're lucky if they know who fought who in World War II. Really. Forty percent of high school seniors think the US fought with the Nazis against the Russians in WW2. That's high school seniors, mind you.
Back to the film. Like many mini-series it has multiple sub plots and an abundance of improbabilities. There's a nice couple, the Goldbergs, still surviving in Dresden because the wife is not a Jew. Yes, there were still Jews at large in Germany. One of the survivors of Dresden was the diarist Victor Klemperer, cousin to Otto, the conductor, and Werner Klemperer, or Colonel Klink as he's better known.
There is Felicitas Woll's family -- an upright doctor/father who is trying desperately to bribe the way for his wife and daughters to Basel. (Kids, Basel is in Switzerland. Switzerland was neutral in World War II. It's usually neutral in war time because nobody wants a bunch of mountains, cows and cuckoo clocks.) They don't make it. Felicitas' love affair with the British pilot doesn't survive the immediate post-war period.
I can't describe all of the details of all of the sub plots. The acting is unimpeachable and the photography and CGIs are outstanding for a TV production. When Dresden has been turned into an inferno, we don't simply see buildings on fire. We see wind machine whipping burning pieces of debris and sometimes people through the air with hurricane force winds.
And there are some unusual touches. When bombs leave the Lancasters, they cause the release mechanisms to rattle. It's a small thing but no one has bothered with it before. And when there is the flash of a distant explosion, it takes a second or two for the WHOOM to reach the viewers. The dropping of the red and green flares by the Pathfinder Mosquitoes has the awesome, benign beauty of a fireworks display on the Fourth of July at the fairgrounds of some small town in the Midwest.
There are some weaknesses too. John Light, as the fugitive pilot, may be a nice guy in real life but his part here limits him to suspicious scowls and he seems all jaw, like Powers Booth. If I were Felicitas Woll, I wouldn't fall in love with him at first sight, as she does. I'd fall in love with me and beg to come be my slave. Another gap in the historical record: the Americans completed the destruction of the ancient city with daylight raids. What the Brits didn't destroy, the American B-17s did. It's only alluded to once.
The bombing of Dresden has always been controversial. There have been arguments for and against it. The consensus seems to be that it was a political act designed to assure Stalin that we were still interested in weakening Germany's battles on the eastern front. Of course Dresden had some importance as a military target. Even a German apple orchard had some importance.
The problem is that the old city had little military significance because the war was already won and whatever local factories were still operating were in the suburbs, left untouched except by accident. The city itself was packed with refugees from the east, trying to escape the Russians. It was a terrible catastrophe. Civilians literally melted in air raid shelters. The film pins the blame on the Nazi regime that invited such mindless destruction, and on "Bomber" Harris, the RAF general who was determined the flatten every German city to destroy civilian morale. It didn't work. "Unsere mauern brechen, unsere herzen nicht," read the signs, until they were replaced by white flags. The Queen Mum unveiled a statue of Bomber Harris some years ago and there were some boos from the crowd.
It all somehow resonates with something Jimmy Carter said in his acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize award: "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
It's a lengthy miniseries mostly in German with English subtitles. I wish more Americans were able to see this because it's intelligent, and many American's don't seem to get out much, and the younger among us don't hear much about Dresden. They're lucky if they know who fought who in World War II. Really. Forty percent of high school seniors think the US fought with the Nazis against the Russians in WW2. That's high school seniors, mind you.
Back to the film. Like many mini-series it has multiple sub plots and an abundance of improbabilities. There's a nice couple, the Goldbergs, still surviving in Dresden because the wife is not a Jew. Yes, there were still Jews at large in Germany. One of the survivors of Dresden was the diarist Victor Klemperer, cousin to Otto, the conductor, and Werner Klemperer, or Colonel Klink as he's better known.
There is Felicitas Woll's family -- an upright doctor/father who is trying desperately to bribe the way for his wife and daughters to Basel. (Kids, Basel is in Switzerland. Switzerland was neutral in World War II. It's usually neutral in war time because nobody wants a bunch of mountains, cows and cuckoo clocks.) They don't make it. Felicitas' love affair with the British pilot doesn't survive the immediate post-war period.
I can't describe all of the details of all of the sub plots. The acting is unimpeachable and the photography and CGIs are outstanding for a TV production. When Dresden has been turned into an inferno, we don't simply see buildings on fire. We see wind machine whipping burning pieces of debris and sometimes people through the air with hurricane force winds.
And there are some unusual touches. When bombs leave the Lancasters, they cause the release mechanisms to rattle. It's a small thing but no one has bothered with it before. And when there is the flash of a distant explosion, it takes a second or two for the WHOOM to reach the viewers. The dropping of the red and green flares by the Pathfinder Mosquitoes has the awesome, benign beauty of a fireworks display on the Fourth of July at the fairgrounds of some small town in the Midwest.
There are some weaknesses too. John Light, as the fugitive pilot, may be a nice guy in real life but his part here limits him to suspicious scowls and he seems all jaw, like Powers Booth. If I were Felicitas Woll, I wouldn't fall in love with him at first sight, as she does. I'd fall in love with me and beg to come be my slave. Another gap in the historical record: the Americans completed the destruction of the ancient city with daylight raids. What the Brits didn't destroy, the American B-17s did. It's only alluded to once.
The bombing of Dresden has always been controversial. There have been arguments for and against it. The consensus seems to be that it was a political act designed to assure Stalin that we were still interested in weakening Germany's battles on the eastern front. Of course Dresden had some importance as a military target. Even a German apple orchard had some importance.
The problem is that the old city had little military significance because the war was already won and whatever local factories were still operating were in the suburbs, left untouched except by accident. The city itself was packed with refugees from the east, trying to escape the Russians. It was a terrible catastrophe. Civilians literally melted in air raid shelters. The film pins the blame on the Nazi regime that invited such mindless destruction, and on "Bomber" Harris, the RAF general who was determined the flatten every German city to destroy civilian morale. It didn't work. "Unsere mauern brechen, unsere herzen nicht," read the signs, until they were replaced by white flags. The Queen Mum unveiled a statue of Bomber Harris some years ago and there were some boos from the crowd.
It all somehow resonates with something Jimmy Carter said in his acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize award: "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children."