"Der Postmeister" or "The Stationmaster" is an Austrian/German co-production and a German-language black-and-white sound film from 1940. The director is Gustav Ucicky and the writer who adapted the short story this is based on was Gerhard Menzel. It runs for roughly 90 minutes. If you see the year mentioned previously, you will know that it is from the days of World War II and while it may not be the Nazis' most blatant propaganda film, there is clearly an anti-Soviet message in here. Some films focused on discrediting Jews, some on Americans, others on Frenchmen and Brits, but this one here is about Soviets. It tells the story of a young woman falling in love with a Soviet nobleman, but the longer the film runs the more we find out the real motives the man had and what his character really seems to be like. The title character is the female protagonist's father and it is a bit random I must say as I rarely felt that Heinrich George's (father of Götz) character is the true protagonist here. It was much more about Hilde Krahl's character and her story I felt. There is a lot of tragedy involved here, but this is also nothing new for films who came out around that time as the Nazis always intended to show us how foreigners' despicable actions lead to death and devastation. I personally must say the story was mediocre at best and the acting was sometimes okay, sometimes not and sometimes even over the top. My overall verdict is thumbs down as the bad outweighed the good. Watch something else instead.
Review of Der Postmeister
