This is an extremely fascinating discussion of vital issues of conscience and demands of reality. Robert Young as a trusted diplomat is faced with a reality he cannot handle as everything in it goes against him, but he cannot do anything about it. He marries the wrong wife while he continues to love the girl he never can get, who handles reality more straightly as a journalist seeing and writing the truth. Difficult issues of journalism also enter the discussion, as the diplomat's father-in-law (Dudley Digges, the best character in the context) runs the paper she is working for - and abandons it at the rise of fascism in Europe, refusing to take any further responsibility for reality.
Also the form of the film is a fascinating composition, starting at present time (1946) as all the protagonists gather for the first time in many years to enter a serious discussion none of them really desires, which brings them back to another day when they all were together in Rome as Mussolini took over power... and then comes an hour of flashbacks through all the traumatic convulsions of Europe between the two world wars, from the rise of German Nazism to the Spanish civil war and the controversial peace treaty of Munich.
I loved this film all through from the first moment to the last, the dialogue is replenished with intensive importance all the way, the characters couldn't have been acted better, there is no flaw anywhere, it flows organically on like taken directly out of reality, it's intelligent and important and well up to the same level as William Dieterle's other excellent films at the time. And through it all flows also Victor Young's gorgeous music, to make it even better...
Also the form of the film is a fascinating composition, starting at present time (1946) as all the protagonists gather for the first time in many years to enter a serious discussion none of them really desires, which brings them back to another day when they all were together in Rome as Mussolini took over power... and then comes an hour of flashbacks through all the traumatic convulsions of Europe between the two world wars, from the rise of German Nazism to the Spanish civil war and the controversial peace treaty of Munich.
I loved this film all through from the first moment to the last, the dialogue is replenished with intensive importance all the way, the characters couldn't have been acted better, there is no flaw anywhere, it flows organically on like taken directly out of reality, it's intelligent and important and well up to the same level as William Dieterle's other excellent films at the time. And through it all flows also Victor Young's gorgeous music, to make it even better...