Platicsco
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Glimmerubro
It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.
Maleeha Vincent
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
rpvanderlinden
This film stars Spencer Tracy as a concentration camp escapee named George Heisler who navigates his way to freedom through the perils of Nazi Germany. Along the way he meets many people who help him, and his cynicism and fatigue fade away. Early in the story, soon after he's left the camp, he meets a little girl, and in his mind he's sure that he'll kill her if she attracts the wrong kind of attention to him. Next he lurches into the home of his ex-girlfriend, frightening her. And no wonder, because his face has a twisted expression on it that frightened ME - in this moment Tracy is almost unrecognizable. This man's an animal, he's been through hell and he has no reason to believe that the world is anything other than a sewer. For my money this is a pretty startling opening for a 1944 movie.Not to throw definitions around too freely, I'm tempted to describe this film as Nazi noir. Heisler weaves his way through German society of 1936, where it's the criminals who are in power, and scuttling through the streets are the folks who are merely trying to survive, in any way possible. At the back of our minds is the worrisome knowledge that things are going to get exponentially worse. Fred Zinnemann, the director, creates an atmosphere of claustrophobia and palpable dread where the night is filled with dark shadows and any tiny act of resistance to the Nazi regime is a colossal act of courage. There is almost no violence in the film, yet the threat of violence hangs heavy in the air. Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy play Paul and Liesel Roeder, a couple who are old friends of Heisler and who befriend him. Paul is politically neutral. He doesn't follow the news, and one gets the feeling that he would rather not know anything about what's going on. One of the fascinating threads in the film is his growing awareness. The scenes with Cronyn and Tandy are wonderful - real chemistry is bubbling here and they seem to belong together (and we all know what happened in real life). I must mention that George Macready and Agnes Moorehead are very good in small roles. There's considerable art and intelligence in "The Seventh Cross", and a preview of what was to come in Zinnemann's illustrious career.
sddavis63
Spencer Tracy headlines a fine cast as George Heisler, an escapee from a Nazi concentration camp in 1936 who has to depend on help from old friends to make his escape successful, all the while not really knowing who he can trust and being actively sought out by the Gestapo. The sense of fear and paranoia that's developed by the movie is quite ominous. Like Heisler, as the viewer you can never really be sure who can be trusted. Nazi Germany is portrayed (accurately!) as a dangerous place, unsympathetic to anyone who might be even remotely opposed to the regime. There's a sense of hopelessness here right from the start. Heisler is one of seven escapees - six of whom are quickly recaptured. Heisler himself feels totally alone, unsure who to turn to for assistance. He finally connects with an old friend (Paul, played by Hume Cronyn - whose wife Liesel was played by Jessica Tandy.) Not knowing that Heisler is a fugitive, Paul and Liesel take him in, and as they slowly discover what's going on, they become his hope and his lifeline.There are some major weaknesses to this, unfortunately, which prevent it from being a first-class film. Tracy's role is unfortunately limited. The first half of the story especially is actually narrated more than acted - the narration being offered by one of Heisler's fellow escapees who died, and the movie implies is watching over Heisler as he tries to stay out of the Gestapo's clutches. The movie would have been well advised to have taken better advantage of Tracy's considerable acting talents. The addition of a romance (completely out of left field) between Heisler and a local waitress in the movie's last half hour seemed bizarre and totally out of place. Probably because of the sudden focus on the quasi-romance, Heisler's ultimate escape comes across as surprisingly (and disappointingly) easy and undramatic.Aside from the believable portrayal of the bleakness of life in Nazi Germany, the movie is probably most surprising for offering at the same time a rather hopeful portrayal - the point is repeatedly made that not all Germans are soulless Nazis, and there are many individual Germans who take great chances to help Heisler. That was a bit surprising to me, since the movie was made during the height of World War II (in 1944) and as a result one might have expected a more negative portrayal of Germans than was actually offered. This was a good movie - it could have been a great movie if not for the weaknesses I mentioned above.
ccthemovieman-1
Boy, this a grim story, but it gets you involved, especially if you tend to be a bit paranoid. The story centers around Spencer Tracy's character "George Heisler" hiding from the Nazis in 1936 Germany, not knowing who to trust.Although there's not much action, this is decently-paced with an unusual (and too corny) narrative from a dead man. The last 20 minutes, which should have been the most suspenseful of the film, instead wound up boring and too melodramatic.What I did find interesting was the very young couple of Jessica Tandy and husband Hume Cronyn. I had forgotten what a beautiful woman Tandy was when she was young. She and Hume were the best part of this film. Tracy, meanwhile, doesn't have a lot of dialog.The movie paints a horrible picture of pre-World War II Germany. There are several attempts to lift the spirits of the viewer as he watches this but overall it is a grim story of survival
bkoganbing
The Seventh Cross is a film based on a novel by Communist author Anna Seghers. It's this kind of material that later got folks in trouble during the blacklist. Of course there were no Fifth Amendment problems for Ms. Seghers as she was an unabashed Marxist and proud citizen of the German Democratic Republic.For a Marxist author, she used religious symbols a lot. Before the days of the mass exterminations with the gas and the ovens, the Nazis used more traditional methods of extermination individually at least in the pre-World War II days of 1936. Modern day crucifixions were the order and that's what they have in store for Spencer Tracy and six other escapees.Tracy of course proves the toughest to catch. During his escape he meets up with all kinds of people, some who help and some who are ready to turn him in. By his wits and with a lot of luck Tracy survives to tell his tale. The Seventh Cross is quite the triumph for Tracy. Usually an actor who eschewed make up of any kind, he made an exception here as he had to be shown weak and with a bad pallor as a result of his hardships. Director Fred Zinneman, a refugee from Austria in fact, was given his first A picture assignment and got great critical acclaim and was well on the way to a two Best Director Oscar career.Zinneman assembled a good group of character players to support Tracy. Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy got their first notice in The Seventh Cross. And this has to be one of the only films where Kurt Katch was not a Nazi, but a member of the underground.Two things always stood out about The Seventh Cross. It seems to anticipate The Diary of Anne Frank in its message. Although they were certainly being rapidly rounded up, in 1936 there apparently were still enough decent folks around to help Tracy. At the end of the film a kind of roll call is read to the audience. And wasn't that Anne Frank's message, that people were essentially decent if you could reach that spark of it left in them?Also besides using religious symbolism, the author went on to live in another police state, this one of the making of her ideological companeros. And where be East Germany now?
