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Absolutely Brilliant!

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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.

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.

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.

****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.