MARTIN LUTHER
Dworkin, Martin S.
State of the Cinema Martin Luther By Martin S. Dworkin THE long-awaited Martin Luther is an explosive film. The coalition of Lutheran groups which sponsored its production by Louis De Rochemont...
...In fact, whatever we believe, this film can be a strengthening experience...
...The sponsors would have been amply repaid if it had been distributed only through the non-theatrical channels through which most religious films reach the public, shown in 16-millimeter form to religious, educational, and social groups in church, school, and other auditoriums...
...They obviously wanted, and paid for, the best film on the subject they could get...
...Because it forthrightly expresses its beliefs, thereby needing fundamentally the right to forthright expression, it can animate first of all that free context of our beliefs, the field of freedom within which we can believe differently, and believe together...
...The film intentionally avoids political aspects of the Reformation, notably neglecting Luther's anti-popular role in the Peasant's Revolt, which continues to confound those who try to make him into an 18th-century revolutionary democrat...
...The coalition of Lutheran groups which sponsored its production by Louis De Rochemont Associates introduced it gingerly to the public in this country...
...As the film enters national theatrical exploitation this September, we can take note that both these purposes would be irrelevant if the film were not so powerfully moving...
...The acting, especially the wonderfully sensitive and powerful performance of Niall MacGinnis as Luther, is not exaggerated, but of an imposing size projecting the historical magnitude of what takes place...
...The production by Lothar Wolff seizes the viewer with a sense of history from its opening, in the style of the iconographic documentaries, on the drawings of Albrecht Durer and others, providing the background for Luther's life and the Reformation he fostered...
...The style of the documentary, with an off-screen narrator, is used throughout to compress the events of many years, while the principal sequences are enacted, under Irving Pichel's direction, in a grand manner that foregoes somewhat the modern fashion of dramatic understatement...
...To achieve this, they mobilized a formidable battery of historians and theologians to prepare the material, then hired crack professional personnel to bring in the film...
...He was aided by a new French camera that allows viewing scenes directly through the camera lens, in creating shots that play masses of shadows and highlights against carefully delineated details of costume and architecture...
...This deliberate contraction of focus may foreshorten certain of the characterizations...
...By contrast, the run-of-fhe-reel Hollywood historical or biographical films are pale trivia...
...It is understandable that the Lutheran sponsors of the film wished to stress the religious aspects of the Reformation...
...Joseph Brun's photography is in the style of Carl Dreyer's great films, The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath...
...A film made for this circulation is not out-dated after one round of the circuit...
...II From another standpoint, Catholics must admit, as many Protestant clergymen have remarked for years, that they have been enjoying an especially successful "mission" with films—from influence over content through the Legion of Decency and other groups, to favorably influential portrayals, in films such as Going My Way, The Song of Bernadette, Monsieur Vincent, and The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima...
...Their purpose in so doing will inevitably be construed as anti-Catholic—and, insofar as any Protestant version of the Reformation must be critical of the Church, it is...
...Luther, as Carlyle said, is one of the few men of whom it can be maintained truly that the world is different because he lived...
...In the light of what we know, and cannot deny, of our history, Martin Luther comes closer to historical integrity on the screen than almost any other picture, in 50 years of film...
...Many Catholics may be offended by the portrayal of the Pope and prelates, the denial of the efficacy of relics and of the legitimacy of indulgences, but one cannot make an honest film about the Reformation without honestly depicting what were the beliefs of Luther and his followers...
...Martin Luther may even be said to invigorate the screen, by treating religious matters openly...
...The openings in May in Minneapolis, and later in Houston and in Hickory, N. C, were designedly test runs—not only to gauge its potential success in commercial distribution in cities representative of large areas of the country, but to feel out the public reaction of Catholic groups...
...The result is nothing less than superb...
...The picture was made neither to make money as a commercial venture nor to antagonize Catholics—although it will probably do both...
...The sponsors might have contemplated its use on some sort of "Lutheran Hour" or "Protestant Hour" television broadcasts...
...The rising German nationalism, accompanying the decline of feudalism and the political hegemony of Rome, is merely suggested...
Vol. 17 • September 1953 • No. 9
