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Dark ‘Journey’ provides early view of Holocaust
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BY: Douglas J. Guth Senior Staff Reporter
Dark and surreal, “The Distant Journey” is known as possibly the first dramatized movie about the Holocaust.
The Czechoslovakian film was made in 1949, only a few years removed from the horrors it portrays.
Using an upper-class Jewish family from Prague as its protagonists, “Journey” chronicles the deportation of Czech Jews to the Terezin ghetto. The drama of their eventual destruction is intercut with newsreel footage of the impending Nazi threat and of grotesque images of the camps.
(Terezin functioned as a ghetto from November 1941 until the end of the war in May 1945. It served as a “transit camp” from which Jews were transported further to the east, particularly to Auschwitz and Treblinka.)
“Journey” is ostensibly about the marriage of Hana, a physician, to a gentile colleague. The “mixed” wedding takes place against a backdrop of increasing anxiety and fear for the future. Mounting oppression against Jews includes orders forbidding them to visit theaters and other cultural events.
The handwriting is literally on the wall as anti-Semitic graffiti turns up throughout Prague. The personal drama of the married couple heightens as transport orders arrive for Hana’s family. Hana’s marriage to an “Aryan” does not save her from joining her family in Terezin.
The not-exactly-novel plot is enhanced by its richly dark tone. Some of the images are powerful; an extended scene of a doomed crowd of Jews trudging almost in lockstep through a rainy ghetto is particularly disturbing.
Director Alfred Radok peppers “Journey” with dramatic scenes accompanied by pounding drums and a jangling score. These elements serve to intensify the movie’s nightmarish quality.
The film is certainly not for the faint of heart, but its ambiguous strangeness is far removed from the stark barbarities featured in more contemporary Holocaust movies such as “Schindler’s List.” There are no scenes in “Journey” equivalent to Ralph Fiennes’s insane Nazi commandant (in “Schindler’s List”) standing on the balcony of his ski chalet and blithely using Jews as target practice.
Nonetheless, “Journey’s” odd, dreamlike quality makes for a disturbing excursion into the heart of a sinister chapter in Jewish history.
dguth@cjn.org
“The Distant Journey” opens a seven-film “Czech Modernism” series at The Cleveland Museum of Art, June 6-22. “Journey” will be shown June 6 at 7 p.m. For more information, call 216-421-7350.
The Czechoslovakian film was made in 1949, only a few years removed from the horrors it portrays.
Using an upper-class Jewish family from Prague as its protagonists, “Journey” chronicles the deportation of Czech Jews to the Terezin ghetto. The drama of their eventual destruction is intercut with newsreel footage of the impending Nazi threat and of grotesque images of the camps.
(Terezin functioned as a ghetto from November 1941 until the end of the war in May 1945. It served as a “transit camp” from which Jews were transported further to the east, particularly to Auschwitz and Treblinka.)
“Journey” is ostensibly about the marriage of Hana, a physician, to a gentile colleague. The “mixed” wedding takes place against a backdrop of increasing anxiety and fear for the future. Mounting oppression against Jews includes orders forbidding them to visit theaters and other cultural events.
The handwriting is literally on the wall as anti-Semitic graffiti turns up throughout Prague. The personal drama of the married couple heightens as transport orders arrive for Hana’s family. Hana’s marriage to an “Aryan” does not save her from joining her family in Terezin.
The not-exactly-novel plot is enhanced by its richly dark tone. Some of the images are powerful; an extended scene of a doomed crowd of Jews trudging almost in lockstep through a rainy ghetto is particularly disturbing.
Director Alfred Radok peppers “Journey” with dramatic scenes accompanied by pounding drums and a jangling score. These elements serve to intensify the movie’s nightmarish quality.
The film is certainly not for the faint of heart, but its ambiguous strangeness is far removed from the stark barbarities featured in more contemporary Holocaust movies such as “Schindler’s List.” There are no scenes in “Journey” equivalent to Ralph Fiennes’s insane Nazi commandant (in “Schindler’s List”) standing on the balcony of his ski chalet and blithely using Jews as target practice.
Nonetheless, “Journey’s” odd, dreamlike quality makes for a disturbing excursion into the heart of a sinister chapter in Jewish history.
dguth@cjn.org
“The Distant Journey” opens a seven-film “Czech Modernism” series at The Cleveland Museum of Art, June 6-22. “Journey” will be shown June 6 at 7 p.m. For more information, call 216-421-7350.
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