europa europa (Hitlerjunge Salomon) 1990 region free dvd5 german bcbc

Europa Europa (German: Hitlerjunge Salomon, lit. "Hitler Youth Salomon") is a 1990 film directed by Agnieszka Holland. It is based on the 1989 autobiography of Solomon Perel, a German Jewish boy who escaped the Holocaust by masquerading not just as a non-Jew, but as an elite "Aryan" German. The film stars Marco Hofschneider as Perel; Perel appears briefly as himself in the finale. The film is an international co-production between CCC Film and companies in France and Poland.



The film should not be confused with the 1991 Lars von Trier film Europa, which was initially released as Zentropa in the United States to avoid such a confusion.



(Contains movie and Optional English, Spanish, French Subtitles. No menus or extras. Regular DVD quality (Not BD, 1080p etc...). Seeding always appreciated).



Summary

This irony-filled tale is based on the autobiography of Solomon Perel, a Jewish German who changes his name and joins the ranks of Hitler Youth in order to survive the Holocaust after he's discovered in a Polish orphanage. As he climbs higher in the Nazi ranks, being found out seems nearly inevitable -- especially when a gay officer and a severely anti-Semitic girlfriend are too close to discovering some irrefutable evidence.



Awards

The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for the Academy Award: Best Writing Adapted Screenplay, but lost the award to The Silence of the Lambs. It had been expected to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film but Germany did not submit it.



Cast

Solomon Perel, Marco Hofschneider, Julie Delpy, Rene Hofschneider, Piotr Kozlowski, Klaus Abramowsky, Michèle Gleizer, Marta Sandrowicz, Nathalie Schmidt, Delphine Forest, Andrzej Mastalerz, Wlodzimierz Press, Martin Maria Blau, Klaus Kowatsch, Holger Hunkel, Bernhard Howe, Hanns Zischler, Anna Seniuk, Jorg Schnass, Norbert Schwarz, Erich Schwarz, Ashley Wanninger, Wolfgang Bathke, Halina Labonarska, Aleksy Awdiejew



Movie Review

Europa Europa

June 28, 1991

Reviews/Film; A Boy Confronts His Jewish Heritage as a Hero of Hitler Youth

Running on tracks that pre-date Hitler's rise to power, the trolley car still passes through the Lodz ghetto, so its windows have been whitewashed to shield the eyes of Aryan riders from unwelcome sights. But a member of Hitler Youth surreptitiously creates a peephole, and through it he glimpses a terrible vision: the abject, suffering figure of his own mother. The woman he sees -- he thinks she is his mother, though he cannot be positive -- moves slowly through a landscape of utter misery. Her son, a Jew who has managed to pass himself off as a Nazi hero, can do nothing to alter her fate.



At moments like this, Agnieszka Holland's "Europa, Europa," which opens today at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, accomplishes what every film about the Holocaust seeks to achieve: It brings new immediacy to the outrage by locating specific, wrenching details that transcend cliche. Based on the memoirs of Solomon Perel, who survived the war through a variety of unusual subterfuges and is briefly seen offering a song of thanksgiving at the story's end, this film includes several remarkable episodes illustrating the strange events that shaped Mr. Perel's destiny and the full force of his terror and sorrow.



But much of the time, the truth here has a way of seeming stranger than fiction, largely because of Miss Holland's determinedly blithe directorial style. "Europa, Europa" has the pretty, sensitive look of a pastoral French romance even as it presents the most harrowing aspects of Mr. Perel's early years. Miss Holland's smooth direction is appealing and never fundamentally negates the essence of Mr. Perel's situation, but the result is a less ironic or complex film than must have been intended. The ingenuousness of the young hero, who was only a teen-ager at the time he found himself in the midst of a grave moral quandary, often feels bizarre in light of the events at hand.



Solly (Marco Hofschneider) comes from a close-knit family that is torn apart very early in the film, leaving him to fend for himself in an increasingly dangerous world. In 1938, on the eve of Solly's bar mitzvah, his home in a German city is disrupted by a pogrom that kills his sister, an event Miss Holland presents with wrenching simplicity and tact. Soon afterwards, the Perels move to Lodz, Poland. But when war breaks out, the parents order their two younger sons to flee, and during the journey Solly is separated from his older brother. "Europa, Europa" is set forth as a linear, episodic story, punctuated by this and many other sad partings.



Solly makes his way east and winds up in a Soviet orphanage, where his identity as a Jew is still reasonably secure. Eminently adaptable, he learns to denounce religion as the opiate of the masses and to co-exist with Christian classmates, despite the obvious tensions in the air.



But when the orphanage is bombed -- marking another sad separation, since Solly has developed ties to the beautiful Stalinist who is his teacher -- Solly is again adrift, and this time he lands in the hands of Nazi soldiers. They treat him royally, partly because of his usefulness as a Russian translator and partly because of his rosy, wide-eyed good looks. Typically, when the film presents a man claiming to be Stalin's son as a Soviet prisoner whom Solly interrogates, the incident has an indefinite, fairy tale quality, although it happens to be a slightly modified version of a real event.



The fact that Solly has been circumcised, in the Jewish ceremony that is seen at the film's outset, becomes critical to his survival, since this physical evidence is the only link to his Jewish heritage. The film pays considerable attention to his efforts to avoid being caught in showers, in bathrooms, and even in a sexual situation with a fresh faced young German girl (Julie Delpy) who admires him as a German hero. "If I ever catch a Jew, I'll cut his throat," she eventually tells him, in a manner that is offhanded but nonetheless certain to wreck their budding romance.



Presented with his personal copy of "Mein Kampf," learning to swim in a swastika-decorated pool while wearing his army helmet and carrying his rifle, Solly eventually becomes a respected member of Hitler Youth; as such, he sits quietly through classroom lectures on how to identify Jews on sight and why "the Nordic man is the gem of this earth." The pressure of this new life eventually becomes unbearable, but Miss Holland does better at depicting the impossible aspects of Solly's outer circumstances than at probing his inner confusion.



The film's dream sequences, which involve Hitler and Stalin, are less affecting than the blunt outburst of emotion that Solly feels in the presence of his Aryan girlfriend's mother, at a moment when he simply can't stand the pressure of lying any longer. Mr. Hofschneider, whose performance is direct and impassioned as far as it goes, conveys Solly's raw panic and confusion much more effectively than the crisis of conscience that inevitably goes with them.