The Man I Married

This movie was excellent in all respects, from a curvaceous Joan Bennet to a handsome Francis Lederer and a convincing set of nasty Nazis. I speak just a bit of German but no more and I was particularly upset at the extensive use of German dialogue with NO subtitles. The simple use of subtitles would have added so much to the understanding of the plot. Why?

Movie is a great prewar flick.. Mixes some documentary footage in with a great storyline and great acting. Using the word propaganda to describe the film does it a disservice as it truly shows how so many were taken in BY propaganda. Can't believe Joan Bennett got bad reviews for her acting in this. I thought she was great.

This picture isn't shown too often. It deals with an American woman living in NY (Bennett) who marries a man of German heritage.(Francis Lederer). He decides he wants to take his wife and their young son to Germany to visit his ailing father. The time coincides with rise of Nazism in Germany. After a short period of time, he becomes a full fledged Nazi, much to how sides horror. He tries to impede her from going home with their son who he wants to remain with him. She recruits an American reporter working in Germany to help her get her son and herself back to the safety of the US. Suspenseful and well done.

In 1938 an American wife lives in New York with her German husband and their son. On a visit to his homeland her husband is attracted by Nazism which she finds distasteful. Interesting propaganda film, released before the US entered the Second World War, which mixes in some documentary footage from the era. Joan Bennett and Francis Lederer as the couple play their parts well with a fine turn by Lloyd Nolan as an American journalist.

This is one of those early prophetic films seeing through Nazism completely long before their actual madness was commonly known or even suspected. Joan Bennett is married to a German in New York who wants to return to Germany to see about his father's business (Otto Kruger in one of his best roles), where he turns into a definite Nazi, to the great shock of Joan Bennett. It's a very unpleasant film, you feel the creeping horrors of Nazism invading your being and life as you like Joan Bennett follow the revelations of the tale, but dramatically it's an ingenious film, carefully building up an almost unendurable suspense, to reach a climax in the wonderful final scene at home. It is very intelligently written, and you follow the arguments and developments with constantly increasing anxiety and thrill, and what's worse - films like this are pertinent still today, since the same sneaking danger of dictatorships is something that history always has seen the return of.