Fear and Suspicion | The Seventh Cross (1944)

Seven prisoners escape from a concentration camp and struggle across Nazi Germany. Six are captured, tortured, and strung up on one of seven crosses in built in the camp. The seventh cross remains empty.

That’s some powerful, if heavy-handed symbolism, especially for a film made in 1944. The Seventh Cross is not a war film, per se. There are no action-packed fight scenes or dazzling examples of daring-do heroics. As a matter of fact, the war itself doesn’t even rank a bit part in this film. The Seventh Cross is also not a the kind of now-familiar meditation on the horrors of the holocaust and the charnel house concentration camps. The camps are bad, for sure, but play out as the symptom of the underlying illness.  But the movie is a ruminative, moody set piece on the claustrophobia and paranoia present when the consequence of dissent, or even mild disagreement, is death.

Film Friday | Weekly Roundup

I spend a lot of time on the interwebs so you don’t have to. Spend your internet minutes wisely with this handy guide to the best of the best from my online week.

• Torsten Reitz examines the resurgence of the gangster pic over at The Moving Arts Film Journal with the “The Rise and Fall, and Rise of the American Gangster Movie”
• Let us now praise Glen Garry Glen Ross. Or the editors of, rather.
• Over at Mythical Monkey, a simple Who’s Your Fav Film Pirate? poll erupts into controversy. Allegations of voter fraud and sexual misconduct follow.
• If you’re not listening to The Film Talk podcast, you should be. Jett Loe and Gareth Higgins manage not only to be funny when talking about the latest cineplex offerings, but insightful as well.
• And perhaps the greatest thing I have found, ever. It’s hilarious and a lot like a dream I had once: