SPRING OF LIFE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2001 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ***
"Race is your fate," the head Nazi officer lectures the blue-eyed, blonde lasses assembled before him. "He who defiles it shall die."
Milan Cieslar's SPRING OF LIFE (PRAMEN ZIVOTA) examines the not well-known breeding program of the Nazis. The program to exterminate "inferior" races, the "final solution," is well documented. Less understood is the program of the Nazis to create a master race by breeding carefully selected Aryan women with SS studs. And I do mean "breed." Once the babies were born, they were whisked away lest the mothers develop an attachment to them.
The heroine of this story by Vladimír Körner, and based on his novel, is Gretchen (Monika Hilmerová), an innocent looking young Czech woman who lives in the Sudetenland. She is carefully chosen for having an impressive X-ray, good lineage and just the right head shape. Initially her village is tickled pink that one of theirs has been chosen to join such an elite program. Just being in it instantly affords Gretchen special treatment at work and seating accommodations on trains. The town's admiration, however, quickly turns to jealousy and fear among the inhabitants, knowing that she possesses the power to denounce them.
Soon after she is selected, she is whisked off to a sanatorium in Germany in which she is groomed just like a goose being fattened before the kill. The women learn how to shoot and fence at something approximating a fancy summer camp except that the conditioning is done during the dead of a gorgeous winter. To toughen them up, they are required to do calisthenics in skimpy little outfits in freezing weather. They are given survival-of-the-fittest lectures, but most of them treat it like a long sorority sleepover with giggling being their chief pastime.
The beauty of the setting and the gaiety of the participants appear in increasing contrast to Gretchen's emotions of disgust and withdrawal. She appears to be the only one who didn't check her conscience at the door on arrival.
The story's real downfall comes in the character of Leo (Michal Sieczkowski), the only Jewish man for miles. The story was powerful enough without writing in a highly improbable love affair between Gretchen and Leo. It is a distraction and the story never convinces us that it is anything other than a plot device to show us that Gretchen really isn't like the other Lebensborn breeders.
Heavy Wagnerian music from Lohengrin and Tannhauser, along with talk of the Holy Grail, reinforce the gravity of the situation. This is a stunningly beautiful picture, which is both its strength and its weakness. Everything is so picture postcard perfect that you start to wonder what the Lebensborn program was really like. Still, as a movie, it does a terrific job of dramatizing its points with poetic images that will be indelibly marked in your memory.
SPRING OF LIFE runs 1:47. The film is in Czech with English subtitles. It is not rated but would be R for nudity and violence and would be acceptable for most teenagers.
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