Europa, Europa [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Agnieszka Holland Agnieszka Holland

Overview

This drama was based on the true story of a young German Jew who survived the Holocaust by falling in with the Nazis. Solomon Perel (Marco Hofschneider) is the son of a Jewish shoe salesman coming of age in Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler. In 1938, a group of Nazis attack Solomon's family home; his sister is killed, and 13-year-old Solomon flees to Poland. Solomon winds up in an orphanage operated by Stalinist forces; when German forces storm Poland, Solomon's fluent German allows him to join the Nazis as a translator, posing as Josef Peters, an ethnic German. In time, "Peters" is made a member of the elite Hitler Youth, but since Solomon is circumcised, he can be easily revealed as a Jew, and he lives in constant fear that his secret will be discovered. Solomon's close calls include an attempted seduction by Robert Kellerman (André Wilms), a homosexual officer, and his relationship with Leni (Julie Delpy), a beautiful but violently anti-Semitic woman who wants to bear his child for the glory of the master race. Europa, Europa (shown in Europe as Hitlerjunge Salomon) also features the real Solomon Perel, who appears briefly as himself.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/09/2019
UPC:	0715515231718
Original Release:	1990
Rating:	R
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Language:	English
Time:	1:52:00
Sales rank:	13,545

Special Features

New 2k digital restoration, supervised by Director Agnieszka Holland, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Audio Commentary from 2008 featuring Holland; New interviews with Holland and actor Marco Hofschneider; New interview with Salomon Perel, on whose autobiography the film is loosely based; New video essay by film scholar Annette Insdorf; New English Subtitle translation; New English Subtitle Translation; Plus: An essay by film critic Amy Taubin

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Solomon Perel	Himself
Marco Hofschneider	Solomon Perel,Isaak
Julie Delpy	Leni
Andre Wilms	Kellerman
Aschley Wanninger	Eric,Gerd
Piotr Kozlowski	David Perel
Klaus Abramowsky	Solly's Father
Michele Gleizer	Solly's Mother
Marta Sandrowicz	Berta
Nathalie Schmidt	Basia
Delphine Forest	Inna Moisievna
Andrzej Mastalerz	Zenek
Wlodzimierz Press	Stalin's Son
Martin Maria Blau	Ullmayer
Klaus Kowatsch	Soldier Schulz
Holger Hunkel	Kramer
Bernhard Howe	Feldwebel
Hanns Zischler	Captain von Lereneau
Jorg Schnass	Pfeiffer
Norbert Schwarz	Schwabe,Goethke
Halina Labornaska	Leni's Mother
Wolfgang Bathke	Police Officer
Aleksy Awdiejew	Soviet Major
Anna Seniuk	Rosemarie
Holger Kunkel	Wagner
Artur Barci¿	Actor
Aleksander Bednarz	Actor
Zbigniew Bielski	Actor
Marcin Bielawski	Actor
Marek Brand	Actor
Arkadiusz Brukner	Actor
Dariusz Buchowiecki	Actor
Bohdan Ejmont	Actor
Alfred Freudenheim	Actor
Jaroslaw Gajewski	Actor
Jaroslaw Gruda	Actor
Kama Kowalewska	Actor
Herman Larcher	Actor
Marcin Latallo	Actor
Gienadij Lesniewski	Actor
Nicolas Lormeau	Actor
Alexandr Maslov	Actor
Michel Malko	Actor
Cezary Morawski	Actor
Maxime Mardoukhaev	Actor
Wlodzimierz Musial	Actor
Ryszard Pietruski	Actor
Hanna Sylberg	Actor
Boguslawa Schubert	Actor
Tadeusz Wojtych	Actor
Grzegorz Wons	Actor
Stanislaw Zatloka	Actor
Zbigniew Preisner	Composer

Technical Credits

Agnieszka Holland

Paul Hengge

Agnieszka Holland	Director,Screenwriter
Artur Brauner	Producer,Producer
Jacek Jelinski	Special Effects,Stunts
Margaret Menegoz	Producer
Janusz Morgenstern	Executive Producer,Producer
Lew Rywin	Executive Producer,Producer
Paul Hengge	Screenwriter
Zbigniew Modej	Stunts
Margot Capelier	Casting
Marie-Christine LaFosse	Casting
Sarah Thomsen	Casting
Malgorzata Jaworska	Sound Editor
Elisabeth Mondi	Sound/Sound Designer
Hans-Dieter Schwarz	Sound Mixer

Editorial Reviews

Films such as Judgment at Nuremberg have chronicled the crisis of conscience that afflicted ordinary Germans after World War II; Europa, Europa, however, examines that crisis as it was brewing, from the viewpoint of a man who embodied the nation's schisms in particularly dramatic fashion. Polish director Agnieszka Holland exhibits a lightness of touch that befits the film's fact-based premise. Solomon Perel's life was so extraordinary that it speaks for itself. In the establishing scenes of Perel's prewar youth, newcomer Marco Hofschneider embodies all the gawky charm of carefree boyhood. As the film charts his character's masquerade as first a good little Communist, then a brave Nazi war hero, it paints his struggles as merely the conflicted loyalties and unavoidable compromises of adolescence given terrible new significance by history. With few exceptions, wartime atrocities are depicted matter-of-factly, leaving the audience to make its own judgment about Perel and the dumb luck and quick thinking that allowed him to survive, even flourish. From André Wilms as the gay actor-turned-Nazi officer who nurtures young Perel to the superb Julie Delpy as the Aryan girl whose willfulness and pique are elevated to manifest destiny under Hitler's rule, the large international cast brings to life the varied personal stories that are sometimes missing from the history books.

All Movie Guide - Brian J. Dillard