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| Images courtesy of VCI Entertainment |
VCI Entertainment has been doing much to clean up their
image lately as far as re-releasing fully 4K restored titles in ornate special
editions. Between their release of the
4K restoration of Luis Buñuel’s The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz to
their first 4K UHD with Bob Clark’s Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things,
the much-maligned boutique label is fixing to actually actively dole out home
video releases that are finally worthy of the asking price. Among their recent revelations on blu-ray
disc is accomplished Danish film and television director Bent Christensen’s brief
foray into English language cinema with his 1970 WWII holocaust drama The
Only Way.
Startlingly a G rated venture concerning the April 1940 Nazi
Germany invasion of Denmark which depended on the peaceful cooperation of the
Danish people provided Denmark’s Jewish population remain free only to renege
on the agreement in 1943, English-Danish bilingual cast production shot on
location in Copenhagen prominently stars Live and Let Die actress Jane
Seymour as the daughter of a Jewish family torn between forfeiting their homes
and preserving their safety. Seymour
being of Polish-Jewish descent herself kind of makes for pitch perfect casting
despite the actress being underutilized.
Most of this look into the stages leading up to the Nazi invaders
turning up the heat on the Danish populace is chilly if not mechanical, but as
a historical period drama involving one of the most difficult topics in the
world’s timeline it largely gets things right.
Produced by Barry Levinson (no, not the renowned film
director) and penned by Christensen, John Gould and Leif Panduro, the ensemble
piece mostly boils down to Lillian Stein (Jane Seymour) and her stubborn father
Leo (Ebbe Rode) and beleaguered mother Ruth (Helle Virkner). Occasionally the film moves away from their
story overseeing characters trying to fulfill the Stein family’s escape while
finding ways to trick and outsmart the Nazis who are already kicking doors
down. One area of the plot that was
interesting involved key checkpoints with Danish residents taking up arms
fending off the Nazis while ensuring the Stein family escapes unharmed. Not dissimilar from Corrie Ten Boom’s The
Hiding Place in terms of dramatizing the will to fight back under duress
and prevail in survival, The Only Way while considerably lighter on
depicting Nazi atrocities nevertheless catches you up in the nerve-wracking
drama of evading the invaders. It’s a human
drama most of us can relate to.
Cinematography by Henning Kristiansen who was a regular
Copenhagen director of photography dating back as far as the early 1960s is
generally solid if not a bit soft. The
look and feel of this venture, though likely released in theaters, closely resembles
that of a made-for-television drama, replete with an orchestral score by
legendary composer Carl Davis, best known for Buster Keaton’s The General
and Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights, which sounds a bit like an album of
library music. Not to say its bad just
that it feels like a television film bumped up to theatrical release, which it
may well have been.
Overall this effort isn’t bad for history buffs though its
soft handling of a thorny subject will aggravate viewers who never took to
Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful which critics accused of sugar
coating. The 4K restoration looks nice
enough if not a little bland in terms of tonality and range. Its a modestly sized and shaped effort that
will hold the viewer’s attention for awhile and satisfy the interests of WWII
history buffs, but it is somewhat vanilla in the end. For a film that should’ve come down hard like
an anvil, The Only Way despite the dramatic tension makes for a soft,
fluffy landing. Understandably, the
director’s brief stint in English language filmmaking was short lived and he went
back to making Danish pictures. But as a
one-off in the filmmaker’s career telling a, yes, still important historical story,
The Only Way does an okay job.
--Andrew Kotwicki
