Note: This appeared in the print only TV Guide of The Marshall Independent.
A nice thing about having a movie rental store in town is finding foreign movies you’d rarely find on TV or at the movies.
Looking for something to review while homebound with the grunge, I came across a DVD of German director Uwe Boll’s, “Max Schmeling: Fist of the Reich” (2010.)
Boll is famous for making films of surpassing awfulness, many based on video games. He’s remained in business despite a lot of bad box office due to quirks in the German tax code that effectively subsidized unprofitable movies.
In 2006 Boll endeared himself to every artist and writer who’s ever been panned by critics by challenging five critics to a boxing match. The documentary made of the matches was called “Raging Boll.”
But Boll’s movies aren’t all bad, and even the turkeys can be entertaining enough for a beer-fueled evening at home, such as the “Bloodrayne” series.
Critic Chris Alexander said (after fighting him) that Boll’s movies were “bloated, expensive and incoherent attempts at aping American genre pictures, sporting some of the most boneheaded casting choices in filmdom”. He also said Boll was an, “insane, two-fisted rogue, and a shockingly honest one at that, someone who absolutely adores film, knows its history and truly lives for what he does.”
Maybe it’s because of his bad boy image that Boll could make a movie about Max Schmeling, the German boxer who twice fought Joe Louis “the brown bomber” in 1936 and 1938, winning the first match and losing the rematch.
Making movies about the Third Reich was a dicey proposition in Germany for a long time after the war, when it was still dangerous to reveal opposition to the Nazis. Later, telling the story of heroic resistance to the Nazis opened the artist to charges of trying to whitewash German guilt.
“Fist of the Reich” is a boxing movie and something more. Boll came under some criticism by casting retired boxers Henry Maske as Schmeling, and Yoan Pablo Hernandez as Joe Louis. Maybe Boll thought it would be easier to turn boxers into actors than vice versa. It works, the match scenes are gripping.
Most of the story is told as a flashback. Schmeling, a wounded paratrooper on Crete, is ordered to escort a British prisoner to a camp a few days walk away. The prisoner is a boxing fan and in spite of orders not to talk to him, Schmeling relates the story of his career, his courtship and marriage to Czech actress Anny Ondra (Susanne Wuest,) and his conflict with the Nazis which resulted in his being drafted and sent on dangerous missions to make a proper German hero of him posthumously.
Schmeling loathed the Nazis, and they barely tolerated him. Schmeling’s manager and friend Joe Jacobs (Vladimir Weigl) was an American Jew. During the Krystalnacht pogrom, Schmelling rescued the two sons of his Jewish friend David Lewin (Stefan Gebelhoff,) and helped them escape the country. (Henry and Werner Lewin became successful businessmen in America and told the story only after Schmeling’s death.)
After telling him the story, Schmeling lets the British officer go, who returns the favor after the war when Schmeling is briefly imprisoned as a Nazi celebrity.
Having lost everthing, Schmeling briefly entered the ring again at age 40, with predictable results. He nevertheless ended his career with a dignified surrender, rather than humiliating defeat.
The rest of Schmelings long and active life is told in the ending credits. He became a wealthy businessman and supported many charities. He remained a life-long friend of Joe Louis and helped support him when he was destitute.
So is Boll “aping American genre pictures”? Well a lot of the scenes certainly owe something to the “Rocky” franchise.
So who cares? “Fist of the Reich” stands on its own and Maske does a pretty good job living up to his responsibility in telling this story.
It’s a heavy responsibility, because “Fist” is a movie about character, courage, and choices. Schmeling and Anny stayed in Germany because if they’d fled the Nazis would have taken it out on their friends. By doing so Schmeling and Anny were able to save at least four people’s lives.
Asked why he never told that story, Schmelling just said, “It was my duty as a man.”
On the other side, a journalist asked his opponent and friend Louis how he could wear the uniform of a country that treated him as a second-class citizen.
And how I wish Boll had included Louis’ answer, “America ain’t got no problems Hitler can solve.”
“Fist of the Reich” tells the story of men living in a time when it was difficult to be a man. For this Boll can be forgiven a lot of bad movies.