GLASS WALL FILM - FILM NOIR : MAGYAR AMERICAN FILM REVIEW

NOIR OF THE WEEK - THE GLASS WALL

  I watched the film on this DVD.

 Here is a promotional poster for the 1953 film.

The film THE GLASS WALL is about a Hungarian-Jew, a Holocaust survivor who makes it to New York but is about to be sent back to Europe by Immigration.  He pleas his case that he had befriended an American, a musician who plays somewhere in Times Square.  His only hope is that he find this musician, who by now has a serious girlfriend who is helping him find a better job so that they can afford to mar, so that the man can testify for him. So Vincent, this man, runs for his life and is homeless on the streets of New York but finds himself befriended by a Blonde who steals a coat to pawn so she won't get evicted, as well as a Hungarian immigrant and her daughter, who help him.

Enter GOULASH on film.  Goulash is a healing meal.  And as mama and daughter cook it and serve it up, no one asks if it's Kosher.

This film is one of those that got the Go at a studio where there was concern for the plight of WWII Jewish immigrants who sometimes found themselves without a country, their families dead, their home towns decimated, who traveled to the United States, as well as how their country men and women in the United States had empathy and tried to help them within their means.  It presents Hungarian ethnic immigrants to the American Viewer sympathetically.

In the end the musician is found and the Holocaust survivor finds himself on the Right side of immigration and accepted by his new country.

Worth a watch, especially if you like Film Noir.

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THE GLASS WALL : A FILM NOIR FILM FROM 1953

THE GLASS WALL film is one of four on a DVD put out by Columbia Pictures, on a DVD called Bad Girls of Film Noir Volume 1. All four films were original Columbia Pictures films from the early 1950's, and in black and white. The legend goes that it was "B" films in that period that actually gave actresses the "juiciest" roles.

It was unexpected that THE GLASS WALL would have a Holocaust and Hungarian refuge thematic. The basic story is of a man who stows away on a ship from the old world where he was in concentration camps from the age of 14 and, caught, he can't make it through immigration. Desperate to not be send back, his wish is to find the trumpet player whose life he saved, so that the musician can testify for him. Meanwhile, he befriends a woman in trouble - a woman who can't pay her rent. The trumpet player sees his picture on the front page of a local newspaper and wants to help him but the refugee is fleeing - all the way to the United Nations building - a modern building that is symbolic in design of a glass wall. The trumpeters girlfriend turns out to be a Hungarian exotic dancer who lives with her mother who is making goulash... and says "We're all honkies..."

Considering that some of the earliest Hollywood people, directors, studio moguls, photographers, cinematographers, etc. were of Eastern European including Hungarian descent, I thought about the stereotypes of Hungarians and their representation in movies. I believe the writers on this were Maxwell Shane and Ivan Tors.



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