This film's impact

i would love to watch the film, but its impossible to find.

I saw this movie for the first time in years and I will never forget the impact this movie had on me when I first saw when I was a kid. People are on this board talking about the inaccuracy of the movie. Who cares , the point was was made. Freinds and families who love each other turn into monsters if given the chance to wield power. It makes no difference if it was Nazi's or a story about any country that people wwere used as weapon against their neighbors and were willing participants. And that is the danger of power. It corrupts good people. Ojh and I saw how good a actor Robert Young was. I just had remembered him from Father Knows Best and even though people say he was unconvincible, even today after seeing this movie again I feel he was very good.

*cough* someone uploaded this movie @ youtube *cough* search under james stewart...

It would take me more research materials than I've currently got on hand to say exactly what impact The Mortal Storm had on America on release in June 1940. For sure it was one of the earlier anti-Nazi movies, coming out a year and a half before the U.S. entered the war, but Confessions of a Nazi Spy from Warner Bros the year before was probably as a big a hit, with only Edward G Robinson holding it aloft at the box-office. I don't think The Mortal Storm was one of the bigger hits of the year, even with a great, important theme, great story, great director and great stars including young Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart at their peak in their early thirties, fairly popular Robert Young, popular character star Frank Morgan (Wizard of Oz) and up-and-comers like Robert Stack and Dan Dailey.

The fact was that the U.S.A. was still overwhelmingly isolationist despite the best efforts at enlightenment by Pres FDR and many others -- and even though Paris had fallen to the Nazis just a week before this was released and Germany was about to bomb London towards submission. More Americans then identified themselves as of German stock than of English stock -- hence the huge influence of Charles Lindbergh and all the littler bundists right across the country. You might argue that German-Americans couldn't be Nazi sympathizers -- even in the face of congenital liar and Aryan-breeding bigamist Lindbergh -- but even a Nazi culture could seemingly be idealised and romanticised by der Volk many generations and thousands of miles removed.