Escape (1940 film)
Encyclopedia
Escape is a 1940
1940 in film
The year 1940 in film involved some significant events, including the premieres of the Walt Disney classics Pinocchio and Fantasia.-Events:*February 7 - Walt Disney's animated film Pinocchio is released....

 drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 about an American in pre-World War II Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 who discovers his mother is in a concentration camp and tries desperately to free her. It starred Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...

, Robert Taylor
Robert Taylor (actor)
Robert Taylor was an American film and television actor.-Early life:Born Spangler Arlington Brugh in Filley, Nebraska, he was the son of Ruth Adaline and Spangler Andrew Brugh, who was a farmer turned doctor...

, Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...

 and Alla Nazimova
Alla Nazimova
Alla Nazimova , was a Russian American film and theatre actress, a screenwriter and film producer. She is perhaps best known as simply Nazimova, but also went under the name Alia Nasimoff.-Early life:...

. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Grace Zaring Stone
Grace Zaring Stone
Grace Zaring Stone was an American novelist and short story writer. She is perhaps best known for having three of her novels made into films: The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Winter Meeting, and Escape. She also used the pseudonym of Ethel Vance.-Biography:Stone was the great-great-granddaughter of...

.

Plot

Famous German stage actress Emmy Ritter (Alla Nazimova) is held in a Nazi concentration camp. She is scheduled to be executed soon, but the sympathetic camp doctor, Ditten (Philip Dorn
Philip Dorn
Philip Dorn , born Hein van der Niet and sometimes billed as Frits van Dongen, was a Dutch actor who had a career in Hollywood....

), has been a fan since childhood and offers to deliver a letter from her to her children...afterwards.

Emmy's son Mark Preysing (Robert Taylor), an American citizen, travels to Germany in search of his mother, but nobody, not even frightened old family friends, want anything to do with him. A German official tells Mark that she has been arrested and advises him to return to the United States.

The postmark of a returned letter guides Mark to the region where she is being held. There, he meets by chance Countess Ruby von Treck (Norma Shearer), an American-born widow, but she also does not want to become involved, at least at first. Then, she asks her lover, General Kurt von Kolb (Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...

), about Emmy and learns that she has been judged a traitor in a secret trial and sentenced to death.

At a concert, Mark encounters Doctor Ditten, who takes the opportunity to deliver Emmy's letter. Then, Ditten drugs Emmy into a coma, making it appear as if she has died. He tells Mark what he has done. Mark sends longtime family servant Fritz Keller (Felix Bressart
Felix Bressart
Felix Bressart was a German-American actor of stage and screen.Felix Bressart was born in East Prussia, Germany and was already a very experienced stage actor when he had his film debut in 1928. He started off as a supporting actor, e.g...

) to collect the coffin, but the American's nervousness raises the suspicion of the political police and he is brought to the camp for questioning. Fortunately, he is allowed to take his mother's body away.

When the road is blocked by snow, Mark is forced to find heat and shelter for his mother at the house of the countess. The next day, he meets von Kolb, who is jealous of the younger man. Later, when Mark and a disguised Emmy leave for the airport, von Kolb guesses what is happening (from Mark's earlier lack of reaction to the news of his mother's "death") and confronts the countess. She begs him not to interfere, but he is implacable. Knowing about his health problems, she taunts him with her love of Mark, which provokes him into having a heart attack, giving her new friends time to escape.

Cast

  • Norma Shearer
    Norma Shearer
    Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...

     as Countess Ruby von Treck
  • Robert Taylor
    Robert Taylor (actor)
    Robert Taylor was an American film and television actor.-Early life:Born Spangler Arlington Brugh in Filley, Nebraska, he was the son of Ruth Adaline and Spangler Andrew Brugh, who was a farmer turned doctor...

     as Mark Preysing
  • Conrad Veidt
    Conrad Veidt
    Conrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...

     as General Kurt von Kolb
  • Alla Nazimova
    Alla Nazimova
    Alla Nazimova , was a Russian American film and theatre actress, a screenwriter and film producer. She is perhaps best known as simply Nazimova, but also went under the name Alia Nasimoff.-Early life:...

     as Emmy Ritter
  • Felix Bressart
    Felix Bressart
    Felix Bressart was a German-American actor of stage and screen.Felix Bressart was born in East Prussia, Germany and was already a very experienced stage actor when he had his film debut in 1928. He started off as a supporting actor, e.g...

     as Fritz Keller
  • Philip Dorn
    Philip Dorn
    Philip Dorn , born Hein van der Niet and sometimes billed as Frits van Dongen, was a Dutch actor who had a career in Hollywood....

     as Dr. Berthold Ditten
  • Albert Bassermann
    Albert Bassermann
    Albert Bassermann was a German stage and screen actor.-Career:Bassermann began his acting career in 1887 in his birthplace, Mannheim. He then spent four years at the Hoftheater in Meiningen. He then moved to Berlin. From 1899, he worked for Otto Brahm. He began work at the Deutsches Theater...

     as Dr. Arthur Henning, an unhelpful family friend
  • Edgar Barrier as the Commissioner of Police
  • Bonita Granville
    Bonita Granville
    Bonita Granville was an American film actress and television producer.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Granville was the daughter of stage actors, and made her film debut at the age of nine in Westward Passage...

     as Ursula, a suspicious student of the Countess
  • Elsa Bassermann as Mrs. Henning
  • Blanche Yurka
    Blanche Yurka
    Blanche Yurka was an American theatre and film actress.Born in St Paul, Minnesota, Yurka was an opera star before she became an actress. She made her Broadway debut in 1910 and established herself as a character actor, also appearing in several films...

    as Emmy's concentration camp nurse-matron
  • Lisa Golm as Anna, Emmy's ill cellmate
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