People are voting emotionally.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Not made for US movie audiences consumption in that the film is far too disturbing as well as accurate in how successful interrogations tactics by the Germans in WWII worked. The film or documentary "Resisting Enemy Interrogation" is the exact opposite of the Hollywood made film "The Purple Heart" in how US airmen bravely resist and make their captors, in this case Japanese, look ridicules as well as stupid that was released the very same, 1944, year.Here we see the Germans use psychology and trickery to get the results that they want. That without those being interrogated not even knowing it. Not through torture and humiliation but through letting their captive US Airmen try to outsmart them and make them look like fools by instead tripping themselves up in them doing that. If the US and its allies used the same sound and tried tactics on captured suspected Al-Qeada and Taliban fighters after the attacks on 9/11 they would have gotten a lot more information and prevented, by putting their leaders out of commission, terror attacks then they had by instead getting false information out of them. That resulting in having sent the US military on a number of fruitless wild goose chases all over the globe.In the movie the Germans suspect a major low level attack on one of their oil installations in Southern occupied Europe and have captured a new B-99 US bomber's crew that was to take part of that attack. With the German intelligence officer Major Franz Kohmen knowing that the plane crew really knows nothing about where the attack is to take place he and his fellow interrogators make the US airmen feel or pretend that they in fact do know but are keeping the information from him. This has them unconsciously blurt out things that they feel will fool Major Khomen that he and his second in common Captain Volbricht skillfully figure out where he raid will actually be, Munich Germany, and when it would take place; May 17, 1944!The Germans way of getting information is just by letting the captured US fliers say wherever they want for what seemed like hours at a time with Major Kohmen an his men filtering out the little truths from the vast distortions and lies. This has them put together a blueprint of where the big US raid in Southern Europe will be and when it will take place. What was so amazing about all that is that Captain Kohmen got all that vital information without the captured US airmen, who unknowingly gave him that information, knowing it! That ended up costing the USAAF 21 bombers being shot down together with their 105 man crews as they were ambushed by squads of German fighter planes over the skies of Munich Germany.Very disturbing to watch movie released at the time when the US was in a life and death struggle with Nazi Germany which was in fact not released to general American public but only at US military bases. It was those men who watched it that had to get the real and hard cold facts in how to act if captured by the enemy. Not the general American public who were to be both propagandized and entertained, in lifting civilian moral at home, in watching the highly gong-ho inaccurate and feel good war movies that Hollywood was cranking out back in those days.

Resisting Enemy Interrogation (1944) *** 1/2 (out of 4) WW2 drama got an Oscar nomination as Best Feature Documentary. The film tells the story of a group of American soldiers who are taken prisoner by German's and must keep their mouths shut so that they won't tip off the enemy. The German's, however, have their own form of interrogation to try and break through and learn of a future attack. This film was made to teach soldiers the type of tricks they might come across if taken hostage and on that level the film works just fine the real bonus here is the fact that the movie is told through the eyes and minds of the German's. I've seen a lot of these WW2 documentaries and for the most part they always look at things from the American point of view so it was great seeing it from the other way. I'm not sure how true the film is because all of the German officials promise not to torture the soldiers and they don't but it seems like they would have crossed the line if they really needed information on an upcoming attack. The performances are also very good with Arthur Kennedy leading the way as the main American soldier. I'm really not sure how this film got into the documentary department as it really plays out like a feature film, running 66=minutes and the only documentary type film-making is some opening and closing narration, which is aimed at American soldiers. As with a lot of these WW2 shorts, the film is pretty graphic at times, which the production code at the time seemed to overlook in this type of a film.

Dear All,Please read "The Interrogator," by Raymond F. Toliver. Toliver tells the true story of Hanns Joachim Scharff, one of the Luftwaffe's best P.O.W. interrogators. Sheer psychological tricks let him extract loads of information from his "guests." He tortured nobody because he did not need to do so. Years after the war, in the United States, some of these same men threw a party for him, despite the fact that several had felt severe remorse over having inadvertently disclosed so much.How successfully a viewer of "Resisting Enemy Interrogation" could have withheld information from Scharff, I cannot say.Sincerely,Gordon F. Corbett

Other comments cover the quality; the interesting part is how the Germans identify the weaknesses of each man and play to them. I don't know if the Nazis were always as subtle as this (I imagine a lit cigarette to the groin or pulling out a few fingernails to a subject or his friends would encourage a frank and open discussion).Good film, relatively propaganda free. It's interesting to watch the way American WWII propaganda treats the Germans as opposed to the Japanese. The Germans are usually portrayed as sophisticated and slimy while the Japanese are shown as little more than cunning animals. Compare "Identification of the Japanese Zero" with this film.Watchable on its own terms, interesting to watch the Germans working on each guy in their own way and piecing together the scraps they get from each man to finding the whole story. I imagine the black-bag boys at Gitmo are doing much the same thing.