This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

A good film by Frank Borzage, curiously a director who has won 2 Oscars and is practically a stranger. We have seen many films in the second war but few on the awakening of Nazism, when Hitler comes to power in 1933, and the consequences of this in Germany itself, particularly in the families and relations between people, depending on the position of each on ideology of Hitler and Nazism. The first half of the film is extremely well made and credible, with Hitler's supporters wanting to impose the new ideology by force on those who do not refer to that ideology. We see that, very quickly, non-supporters of the regime were persecuted, arrested and even murdered. Hitler's doctrine was quickly assimilated by much of the German youth of the time. Thankfully there were exceptions such as the cases of the characters played by James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, in the figure of two in love that Nazism in Germany threatens to separate. All these aspects are shown very convincingly in the first half of the film. The second half of the movie does not have the same level as the first, being a bit melodramatic and dragged. The film culminates in a beautiful scene filmed by Borzage, with the leading pair, on the run, "getting lost" in the snow...

The teaming of Frank Morgan, Margaret Sullivan and James Stewart plus Europe proved a winning parlay for MGM in 1940 so much so that they shot them in two movies European-set back to back that year, The Shop Around The Corner and The Mortal Storm, in each case surrounding them with fine supporting actors. 'Shop' was an out-and- out delight and retains both its charm and appeal to this day. This one, every inch as great in terms of quality is dated by its propaganda content whilst ironically up-to-date in its tacit warning of how pure evil is insidious. It's of its time inasmuch as Borzage chooses to open not only in 1933 but on the very day that Hitler is elected Chancellor and neo-Nazis would argue that he stacks the deck by presenting a microcosm of Germany via a typical family on a day when they ate supremely happy, patriarch Frank Morgan's 60th birthday, marked by both colleagues and students at the small university where he holds a Professor's chair and by his family and close friends in a dinner at home, where the news of Hitler's triumph in the election is heard on the radio. From that moment, of course, both family and nation begin to fragment, but because the film was made in 1940, the first full year of a war that would last for six, it can only guess at the darkness ahead. In retrospect it is remarkably accurate at depicting both the national susceptibility to the ravings of a charismatic madman and the brutal, callous, harsh, ruthless streak running through its Hitler youth embodied beautifully in the Robert Young character who finally gives the order to fire on the girl to whom he was once engaged, fleeing to safety in Austria with one of the closest friends of his youth. The acting across the board is beyond praise and given that I've just watched the DVD in January, 2016, it stands up remarkably well.

Despite Mortal Storm's numerous flaws and its unintentionally laughable opening narration (which came across to me as being almost lunatic), this film still manages to deliver a powerful anti-Nazi message that packs a punch, even when viewed today, 74 years later.Considering that back in 1940 the USA was not yet involved in the war that was raging away in Europe, I'm quite surprised that MGM Studios actually went out on a limb and released a film of this one's nature, which clearly paints a very negative picture of the gloom & doom regarding the rise of The Third Reich in Nazi Germany.Is it any wonder that after the infuriated Adolf Hitler viewed Mortal Storm he promptly ordered his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, to have all films produced by MGM banned throughout Germany? Set in 1933 (the year Hitler was elected as Chancellor of Germany), Mortal Storm's "swastika-in-your-face" story of escalating emotions, blind intolerance, family betrayal and Nazi loyalty takes place in a small Bavarian university town situated at the base of the Alps.The action of Mortal Storm's story focuses in on the well-respected and well-to-do Roth family whose head of the household is a greatly admired professor at the Bahnhoff University.Once Hitler is placed in supreme power this, in turn, gets the "party-loyalty" juices flowing amongst the young, adult males throughout this once-quiet town. (Never do we ever see any women joining in on this fanatic political movement) Needless to say, all of this turmoil quickly begins to sever the close-knit ties that had previously held the Roth family (as well as many others) together.I think that it's interesting to note that neither the word "Jew" nor "Nazi" were ever spoken in this film.And, finally - When it came to Mortal Storm's cast, I, personally, thought that both James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan were clearly unconvincing and not at all suited for the dramatic demands of their parts.On the other hand, the one performance that I consider to be something of a standout was that of Robert Young as Fritz Marberg, the zealous yet tortured young student who finds himself torn between his loyalty to his friends and his fanatical allegiance to Nazism.All-in-all - Mortal Storm, which was filmed in b&w, was certainly well-worth a view.

Frank Borsage directed this powerful and still timely drama set in 1933 Germany, in a little village in the Alps, where respected Professor Roth(played by Frank Morgan) is having his birthday(Jan. 30) observed by his family and students. Things are happy until the results of the national election are announced, with Hitler and his Nazi party the overwhelming winners. This creates a wave of pro-Nazi zealotry that ends up dividing the family. Daughter Freya(played by Margaret Sullivan) is torn between two suitors(played by Robert Young and James Stewart). When her father is arrested and later dies in prison, Freya chooses Stewart because he hates the Nazis, but he is also a fugitive, as is her whole family, leading to a fateful ski trip escape down the mountains to freedom across the border...also costars Robert Stack, Ward Bond, and Bonita Granville.Still potent film shows in chilling and shocking detail how blind party loyalty can grip a nation, turning friends and family against each other because they dare question their own government, a problem that has not gone away, but merely changes form... Only a vigilant and informed citizenry can prevent such a thing from happening again.