Mr. Emmanuel

Mr Emmanuel (1944) is a British film directed by Harold French, based on a 1938 novel by Louis Golding, who adapted the novel for the screen.

Plot summary

Isaac Emmanuel has just retired as an employee of a Jewish welfare agency in pre-WW2 Doomsbury, and expects to join his son in Palestine. Visiting a group of boys, refugees from Nazi Germany, he is much taken with the story of Bruno Rosenheim, a young Jewish boy attending an English school.

Himself a former refugee from Russia, Mr Emmanuel's sympathies are aroused for Bruno, who has not heard from his mother and doesn't know where she is. Somewhat naively, he decides to travel to Germany to find her.

Emmanuel puts up at a boarding-house and starts asking questions, but everyone is too scared to give him information. The authorities and even refugee organisations are equally unhelpful. When a high-ranking official is assassinated, the police decide that, despite his innocent appearance and British passport, Emmanuel may well be a spy and communist sympathiser. They arrest him. Unable to convince the Gestapo of his innocence, Mr Emmanuel sees fellow prisoners tortured and led off to certain execution.

Elsie Silver, a half-Jewish nightclub singer and the toast of Berlin society, recognises Emmanuel from England, where she grew up. She tries to intervene, but gets nowhere. She convinces her social-climbing Nazi protector to assist, and Emmanuel is released, with twelve hours to leave Germany. Instead of leaving the country, he continues to search for Bruno's mother. He eventually finds her, but she is now married to a prominent Nazi and denies that she is Jewish or that she has a son.

Sadly, Mr Emmanuel returns to Britain and tells Bruno that his mother is dead.

Cast

• Felix Aylmer as Mr Emmanuel
• Peter Mullins as Bruno
• Greta Gynt as Elsie Silver
• Walter Rilla as Willi Brockenburg
• Ursula Jeans as Frau Heinkes
• Friedrich Richter as Herr Heinkes
• Elspeth March as Mrs. Cooper
• Meier Tzelniker as Sam Silver
• Helen Misener as Mrs Silver
• Louis de Wohl as Hermann Göring

References

• Encyclopædia Britannica

External links

• Mr Emmanuel at the Internet Movie Database
• Review of film at Variety