The Hiding Place (1975)

          Based on a memoir by concentration-camp survivor Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place details what happened when a Dutch family transformed their home into a safe haven for Jews during the German occupation of Holland, only to pay a horrific price for their altruism. Infused with probing theological conversations about how a merciful God can allow the existence of cruelty and suffering, The Hiding Place is a sermon in the form of a drama. Yet the unflinching way that director James F. Collier and his collaborators depict the hardships of war entirely from the victims’ perspective—no effort is made to humanize or “understand” the oppressors—gives the piece tremendous credibility. Ultimately, The Hiding Place is a story about the challenge of maintaining genuine faith when confronted with the worst of what humans can do to each other.

          The picture begins at the onset of the occupation, when Gentile patriarch Casper ten Boom (Arthur O’Connell) decides to take a stand against the Nazis who have invaded his homeland. Casper, a kindly grandfather who runs his family’s century-old clock shop, initially defies the Germans by wearing a gold star on his sleeve in solidarity with ostracized Jews. Later, accepting entreaties from the Dutch Resistance, Casper allows his family’s large home to be fitted with secret compartments capable of holding a large number of fugitives. Throughout the first half of the picture, Casper and his relatives—notably adult daughters Betsie (Julie Harris) and Corrie (Jeannette Clift)—justify their actions by articulating their love for Jesus. This first half also includes fraught relations between the ten Booms and some of their “boarders,” who appreciate the family’s courage but disagree with their Christian ideology.

          Midway through the picture, the Nazis discover that the ten Booms have aided Jews—although the Germans fail to find the people hidden inside the ten Boom household, all of the ten Booms are carted off to concentration camps. Thereafter, the movie becomes a survival story focused on the time Betsie and Corrie spend as prisoners in a work camp. (The focus also expands to include Corrie’s closest confidant in the camp, fellow prisoner Katje, played with fierce determination by Eileen Heckart.) The second half of The Hiding Place is filled with abuse and pain and tragedy, and yet through all her travails Connie tries to espouse her father’s ideals of surmounting earthly rigors through faith.

          The strongest virtue of The Hiding Place is that it never casts Corrie’s wartime ordeal in a nostalgic glow, as if the Holocaust was merely a test of faith; instead, the picture offers a clinical look at how one family, and by extension one individual, relied on religion to sustain humanity amid an inhumane situation. The anguished performances by Clift and Harris deliver this theme passionately, just as the unvarnished filmmaking by Collier and his technicians accentuates the terrifying reality of concentration-camp existence. Given its narrow focus, The Hiding Place is too long, even though each scene more or less justifies its own existence with some flourish of narrative or performance; furthermore, the picture probably didn’t need quite as many dialogue exchanges about theology. Nonetheless, this is powerful, sincere work about a subject that can never be explored in sufficient depth—and the movie also represents a fine tribute to an individual, and a family, possessed of extraordinary moral strength.

The Hiding Place: GROOVY

Butterflies Are Free (1972)

          Well regarded for its sympathetic portrayal of a young blind man whose travails echo those of all persons living with disabilities, Butterflies Are Free has some fine ideas and sentiments, but it’s also long-winded, stilted, and trite. Adapted by Leonard Gershe from his successful play of the same name, the picture explores challenges faced by Don Baker (Edward Albert), a college-aged suburban youth trying to live on his own for the first time. For the first half of the story, he’s excited by the affections of a sexy neighbor, cheerfully irresponsible hippie Jill Tanner (Goldie Hawn), and for the second half the story, Don is tormented by the smothering attentions of his overprotective mother, referred to only as Mrs. Baker (Eileen Heckart).

          According to the introduction accompanying a recent broadcast of Butterflies Are Free on Turner Classic Movies, the significance of the picture is that it captured the tone of the early-’70s “independent living” movement, during which persons with disabilities attempted to break from the traditional cycle of home care and institutionalization. And, indeed, Gershe’s narrative crisply depicts myriad hardships people like Don must have faced on a daily basis in less-informed times, from condescending attitudes to the genuine fear of overwhelming situations. Alas, Gershe’s weapon of choice is overly literate dialogue, so the characters in the story feel more like polemic representations than actual people: Mrs. Baker represents oppression, Jill represents freedom, and Don wants to exist somewhere between those extremes.

          If the filmmaking had more vitality and the acting was transcendent, the mannered nuances of Gershe’s writing would be more tolerable. Unfortunately, director Milton Katselas does little more than film a theatrical production; Butterflies Are Free is so flat one can almost feel the curtain descending whenever the story lurches from one act to the next. Yet leading man Albert is the movie’s biggest weakness. Bland and unmemorable, he delivers a performance more suited to an afterschool special than a theatrical feature. Hawn fares better, simply because of her beauty and charm; if nothing else, the fact that she spends a third of the movie in her underwear commands a certain kind of attention. Heckart, who won a Supporting Actress Oscar for the movie, benefits from Gershe’s best-written role. Anguished and sarcastic, Heckhart’s character charts a believable arc from assumption to understanding. Heckart’s isn’t a performance for the ages, per se, but her solid work elevates an otherwise mediocre endeavor.

Butterflies Are Free: FUNKY