The Last Butterfly
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: B-
Before Holocaust films became too disturbingly
overproduced, making them was always a touchy and serious affair. Karel Kachyna’s The Last Butterfly
(1990) joins the two Jacob The Liar films and the problematic Life Is
Beautiful as having the human spirit somehow overcome the hell and
evil. This is more difficult to suspend
disbelief over more than ever. Such
films are even sincere, but they tend to miss the point of the evil in ways
that cannot be ignored.
Here, Tom Courtenay gives a fine performance as an actor
and mime artist hired and hoodwinked by the Nazis into doing the greatest,
grandest and most expensive show of his life with some Jewish children. When he finds out this is a hoax and the
kids will go to death camps soon after the performance, he decides to do
something with the performance the Nazis will not expect. That alone is too close to the disturbing
aspects of The Sound Of Music Mel Brooks rightfully attacked in his
original film version of The Producers.
In real life, the Nazis would kill any such subversion off
in an instant, but they somehow just sit back ala Hogan’s Heroes and let
the heartfelt moments pour out. It is
no longer a path that works in these films, unless you go into some serious
denial. Brigitte Fossey and Freddie
Jones help the film, but it ultimately does not live up to its intents.
The full frame 1.33 X 1 image is from a somewhat dated
NTSC analog master and it is hard to tell if this is the full camera frame or a
tunnel vision copy. Radomil Cech is the
cinematographer, shooting one of the last normal color dramas on The Holocaust
before the black and white of Schindler’s List changed how such films
were shot. This is one of the aspects
of the films that ages it sooner than it would otherwise. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has very weak
Pro Logic surrounds, which were more pronounced in its Dolby A-type analog
theatrical release, showing that the video master and its audio are down a few
generations. There are no extras here
of any kind.
- Nicholas Sheffo
