Christian Petzold's Transit is a beautiful and somewhat baffling film, taking Anna Seghers 1944 novel and having it take place in the present day. (There was a 1991 film version of the novel, directed by Rene Allio, which was a period piece.). If Petzold's Phoenix (2014) was somewhat a reimagining of Hitchcock's Vertigo (see my post of March 25, 2019) then Transit is something of a reimagining of Curtiz's Casablanca. Fascism has invaded France and Georg has fled to Marseilles in an attempt to find a way to flee the country. Georg (Franz Rogowski) meets Marie (Paula Beer) who is looking for her husband and they hook up when Georg is looking for a doctor to help a young boy he has befriended, the son of the mute wife of Georg's friend who died on their trip to Marseilles. Marie is looking for her husband, who has committed suicide and whose papers Georg now possesses.
It's all rather confusing but Petzold clearly means to relate the refugees of today with the refugees of World War II and the difficulty of escaping fate (a common theme of German directors such as Lang and Ulmer who fled to the U. S.): even when Marie gets a boat out of France it hits a mine and all passengers are killed. The film has a Bressonian-style narrator who turns out to be the bartender at one of the cafes Georg frequents, a café where he awaits his fate while the fascists arrive in Marseilles, as Petzold once again suggests that one can be in Hell even if one doesn't know it.
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