Europa is the conclusion of Lars Von Trier’s Europe trilogy and announced his emergence as a major filmmaker. The movie begins with Max Von Sydow hypnotizing the audience with a soothing, authoritarian voice over, the first of many signs that we are entering a dream-like work. A young American (Jean-Marc Barr) travels to Germany in 1945 to work as a sleeping car conductor during the American occupation. He becomes involved with the daughter of the train’s owner as he learns that werewolves are continuing the Nazi cause through terrorism. He is tricked into allowing children onto his car who then proceed to assassinate the new Jewish mayor of Frankfurt. Soon, he learns that his love may be a werewolf even as her father, a German industrialist who helped the Nazis transport Jews to concentration camps during the war, commits suicide in response to threatening letters. The American is eventually blackmailed into planting a bomb on the train in order to save his kidnapped wife. He defuses it at the last minute when he realizes how many people would be hurt. He soon realizes that he has been used as a pawn in a complex game by nearly everyone-the Americans, his wife, and his employer-and in a fit of anger blows up the train anyway, leading to his own death.
Shot in black and white with occasional color inserts, Europa has outstanding cinematography, some of it done by Dreyer’s cinematographer, Henning Bentsden. There are numerous complex compositions that include back and front projection. The performances are excellent and include an iconic turn by Eddie Constantine as a colonel in the American army. The innocent American corrupted by Europe reminds the viewer of The Third Man and the film should be considered a very late noir. What were the Germans to do after they were defeated? As the Cold War ended, Von Trier appears to have felt that their involvement with the horrors of the war had still not been adequately dealt with. The film is the best of the handful of Von Trier films that I have seen and is recommended to those interested in film noir, World War II, and late 20th Century European cinema. ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰.
MJM 12-06-2011