The Last Chance

Out of the Past - KVIFF 60/80 / Die letzte Chance / Switzerland 1945

Synopsis

Northern Italy, September 1943. A group of Allied prisoners of war escapes from a prison train headed to Germany. They soon meet up with local partisans and a multinational group of desperate refugees. All share the same goal – to cross the Alps and make it to neutral Switzerland. Lauded in its time and unjustly forgotten today, The Last Chance – filmed as the last battles of World War II were still raging – presages the coming era of Neorealist cinema. By using a minimum of studio shots and working with real soldiers escaped from Italian prison camps, director Leopold Lindtberg further amplified his film’s urgent moral message. The film premiered at the first festival in 1946.

Tomáš Hubáček

About the film

112 min / Black & white, DCP

Director Leopold Lindtberg / Screenplay Alberto Barberis, Elizabeth Montagu, Richard Schweizer / Dir. of Photography Emil Berna / Music Robert Blum / Sound Bruno Müller, Fritz Obitsch / Editor Hermann Haller / Art Director Robert Furrer / Producer Lazar Wechsler / Cast Ewart G. Morrison, John Hoy, Ray Reagan, Luisa Rossi, Giuseppe Galeati

About the director

Leopold Lindtberg. Selected filmography: Die mißbrauchten Liebesbriefe (1940), The Last Chance (Die letzte Chance, 1945), Four in a Jeep (Die Vier im Jeep, 1951), The Village (Sie fanden eine Heimat, 1953), Der Marquis von Keith (1985).