Out of the Past – KVIFF 60/80 / Die letzte Chance / Switzerland 1945
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
Film stills © Cinémathèque suisse Collection. All rights reserved.
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
/ Contact Cinémathèque suisse
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).
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