PROPAGANDA AGENT PUT ON TRIAL

PACINO CHARACTER SKETCHES SENIOR TRIAL LAWYER

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Governments seek the hearts and minds of the people in life during wartime with the use of propaganda.

Eighty years ago people were engaged with receiving any radio signals from the main broadcast medium at the time, particularly during wartime. Radio broadcasts were therefore an effective method of delivering government information.

American Traitor (2021) is a courtroom drama about the trial of Nazi radio personality Axis Sally, co-starring Al Pacino as defense lawyer James J. Maughlin, and Meadow Williams as Mildred Gillars, aka Axis Sally. Mitch Pileggi plays the federal prosecutor, John Kelly.

Axis Sally was a radio personality developed by an American in Germany during World War II as part of the radio broadcast of Nazi propaganda. The film follows Axis Sally as she is captured and put on trial for treason in Washington after the war.

Director Michael Polish intertwines the courtroom drama narrative with a flash back narrative showing the involvement of Mildred Gillars broadcasting Nazi propaganda to American troops in the  war zone and to American families at home in America.

The 109 minute runtime might have been extended to fill in this backstory a bit more, but the film nevertheless gets to the point without long and unnecessary courtroom scenes.

Pacino does a good job showing the personality of a senior United States trial lawyer asked to take on the defense of a hopelessly defensible case.

Polish casts Thomas Kretschmann as Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Kretschmann performs many scenes in chiaroscuro light to emphasis the dangerousness of the personalities behind the Nazi war machine.

Kretschmann shows the maniacal ability of Goebbels to exhibit the  love and hate duality that can quickly break out into raging madness.

Kretschmann also played the Nazi SS Major in Valkyrie (2008) and the captain of the ship in Director Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005).

Meadow Williams is cast well as Axis Sally, a slightly naïve but ambitious radio personality during a time when radio and film were beginning to dominate entertainment and culture over live theatre shows.

The film focuses on the issue of defending the defenseless, but the script also captures some aspects of involuntary behaviour under the tyranny of Nazi oppression.

Williams portrays Gillars with some victim aspects, but overall Axis Sally overlooks her treasonous activity for her self-ambition to be a celebrity in what was promoted at the time to be a victorious Germany.

Polish uses a score but only sparingly to create the atmosphere of the time. And more could have been done to use music to create suspense and drama. 

American Traitor is streaming on Apple TV.