Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31263 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-07-23
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French, German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 81 minutes

Amazon.com
Rupert Everett narrates this sensitive documentary about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals during World War II. "Paragraph 175" refers to the old German penal code concerning homosexuality, which was used to justify the prosecution of gay men during the war (the code ignored lesbians, still considered viable baby-making vessels). As mere rumor became enough to justify imprisonment, over 100,000 were arrested and between 10,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. In Paragraph 175, Klaus Müller, a historian from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, sets out to interview the fewer than 10 who are known to remain alive. The film covers the astonishingly quick rise of Hitler (one interviewee points out how ridiculous a figure he seemed at first) and the shock that more liberal Germans felt as it became clear that he was a force to be reckoned with. Some of the film's most touching moments come when the participants reminisce about their first loves and the "homosexual Eden" that was Berlin in the 1930s. This is a beautifully well made documentary that poignantly captures a piece of nearly forgotten history. --Ali Davis

Customer Reviews

Less a Documentary than a Reminiscence
PARAGRAPH 175 is a beautifully photographed, historicaly accurate, sensitively enlightening film about the Nazi persecution and slaughter of the Pink Triangle, as male homosexuals were designated in Hitler's concentration camps. But for once a documenting film does not focus on grotesque pictures of bodies, wretched camp conditions or images of abuse and torture. The film's makers instead opt for the more sensitive approach of interviewing the few remaining men (and one woman)who survived the period. From these elderly gentlemen we hear memories of how fun Berlin was from 1914 to 1918, the between war period when life was raucous and liberated. We then learn through their words and through film clips of the growing influence of Hitler and his own gay SA General, the response of a people wilted from WWI needing hope for a future and not realizing the depravity of the promises of the Nazi party, the ugly truth. It is this insidious perpetration of evil that becomes most pungent in the faces and words of the survivors. This is a beautifully realized documentary and one that will open eyes to a fact that most people remain unaware of even today.

Painful, defiant, angry, joyous
This is a magnificent piece of documentary filmmaking, not only from the perspective of the production values, but especially of the reportage. It is made clear throughout the documentary how extraordinarily difficult it was to get the extremely elderly men who were the survivors of the Holocaust to think back to what must have been a horrifying period in their lives. The producers managed to get through, however, sometimes with the help of friends, sometimes on their own, and the effect is a devastating one. I cannot agree with the reviewer from Louisiana who carped about "too many Nazi movies". First of all, the Holocaust is a horror which must never be forgotten, and there is no point at which there will be too much information about a "civilized" Western European country which slaughtered millions upon millions upon millions of people at a time which is still in the living memory of countless Europeans, Americans and other citizens of the world. Second, I would have a hard time in coming up with any short list, let alone long list of written, audio or video material which treats the specific subject of the extermination of gay people in Hitler's camps. Gay men were one of the secondary groups of slaughter, of course, in comparison to the breathtaking horror that was visited upon the Jews, but they were a major group nevertheless, and if the critic in Louisiana thinks that this is a story that does not need telling, then I'm sorry, but he's wrong. It does need telling, and the point to this documentary is that not many more years will pass before all of those who survived the terror are gone, gone, gone. The fact that the Holocaust is a throbbing and living thing even in the lives of people in the late 20th and early 21st century was neatly encapsulated in "Paragraph 175" when, if I understood it correctly, a French interviewee said that the interview was the first time that he had ever spoken to a German since World War II. "Paragraph 175" brought tears to my eyes again and again, because I had to ask, again and again, "why, why in God's name, why?" Whether Nazi atrocities have been treated in the media to a greater, lesser, more significant or any other extent than the atrocities of Stalin's Gulag (and as a Latvian, I am perfectly aware of what Stalin did, thank you) is entirely not the point. No human terror can be measured up against any other. This was terror. This was pain. But the survivors also represent a point of joy. They did survive. They had something to say. "Paragraph 175" allowed them to say it. I think that we are better for the story having been told.

THE BASHING OF GAY MEN BY THE NAZI REGIME...
This is a beautifully executed documentary that is approached with great sensitivity. An official selection of the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, the film is named after Paragraph 175, Germany's anti-sodomy law, which was enacted in 1871 and was gender specific to males. It is this statute upon which the Nazi regime relied to round up homosexual men for internment in its infamous concentration camps. Once interned, they were reduced to wearing the now infamous "pink triangle" to herald their homosexuality.

This documentary focuses on poignant reminiscences by the handful of homosexual men, now in their eighties and nineties, as well as one elderly lesbian who had managed to escape from Germany to England, who survived their experiences, were still alive at the time of filming, and willing to talk about this painful time in their lives. Their stories, sensitively handled by interviewer and historian Klaus Muller, are coupled with wonderful archival footage of a Germany of long ago, and come to life under the expert hands of directors Jerry Friedman and Rob Epstein.

The film discusses Weimar Germany's tolerance of homosexuality in the post World War I era, which tolerance continued up until the time the Nazis took control of the country. Berlin was a mecca for homosexuals before the Nazis took over, and Paragraph 175 was largely ignored. The film is highly successful in capturing the joie de vivre of that era, with wonderful archival film footage, stills, and music of a pre-Adolph Hitler Berlin, interspersed with clips of Marlene Dietrich in the film "The Blue Angel" (1931). The use of that film, as well as its signature song "Falling In Love Again", is a perfect marriage with this documentary, as it captures the flavor of the Weimar Republic before Adolph Hitler cast his shadow upon it.

The film shows how the Nazi regime stealthily encroached upon the tolerance that had been so pervasive, rendering gay Berlin a thing of the past, no longer a mecca for homosexuals. Its rigid application of Paragraph 175 was the end of an era of tolerance. It was replaced by the persecution of and intolerance for Germany's homosexual men. The film, narrated by Rupert Everett, is a brief ode to the suffering of this segment of Germany's population, but it is, nonetheless, a powerful one.

The DVD is limited in terms of bonus features. It does, however, provide two additional interviews with concentration camp survivors who shed more light on the treatment of homosexuals during the Nazi era, as well as an insightful and intelligent film commentary by the directors and producer.