MFAH Film – Newcomers: Three Films on Immigration: The Glass Wall
- When
- October 04, 2015
- Where
-
Museum of Fine Arts Houston – Brown Auditorium
1001 Bissonnet Street
Houston,TX 77006 - Cost
- $2 - $1001
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents the film series Newcomers: Three Films on Immigration. Three scholars who serve on the Museum’s Film Committee have chosen unique films on the subject of immigration.
Each screening features a brief introduction and a post-screening discussion with the audience.
The Glass Wall
Directed by Maxwell Shane
1953
USA
B/W
82 minutes
35mm
Presented by Dr. Garth S. Jowett.
The seldom seen The Glass Wall features issues that struggling immigrants faced when finding refuge in the United States after WWII.
In his first American film, the popular Italian actor Victoria Gassman plays a Nazi concentration camp survivor who stows away on a ship to New York in search of an American paratrooper he saved during the war. The immigration authorities give him 24 hours to find the man known only as a jazz musician named Tom before sending him back to Europe.
The director follows Gassman on the gritty streets of New York, and captures the increased desperation of this Holocaust survivor as the deadline for finding Tom nears.
A superb urban thriller, The Glass Wall fully captures a moment in time when many victims of the War were trying to enter the Unites States. – Garth Jowett
