This film probably should have been made either five years earlier or twenty years later. That way, it would have been able to delve more deeply into the ambiguities of the Norma Shearer/Conrad Veidt relationship, by far the film's most interesting aspect. As it is, this 1940 production, made just before the United States entry into WW2, is largely an anti Nazi propaganda piece which was fine for fighting isolationism but which today rings a bit too, well, propagandistic and results in too little Shearer and way too much Rat Fink Bob yelling at numerous scared Germans to help him find his mom and scolding them for their complicity. And when he does find her (played by an over the top Nazimova, as if she thinks she's still in silent pics) we have a jerry rigged and cockamamie scheme to fake her death via coma cooked up by a concentration camp doc with a conscience (as if), a character out of both left and right field. The result is a film that straddles the C plus/B minus line and which is pulled to the latter thanks to the scenes of Shearer and her lover/protector Veidt, scenes which are notable for their sexual frankness, certainly unusual for a movie made under the code, as well as Shearer's refusal to be PC, most notably expressed in the final scene.