My latest vintage film purchase is John Voight's The Odessa File, which is a well-crafted tale about Nazis hiding in plain sight during the 1960s.
The titular "Odessa" is actually an acronym for veterans of the SS who managed to keep a low profile after the initial war crimes trials and used their wartime connections to achieve positions of power and influence.
Voight is an idealistic journalist who pursues a seemingly pointless story through the usual wilderness of mirrors.
The film itself was made in the 1970s but set ten years earlier, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's soundtrack carries a number of precursors to his score for Evita. It's based on a book and is not entirely fiction - certain elements in the story are historically accurate.
The upshot is that in a time when there's even less reason to trust government than in 1974, it's fascinating that this genre hasn't made more of a comeback.
One thing I'll say for Voight – he actually does a good job of being German. I'm not talking about the accent, I mean the facial expressions and mannerisms. Germans are not a particularly vivacious people – they don't get all animated like Italians talking with their hands. Voight places his role well, by which I mean he frowns a lot, which is something Germans do. Dated? Sure, but quite enjoyable.
Chateau Lloyd 
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