Cinema: The Reformer

Martin Luther (Louis de Rochemont Associates) has already broken attendance records in Minneapolis, where it had a special pre-release run. Partly responsible for its success is its surefire subject. Hollywood might long ago have turned out an epic on the life of the great reformer if it were not for an understandable reluctance to jump into a religious controversy.

But good potential box office as the subject is, only a sort of minor Protestant miracle made Martin Luther possible at all. It was made for church release, and under the sponsorship of not one but five church bodies: the American Lutheran Church, the Augustana Lutheran Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the United Lutheran Church, plus the National Lutheran Council of the U.S.A. Surprisingly enough, they were able to get together on so delicate an undertaking as a movie about their founder.

To film Martin Luther, the Lutherans chose a moviemaker who is capable of resisting Hollywood’s inclination to see every religious picture as de Millennium. Documentary-minded Louis de Rochemont (Lost Boundaries) likes authentic outdoor sets and on-the-spot extras, and Producer Lothar Wolff sent him to western Germany to get plenty of both. To play Luther, Wolff chose British Actor Niall MacGinnis, surrounded him with a varied cast, and began to shoot scenes in 12th century Maulbronn Cloister, Eberbach Cloister and the castle at Eltville (instead of Luther’s Wittenberg, which is in Russian hands). Even more impressive than the authentic sets are the intense, characterful faces of the extras.

The film takes Martin Luther from his doubt-filled student days through the whole dramatic flowering of Protestantism. There are notable soft-pedalings; the Peasants’ Revolt (1524-26) seems to be telescoped with the iconoclastic excesses of one of Luther’s too enthusiastic followers, and the rallying of the German princes to Luther’s side is tricked out in more Christian idealism than most historians give the princes credit for. But by & large, the action and the dialogue, drawn mostly from Luther’s own written words, are both accurate and edifying.