Forbidden 1984
Toney Talbot
Forbidden is a 1984 drama film directed by Anthony Page and starring Jacqueline Bisset, Jrgen Prochnow and Irene Worth. The plot is inspired by the life of Maria von Maltzan originally told in the non-fiction book The Last Jews in Berlin by Leonard Gross about a countess who hides her Jewish boyfriend in her apartment in World War II. It was a co-production between the UK and West Germany. It was broadcast on television in the US, but released in cinemas in other countries.
German countess Nina von Halder is a student in veterinary medicine in Berlin, Germany on the eve of World War II. Ostracised by her family due to her liberal views and opposition to the Nazi government, she lives alone, independent and strong-willed. The film opens with Nina studying at the library the day Germany invades Poland. She is angered and tells a classmate she knows the reasons Hitler gave for the invasion (to allegedly rescue ethnic Germans from Polish oppression) are a pack of lies.
One day while on errands Nina witnesses two Hitler Youth boys attacking a vendor. She also sees a man attempting to help the vendor. She confronts them and demands to know why he is being attacked. They say they beat him because he sells to Jews. She tells them to leave the man alone or she will report them to her brother-in-law, a high-ranking officer. Later, while attending an informal party hosted by her friend, she recognises the man who came to the assistance of the vendor. Her friend, Erica, tells her that his name is Fritz Friedlaender and he is a writer. She is immediately attracted to him, but Erica warns Nina that it would be illegal to date him under the Nuremberg Laws because he is Jewish. The headstrong Nina ignores this advice, however, and begins a relationship with him.
When he returns home, he finds Nina desperately waiting for him. He tells her what happened. She has worse news for him; the Resistance has discovered that the Nazis are taking the Jews to concentration death camps in occupied Poland and gassing them. She still believes his mother is still safe in Theresienstadt. She then tells him about a train going to Switzerland. She and her friends are smuggling several Jews on board. She professes her love for him, but wants him to go where he will be safe. That night, they go to the railway depot, where he and other refugees are placed in boxes with a small supply of food and water. As she leaves, she sees Fritz running up to her; he loves her so much that he's unable to leave her. Together they return home.
During the war's closing months, Germany is invaded by the Soviet Union in 1945. Nina knows that the Russians want revenge for the millions of their countrymen murdered by the Third Reich. Attempting to hide in the cellar, they are caught by the Russians and forced outside. Nina yells to the soldiers that Fritz is Jewish, but they ignore her. Once outside, Fritz is forced to kneel as the Russians prepare to shoot him. He starts singing "Shema Israel". The Russian soldier lowers his gun and says that he is Jewish too. During the voice-over while the camera pans over a bombed-out and devastated Berlin, Nina tells the audience that Ruth Friedlaender is eventually transferred from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, where she is gassed. Eventually Nina and Fritz marry; Fritz dies in 1974.
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In Goldstein's book, Winston Smith reads about the goals and functions ofthe world's three superstates, which share similar ideologies and are engagedin continuous warfare. Winston reads that the primary goal of modern warfare isto consume and destroy resources and products, which would otherwise be used toimprove the standard of living in each nation. The authoritarian regimes haveno desire to obtain land or resources from their enemies and simply engage inwarfare to cultivate a hysterical atmosphere throughout their society whileusing up valuable resources without compromising their industrial capabilities.Essentially, the wars are a farce used to manipulate, scare, and economicallyoppress the population. Winston then reads why citizens in each superstate areprohibited from being in contact with foreigners. Orwell writes,
War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on acitizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the knowledge offoreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discoverthat they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has beentold about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken,and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends mightevaporate. (248)
Overall, citizens are forbidden from being in contact with foreignersbecause it would jeopardize the Party's authority and threaten the corruptregime. If citizens communicated with foreigners, they would finallyacknowledge their oppressed state and be motivated to rebel against thegovernment.
Southern, Curt. "In 1984, why are citizens forbidden from associating with foreigners by all three superpowers?" edited by eNotes Editorial, 2 Mar. 2019, -all-three-superpowers-forbid-their-citizens-66359.
The main reason all three superpowers don't want their citizensintermingling is that the war is a farce. The superpowers all use the waras an excuse to keep their citizens and countries under the proverbialthumb. It is also a reason to keep working so hard and producing theitems they need to operate and survive...even if it produces a surplus thatneeds to be destroyed. Otherwise, the people of all three countries, ifable to speak with one another, would realize that they don't need to work ashard as they are in order for everyone to have enough (food, supplies,clothing, etc.) to live. Part of the way the governments get what they doout of their people is by using propaganda and other brainwashing techniques to"hate" whatever country they're supposedly at war with at the time. Ifeveryone made friends with everyone else, this "tool" of persuasion would beabsent from their little box of tricks.
Lepore, Amy. "In 1984, why are citizens forbidden from associating with foreigners by all three superpowers?" edited by eNotes Editorial, 23 Feb. 2009, -all-three-superpowers-forbid-their-citizens-66359.
In late 2020, Snopes readers asked us to look into a series of internet memes and social media posts that presented a quotation from George Orwell's classic dystopian novel "1984" as being eerily prescient of the "lockdown" restrictions imposed by governments throughout the world during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
The quotation was not authentic and did not originate in "1984" or anything else written or uttered by Orwell. A search of online versions of the novel does not yield the line included in the memes in 2020, or similar formulations of words.
Even if the novel itself were not available to consult, good reason existed to doubt the authenticity of the quotation. For example, we could find no record of the quotation in a newspaper archive that stretches back more than a century, and no record on Twitter or Facebook from before 2020. Given the novel's considerable cultural impact over the past 71 years, it would be implausible that such a quotable line should supposedly be "discovered" for the first time, in 2020.
It's not clear who fabricated the quotation and first attributed it to Orwell. The earliest instance we found was on Aug. 29, 2020, when social media users in France began sharing a French version of the quotation ("En dehors du travail, tout sera interdit, marcher dans les rues, se distraire, chanter, danser"). Shortly afterward, Spanish speakers began to do likewise ("Fuera del trabajo, todo estar prohibido, caminar por las calles, divertirse, cantar, bailar").
In Berlin in the early 1940s, romance is forbidden between the young countess who is studying veterinary medicine and a young man she meets at the home of a former professor. But they fall in love. She gets involved in helping Jews escape from the Nazis. All get out of Berlin except the young man.
The Party attempts to remove love from marriages by taking away the pleasure of sex and the intimacy that married couples are normally able to have. The resulting marriages are very cold and often end in separation, which was encouraged by the Party "in cases where there were no children" (57). The first mention of Winston's wife is peculiar: "Winston was married -- had been married, at any rate: probably he still was married, so far as he knew his wife was not dead" (56). Winston seems to neither know nor care whether his wife is alive or dead. Consequently, he does not even know whether or not he is still married. The indifference towards his own marriage here is an indicator of the way that the Party has changed what marriage means. Winston's indifference towards his marriage is further displayed when the narrator tells us that, "[f]or days at a time he was capable of forgetting that he had ever been married" (57). In a society where love still exists in marriage, it would be hard to imagine someone forgetting that they had ever been married. The fact that Winston forgets his wife regularly displays how insignificant marriage became in Oceania after the Party separated love from it. Even while they were still living together, Winston and Katharine's marriage was not happy. Katharine believed that it was their duty to have sex to create a baby for the Party and so she embraced the act as a chore. She would refer to it as "making a baby" and "our duty to the Party" (58) while Winston came to have a "feeling of positive dread when the appointed day [to have sex] came around" (58). Neither member of the union enjoyed the act that joined them together and, consequently, they grew apart and eventually separated.
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