My Knees Were Jumping (1996)
Film:
DVD:

Edited by Melissa Hacker
Directed by Melissa Hacker
Narrated by Joanne Woodward

Features:

• Filmmaker biography
  

Released by New Video Group/Docurama
Region: 1
Rating: NR
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: Shoah scholars and WWII history buffs should give it a rental.

From December of 1938 to August 1939, a handful of British Jews and Quakers, with assistance from a small group of sympathizers, perpetrated one of the most amazing rescue missions in modern history. In anticipation of Germany's growing madness, they loaded trains full of Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, and whisked them to safety out of reach of Hitler's Third Reich and its hideous Final Solution. Today, the story of these trains, the Kindertransports, is too often overlooked and overshadowed by the works of people like Schindler who have had better Hollywood representation. Melissa Hacker, inspired by her own mother's story of survival as one of the passengers on these trains, turned a lens on the survivors and recorded their stories in hopes of shedding light on this lesser-known, but no less powerful, story of human decency.

The bulk of the documentary comes from the interviews that Hacker collected from surviving beneficiaries of the kindertransport rescue. Most recall the fear and confusion of those hectic days at the trainyard, and many would never see their families again, as Hitler's regime captured and subsequently slaughtered the parents that these children had to leave behind. A few remember fondly the families with whom they were placed to wait out the war, some having even been adopted by those foster families when it was learned that their real parents were killed.

Disappointingly, though, there is too little information on the program itself. Other than a fairly cursory overview of the rescue program early in the film, there's only the odd snippet of information about the trains and the people who organized this massive rescue operation. There's also a lot of repetition amongst the interviewees, who understandably had very similar experiences to relate. Rather than using one or two interviewees as illustrative on any given point, Hacker will give us half a dozen people telling the exact same story. This makes the film seem longer than it is, on the one hand, and gives viewers a sense that Hacker might have needed to take a firmer hand in editing her raw footage.

The documentary feels surprisingly unfocused, and sort of drifts from interview subject to subject, never really doing a good job of piecing together a coherent narrative thread. While it is admirable to see a documentary filmmaker manage to keep themselves out of the work, there's such a thing as taking the concept too far. Sitting a camera down in front of people and telling them to reminisce doesn't really qualify as "directing," documentary or not.

The quality of the film, from a video and audio standpoint, is just fine. There's plenty of black and white stills, and even a bit of footage, of the trains and the rescue, and it's used to good effect. Contemporary footage is uniformly color. The DVD, though, could have used a little more attention. A filmmaker bio is good, as far as it goes, but when dealing with such a widely-documented historical period, it seems like they could have thrown us some newsreels, an article or two, or some kind of biographical profile on those behind the operation. Alas, we get none of this.

Those particulary interested in all aspects of the Shoah or World War II might want to at least rent this one, as the subject of these kindertransports is little covered in other sources. Unfortunately it can't be recommended as a purchase for such a viewer's library, as even in the documentary, the subject of the trains is little covered, in favor of fairly misty-eyed personal rememberances. Makes for powerful emotional cinema, and the movie certainly racked up enough indie street cred for that, but it makes for bad historical documentary.