Based on a classic children’s book by Judith Kerr, “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” (2019) is a semi-autobiographical film by Academy Award-winning German director and screenwriter Caroline Link. It portrays the flight of her secular, socialist, upper-middle-class Jewish family from Berlin as the fateful 1933 German election looms. (This was when Hitler came to power as part of a coalition government, and what followed was violent oppression and horror.)
The world is seen through the eyes of spirited, bold, and smart 9-year-old Anna Kemper (Riva Krymalowski), who longs for her Berlin home and her stuffed rabbit as she, her mother and father, and older brother Max are forced to become refugees. The father has difficulty getting writing assignments and, as a result of their financial problems, the family moves from Zurich to a village in the Swiss Alps, then to a small flat in Paris, and finally to London. They must learn languages and confront new experiences at each point along the way.
Anna’s mother (Carla Juri) is an opera singer, and her father (Oliver Masucci) is a prominent theater reviewer and journalist … and a passionate intellectual critic of the Nazis. Hitler has put a price on his head, so a return to Germany is impossible. Being that the film focuses on Anna’s view of the world means that swastikas, storm troopers, and Hitler’s vile anti-Semitic screeds are secondary to Anna’s making new friends, doing cartwheels, and dealing with young boys who throw rocks at her to show their love.
Despite sweet, perceptive Anna, and the cute goats and stunning green meadows of Switzerland, director Link makes sure we don’t forget the family is in danger, and that anti-Semites exist in France as well as Germany. The father suffers from nightmares, and the family is aware that, as refugees, ”they are always saying goodbye.”
However, the film never allows the terror that envelops their lives to disrupt the warm family relations, and the ability of children to shut out the world and engage in innocent play. They celebrate Christmas as a German, not Christian, celebration, eat snails at a restaurant, and look out over Paris from the Eiffel Tower.
The original story comes from a children’s book, so the family dynamics aren’t very complex, and the world is simpler and more harmless than it should be at that historical moment. But the film has charm and can be moving; Anna can poignantly convey a sense of homelessness, but also the capacity to adapt to each new home and start life anew.
The film opens Friday, May 21 in New York (Quad Cinema) and Los Angeles, with key theatrical markets to follow.
