Vor der Morgenröte

The film, treated in a semi-documentary style with an accentuated preference for plan-sequences (in-camera editing of sequence-like shots), is interesting in itself. But even more interesting perhaps would be to seek, or rather to fantasize, what would have been Zweig's life had he not opted for a terminal attitude. He'd already seen the US joining the War. He probably felt that Germany would inevitably win the conflict, and this would bring about the extermination of Judaism, the end of Western-style democracies, and so on and so forth. Had he lived, however, he'd see the Allies gain the conflict, which would provide him with a breath of optimism and comfort. He'd see his adoptive country, Brazil, leaving (in 1945) a long-overdue dictatorship. Later, already an octogenarian, he'd see Brazil plunging onto another dictatorship - against which Zweig would certainly say nothing, not in the least because he was an anti-communist. One thing is certain: the writer would never live to witness the growth of the largest criminal organization ever invented in Brazil or, for that matter, in any other place. The "Land of the Future" (Zweig's book title) has been since very busy , trying hard to dump her historical promises into the trash cans of History...