Yet another film on the legacy of the Holocaust. Maximilian Schell is the concentration camp survivor on trial for attacking the former commandant of the camp in which his sister was murdered and it's a great performance. There's fine work too from Liv Ullmann as the woman who takes on his defence, Hanns Zischler as the prosecutor and, perhaps surprisingly, Peter Fonda as Ullmann's ex-husband who happens to sway to the right.
Dutch director Fons Rademakers' "The Rose Garden", filmed in English, has its faults, (would a woman as supposedly intelligent as Ullmann really leave her young daughter alone overnight after their apartment had been attacked), but unlike other similar movies it's not exploitative nor is it overly melodramatic, at least not until it pulls its 'surprise' witness out of the hat. Indeed it's chillingly level-headed throughout, perhaps too much so; the flashback at the climax would have been better described rather than shown. A minor film then but both heartfelt and shocking which, in this case, is very much to its credit.
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