Search - Arch Of Triumph on DVD

Arch of Triumph

Starling Flowers | Gallipolis, OH USA | 01/22/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"The story line is OK and Anthony Hopkins is brilliant as always. I was very disappointed in the quality of the video itself. It is hard to see, the color is awful and the sound is bad. It looks like a homemade video."

Historical anti-war movie

Andrea Dealmagro | NYC | 05/16/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Arch of Triumph is based of the novel of the same title written by Eric Maria Remarque (who also wrote "All Quiet of the Western Front") There are no happy endings en Remarque's novels. The history is about a German doctor (played superbly by Anthony Hopkins), who is Christian but anti-nazi, and has sought refuge in France prior to September 1, 1939.
He is what the French call un sans-papier - an undocumented. France was already flooded by refugees from the defeated Spanish Republic. He is not allowed to work and if he is arrested, he will be dropped at the German border and pushed forward. Of course, if he goes back to Germany, he will end in a concentration camp. He knows it and does what he has to do in order to survive in France. He is viewed as an enemy by both the French and the Germans. In that quandary, he meets a suicidal French woman, a helpful French doctor, and a compasionate Zarist Russian exile. The movie ends as WWII begins.
If you want to watch a movie just to relax, this is not it; it shows a cruel world. This is a movie with a message: that the price that war and prejudice exert on the individual is a high one."