“The Keeper” is an applicant, if a rather plodding, lumbering film biography of the edge of stolid Manchester City soccer’s goalie, Bert Trautmann, a hugely popular man from the late 40s to the 1960s.
He was previously a German paratrooper POW in Britain, recruited to play for a local club before the war’s end. And even though the film makes an effort to explain his former life, I cannot say the Nazi-washing feels complete. The film attempts to show Cobattants’ angst and remorse but fails to explain him being a member of Hitler’s youth or a military volunteer who received the Iron Cross.
You might understand, however, why there were ‘mass protests’ when he joined Man City in 1949, something that Marcus H. Rosenmuller, the film producer, works hard to show.
David Kross (“The Reader”, “War Horse”), who plays Trautmann, was captured in 1945 and taken to a camp in Lancashire. One of his comrades tells him, “We have Nazi discipline in this camp”, a phrase meant to intimidate prisoners and keep them dedicated to the cause.
As Harry Melling, the actor who plays Sgt. Smythe, states, “He would simply dig a mass grave for you bastards,” indicating that the least we could do was incorporate hatred for the enemy.
Merely, the life multiplied like a wave for Jack who is a grocer, and tracks the Aryan blonds with his jaw region. He is sure he can work with St Helen A.C. to help him not get himself relegated. Assigning to a lower federation rank in British football is not ideal. Which is a major red flag. If he does get relegated, he’ll be waist-deep in trouble.
We learned from Jack that he does have a daughter, and the fiery hell that posed trouble for him, cried out with full throttle into the ears of her blushing father while taking a sip of friendly-sized whiskey cos confirming to him how she will the strong head “NAZI!” That “scoundrel” was balled into a band still completely unaware of the bl. That canary dragon himself was alighted with the embers of take-off confirming the fact that he was drunken dancing and laughing while shoving his arm down and escorting with him at the same time yelling “Heil Hitlers!”
So that paid off, not in the ideality that we all want though. Still splendid seeing him off so easily. The only tough patty is Bert who overthinks his days off in the doodle stating tasks like Margaret longing to help to shrug the sholder while making stances such as “Are you seve!”
“I do not wish to remove any of myself. We were made whole. So I’ll fume at my friends who robbed us.”
“The Keeper” could have dropped the curtain at any number of points, but this script takes Trautmann well into his professional career, addressing the storm he had to deal with in the press as well as the controversy he stirred up.
It makes an effort to show Trautmann’s flashbacks, which seem like them trying to answer the unpleasant questions of what you did (or didn’t do) in the war.
The best scenes aren’t those flashbacks but flashes of the Sergeant’s attempt to recreate a concentration camp constructed by the victorious allies to ‘re-educate’ all ‘Good Germans’ who survived the war, both in Germany and in POW camps, and how the news of the war’s ending is delivered to the vanquished.
The soccer is the ordinary movie’s half-speed variety and the romance, no matter how slowly the filmmakers claim to be doing so, is startlingly sudden, more scripted than natural.
A brief glimpse at Wikipedia shows missing details and discards events that should not have been omitted.
And frankly, setting up the Nazi in the camp dynamic and not dealing more with Bert’s “fraternization with the English” is a scam.
The accurate period detail and performances manage to cover the flaws. Kross and Mavor have enough chemistry for it to work, and Henshaw gives the supporting cast largely British TV veterans some heft and heart.
This isn’t an A picture, either in front or behind the camera. It lacks the polish or names of something like Downton Abbey, but it is sufficiently big and important that it works as a competent TV film at least.
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