Reunion

Reunion

Directed by Jerry Schatzberg. 
With Jason Robards, Samuel West, Christien Anholt 
France/West Germany/UK 1989, color, 35mm, 110 min.

Adapted by Harold Pinter from Fred Ulhman’s autobiographical novella, Reunion uses the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s to explore the destruction of personal relationships by historical forces. Depicting the achingly intimate friendship between two teenage boys – one Jewish, the other from an aristocratic family – Schatzberg gives equal attention to the intense adolescent bonding as its inevitable and tragic erosion by the winds of time and fate. As the now adult Jewish lawyer who fled to the U.S. before the war, Jason Robards delivers one of his finest performances as a man determined to confront the traumas of his past.

- Harvard Film Archive