It was the retired eminent lawyer Tony Parker who made the point during the post-film discussion of One Life (2023), part of the British Film Festival.
“It was so reassuring to see that one man can make a difference.”
He was referring to the humanitarian work of Sir Nicholas Winton, who worked for the newly-established British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia in 1938. Their work saved 669 Jewish children from almost certain death at Nazi hands.
All the above sounds honourable but rather bland in the writing but is so beautifully conveyed in James Hawes’s debut film-directing role in One Life.
Hawes, director of many prominent TV series, including Black Mirror (2016-19) and Slow Horses (2022), has created a touching film which recounts Winton’s story. The tale is all the more moving because the man’s achievement had not been recognised for 50 years because Winton was haunted by what he considered a failure.
In 1938, the 29-year-old Winton (Johnny Flynn) goes to Czechoslovakia to help his friend Martin Blake assist refugees fleeing the Sudetenland, part of the Czech nation granted to Nazi Germany after the Munich Agreement.*
When Blake tells him he has been called away and won’t be there, Winton goes anyway and is met by Doreen Wariner (Romola Garai). He is moved by the appalling conditions the refugees are living in. Winter is coming and he sees the need to save the children.
Together with Wariner, Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp), Hana Hejdukova (Juliana Moska) and others, Winton decides the children must be saved. The decision needs co-operation, money and willing British families to foster the intended evacuees.
Few of the Jewish parents trust him and his breakthrough comes when a rabbi releases the names of families with children who could be saved. It is here that Winton admits his grandparents on both sides were Jewish and the rabbi concedes the list with the sober warning in Yiddish (translated as: “Don’t start something you cannot finish”).
Winton’s London-based mother Babette (Helena Bonham Carter) is recruited to the cause and works quickly and with assurance to cut through the bureaucracy facing the endeavour. One of the sticking points is that every family which fosters the children must pay a 50 pound sterling fee to ensure the children’s return journey is covered. Most have the will and love to foster the children; many don’t have the fee.
By 14 March 1939 the first group of children were transported and Winton’s London team, including Blake, is at the station to meet them.
Further details would ruin it for those yet to see the film but Hawes has begun his story in 1988 with the revered Sir Anthony Hopkins as the older Winton.
Urged by his wife Grete (Lena Olin) to declutter while she is away from home, Winton clears his office and garage of files and other paperwork but he keeps the scrapbook he made of the 50-year-old refugee rescue. (In reality, the scrapbook lived in a briefcase, given Winton by Chadwick, and only came to light because it was found and read by Grete).
It is revealed that Winton has not disturbed the book because he is still haunted by a September 1939 train, carrying his biggest intake of children, which was about to leave Prague station. It is the day of the Nazi occupation of Prague and soldiers disembark the children.
When encouraged to take his story wider, Winton is asked to meet Betty Maxwell (Marthe Keller), wife of publishing tycoon, Robert Maxwell, himself a Czech.
She asks Winton if she can keep the scrapbook and show it to her husband, who writes to Winton, asking him to appear on the BBC television show, That’s Life. The story gets wider attention and the world gets to know that one man can indeed make a difference.
Well-told and very moving, One Life is particularly relevant to the modern horrors of Gaza. To think, the world said “Never again” in 1945 and this has become “Here we go again” less than 80 years on is horror in itself.
SIDELIGHTS:
1. * Munich Agreement, (September 30, 1938), settlement reached by Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy that permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland, in western Czechoslovakia (Brittanica).
2. Video of the That’s Life 1988 program which brought the Nicholas Winton story to much wider public knowledge, 50 years after the event, can be seen on line.
3. There is a statue of Winton outside Prague’s main railway station.
4. The three actresses playing older principals in the film are ravishing beauties from another era. I confess to having a young man’s crush on Keller, who played opposite Al Pacino in the 1977 movie Bobby Deerfield.
Olin was a female lead in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) and Bonham-Carter, a much-loved British actress, made her screen debut in Room With a View (1985).
4.5
I WRIGHT 