****SPOILERS**** The legendary Hugo Haas' most personal project has him play a Mr. Agnus who slips into this rundown neighborhood in the slums of L.A and through a combination of love psychology and film making turns everyone's lives around for the good. That in having them realizing their potentials as kind and loving human beings not the slobs hateful and vindictive persons that they are: Or what life on the wrong side of the track turned them into. Mr. Agnus gets involved with his next door neighbor Mr. Gregory, Chester Conklin, a former Hollywood cameraman in the silent film age to do a movie about the neighbors in their slum known as "Paradise Alley" called "The Chosen & the Condemned". The trick is that Angus plans to make what he calls his masterpiece without any film in the camera!
It soon becomes apparent that Mr. Angus is not the person that he claims to be. He's the once famous Hollywood director Karl Von Stallburg who was institutionalized by his family members for giving his entire fortune to the poor and needy of the world. Not to them who felt that he had gone mad and left them out in the cold. Now released from the sanitarium Mr.Agnus plans to do his work for humanity in doing this movie to improve the lives of those in "Paradise Alley" who feel that their lives aren't worth living!
Hugo Haas looking much younger then he did 10 years ago, with a full head of dark not graying hair, gives it all he's got in him being the producer director writer as well as actor in the film and has made a movie that has stood the test of time and actually improved with age over the years. It goes much deeper into the human psyche then any movie made before or even after and does it in a nonchalant and simple way not in hitting its audience over their heads like most likewise films of that type usually do. Haas himself is depicted as a man who has got a second chance in life like those in "Paradise Alley" and thus took full advantage of it. Not for fame and glory but to use his talents to make life better for others who's lives were a total mess at the time. And in that case he succeeded with flying colors even though the film was made in black & white.
P.S Hugo Haas' last movie turned out to be very probably his best. More or less unknown since it's release in 1962 it has become a cult classic to those who watched it over the years and rightfully so.
It soon becomes apparent that Mr. Angus is not the person that he claims to be. He's the once famous Hollywood director Karl Von Stallburg who was institutionalized by his family members for giving his entire fortune to the poor and needy of the world. Not to them who felt that he had gone mad and left them out in the cold. Now released from the sanitarium Mr.Agnus plans to do his work for humanity in doing this movie to improve the lives of those in "Paradise Alley" who feel that their lives aren't worth living!
Hugo Haas looking much younger then he did 10 years ago, with a full head of dark not graying hair, gives it all he's got in him being the producer director writer as well as actor in the film and has made a movie that has stood the test of time and actually improved with age over the years. It goes much deeper into the human psyche then any movie made before or even after and does it in a nonchalant and simple way not in hitting its audience over their heads like most likewise films of that type usually do. Haas himself is depicted as a man who has got a second chance in life like those in "Paradise Alley" and thus took full advantage of it. Not for fame and glory but to use his talents to make life better for others who's lives were a total mess at the time. And in that case he succeeded with flying colors even though the film was made in black & white.
P.S Hugo Haas' last movie turned out to be very probably his best. More or less unknown since it's release in 1962 it has become a cult classic to those who watched it over the years and rightfully so.