3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Risky subject, first-rate treatment, December 25, 2001
This review is from: D.P. (1985) [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Pick a button, and "DP (Displaced Person)" -- adapted from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s brilliant short story -- probably hits it or comes close: Isolation, self-image, racial self-awareness, cross-cultural relations, psychological and social development. Vonnegut covers all the bases in this World War II drama.
A young Black boy grows up in an all-white German orphanage run by white nuns. Townspeople tease him that his father is an American GI named Joe Louis. Told of a "sighting" of the alleged father, the boy sets out to find the soldier.
With this formula, we run the risk of a maudlin, condescending, offensive display of tripe that does nothing to advance the cause of understanding. OK, admittedly it is a tearjerker. Still, we're treated instead to a touching and sensitive depiction of a horrible example of another side of war.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Afterschool Special!, October 18, 2006
This review is from: D.P. (1985) [VHS] (VHS Tape)
During the late 1970s until the early 1990s, afterschool specials were regularly seen for a teenage audience. This short subject film about an African German male orphan in post World War II Germany. The boy feels alone and isolated until somebody tells him about an African American soldier who looks like him. The boy thinks that he is his father. Despite the obvious truth, the soldier loves him like his own regardless of who really is his father. It's a heartbreaking story and I hope I got the ending right. I brought to school and gave it to high school teachers for reading class. We should bring back afterschool specials.
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