The Hiding Place

Julie Harris delivers one of the great faith performances in cinema as Corrie ten Boom, a watchmaker's daughter whose ordinary life became extraordinary when she chose to risk everything to save Jewish neighbors from the Holocaust. The film follows the ten Boom family from their comfortable Haarlem home to the horrors of Ravensbrück concentration camp, and it doesn't flinch from either the heroism or the suffering. Jeannette Clift (as the younger Corrie) captures the transformation from a sheltered middle-aged woman into a resistance fighter with remarkable subtlety. The scenes inside the secret room (the 'hiding place' of the title) are claustrophobic and tense. The concentration camp sequences are harrowing without being exploitative. What elevates this above a standard WWII drama is the film's unflinching exploration of forgiveness — Corrie's post-war encounter with one of her guards, where she must practice the forgiveness she's been preaching, is one of the most powerful scenes in faith cinema. Based on Corrie's own memoir, the film has an authenticity that period dramas often lack. A masterpiece that deserves to be as well-known as Schindler's List.