Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1982) User Reviews (3)

Don't waste 2.5 h, better spend a week reading the book!

[andrnick · 5/10 · 11 August 2013]

Of course compressing the long novel into a 2.5 hours film is very hard and some sacrifices are inevitable.

But I believe a movie with the same title as the original novel ought to reflect the main ideas and the narrating manner. Let alone the strange metamorphoses such as the Kilikian character appearing quite talkative and showing up in the beginning of the movie. The Haik's mover (Giantess) turning into a thick father Simon. The characters do not match the book: Ter-Haigasun shouldn't be that bulky. Haik appearing a slender boy of about the same age as Stephan, but most importantly looking way too European. Stephan looks more determined than Haik - nonsense! The hasty illustration of the affection kindled between Gabriel and Iskuhi, Juliette and Maris. The crumpled battle scenes and comical stealing of the Howitzers., and many more ruined episodes. These all are small albeit disappointing points.

The main problem is however, that in the novel the Turks are pictured realistically - there are bad and good turks. Some are greedy for power, some are noble and benevolent. So are Armenians: some giving and dependable, some dirty traitors. This is how it should be! Why picturing this Jemal character so repelling and indeed horny? Maybe it was so indeed, but not in the book!!! Stephan was not raped (I stopped watching the film when Jemal orders to bring him into his room and tie to the bed: so stupid...). One ought to show respect to the novelist.

All in all, the film is made too personal and the key points have been grossly omitted.

No careful planning of Bagradian; no subtle and complex feelings of Gabriel, Juliette, Iskuhi, Stephan and indeed anyone else; no beautiful battle scenes displaying the valor of the people; no grandiose disasters due to famine, typhus and treachery, etc.

The story has been terribly squeezed and defaced. Even the beautiful and rich language of the book had been simplified and bristled with Americanisms.

Please, read the book, both Armenians and non-Armenians (also Turks), the book is incredibly overwhelming! Hope, some day they make a great movie, maybe a trilogy (since there are three 'books'). It might have been a magnificent masterpiece, that not only Armenians would appreciate, but the whole world, since the story touches everyone - it has been the first massive genocide and an example for Hitler who proceeded in similar lines to exterminate the Jews.

Too bad for the memoir of Armenians' struggle...

[ertanasan · 3/10 · 30 March 2020]

Plenty of stereotypical characters and exaggerations. What a waste of an opportunity...

"After all, who remembers the massacres of the Armenians?" -ADOLF HITLER

[vsimonyan · 9/10 · 22 June 2000]

When Hitler ordered his death units to "exterminate without mercy or pity men, women, and children belonging to the Polish-speaking race," he was confident that the world would overlook the mass murder. "After all," he asked rhetorically on the eve of the 1939 invasion of Poland, "who remembers the massacres of the Armenians?"

When Jews of Warsaw Ghetto stood against the Nazis, their source of inspiration was Prague-born Jewish writer Franz Werfel's "THE FORTY DAYS OF MUSA DAGH", the 1933 novel whose graphic depiction of the Armenian plight which later shaped a generation in Israel.

A MUST see movie for every Jew and Armenian and for everyone who wants to create a better world without "Man's inhumanity to man" into the 21st century. ARMENIAN GENOCIDE marked the first genocide of the century we left behind. We all can learn something from this movie.