AllMovie

An odd, incompatible analogy to an ancient legend seems to be the basis for this conventional wartime drama by director Edwin Zbonek. In the legend, an elderly Greek couple were the only people on earth to provide hospitality to the god Jupiter, and he was so appreciative that he granted them one wish -- which was that they be allowed to die together. The god then turns them into two trees whose branches symbolically intertwine. In this drama set in 1944 on a Greek mountainside, Greek partisans are fighting German troops when an elderly couple agrees to give a desperate partisan refuge. They go so far as to protect him from German troops who search their home but come up empty-handed. When the shoe is on the other foot and two German soldiers seek asylum with the same couple, they also shelter them. The results turn out to parallel the "letter" but not the spirit of the legend.