by Eleanor Mannikka
synopsis
In this frank and open drama about a 1941 Swiss government decree and a man who disobeyed it, the nature and strength of individual protest is luminously etched. Otto Machtlinger (who died shortly after this film was completed from an already-diagnosed fatal illness) plays Tanner, the man who refuses to give up his grazing land for farming purposes. Because imports to Switzerland were cut off at the beginning of World War II, the Swiss government was worried about food supplies. Their solution was to mandate the expansion of farm land, and when Tanner refuses to go along because he knows his grazing pastures are no good for farming, he starts a confrontation with the government which seems impossible to win.
