AllMovie

Like other films that run past the normal feature length, this 5 1/2 hours of drama is divided up into three segments: the years from 1908-1918, from 1922-1928, and from 1932-1937, with an epilog that brings events up to 1942. The focus is on the fictionalized events in the life of Jan Koplowitz, who not only co-wrote the screenplay with director Horst Seemann and Guenther Ruecker, but who also wrote the original story on which the film is based. In essence, the saga details the history of a Jewish family who owned a large hotel -- the Bohemia -- in Bad Kudowa, a resort town. In the first part of the story, set at the turn of the century and just before World War I, the posh resort hotel is seen in all its old-world splendor and basking in the ease of times gone by. In the second part, Jan Koplowitz's early life is dramatized, capturing the coming home of a relative who had moved to Australia, and the rising power of the National Socialists. In the third segment, the family splits up (ideologically and politically) as one member joins the communists and gives up the practice of orthodox Judaism, and all face the specter of the Nazis and the fight to keep their hotel.