Willy on AllMovie

Produced in Germany, this is the story of a young mixed-race man struggling to find his place in West German society of the 1960's. Willy (Hubert Persicke) is the illegitimate child of an African-American G.I. of the Allied occupation forces and a young German woman, Klara (Hannelore Schroth). His mother raises him alone after his father returns to the United States. After graduation from high school, he attempts to find and keep a job. Willy and his mother must face the prejudices of their small town, and eventually she encourages him to pursue a better life in Hamburg, hoping that the impersonal setting of a large city might provide him better opportunities. Director and producer Allan A. Bruckantz is to be commended for his willingness to tackle the subject of racial prejudice in the racially hostile environment of post-war Germany, but unfortunately he does not do his subject matter the justice it deserves. The acting is too thin to be believable and is further hampered by insufficient dubbing. The subject is handled with too little imagination, lack of sufficient depth, and fails to evoke any real self-exploration in the viewers.