Mark Reviews Movies: AMERICAN TRAITOR: THE TRIAL OF AXIS SALLY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 27, 2021

American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally puts forth a legal argument for Mildred Gillars, the American woman who served as a mouthpiece of Nazi propaganda on German state radio, before and after the United States became involved in World War II. Following the war, she was accused of and put on trial for eight counts of treason. If we accept that Gillars was still a citizen of the United States (after also becoming a German citizen) and that her radio broadcasts amounted to giving "aid and comfort" to an enemy of the country (as the crime is partially defined within the Constitution), this seems like a pretty obvious case.

The movie, co-written and directed by Michael Polish, doesn't see the case against Gillars in such simple terms. Indeed, the screenplay, co-written by Vance Owen (whose book Axis Sally Confidential, written with William E. Owen, has been adapted here) and Darryl Hicks, goes out of its way to defend Gillars, raising questions of the First Amendment, her citizenship, and whether or not she was a consenting participant in those radio broadcasts, among other matters. Its other major argument is that Gillars' trial was less about the law or justice and more about revenge—knowing the toll of the Nazi war machine and, with the higher-ups of the regime dead, looking for someone to hold accountable.

What's never put forth by the movie is the moral case for Gillars, because that—even this distracting and obfuscating story seems to acknowledge through omission—is a losing argument. Did Gillars, played here by Meadow Williams, actually believe all or any of the things she read and said throughout her career as a Nazi propagandist? Was she aware of what was happening within Germany and its occupied territories, beyond the military conflicts? Why did she stay in Germany as the Nazis' intentions became clearer, well before, according to her account, Joseph Goebbels himself confiscated her passport?

These and many others are the questions the movie refuses to ask, and they're the ones that sink this dramatization of Gillars' trial. She's presented as a naïve victim, saying that she feared for her life (a reasonable fear under the circumstances, of course) and never really wanted Germany to win the war. It's a solid enough legal defense (barring the obvious holes in her account, which the movie also never addresses), but in dramatizing both the trial and Gillars' career as a propaganda arm for the Nazis, the movie clearly wants us to find some degree of sympathy for her. In complicating the legal matter and wholly avoiding the moral one, that's asking far, far too much.

The narrative intercuts Mildred's trial—where she's represented by attorney James Laughlin (Al Pacino), who has been asked by shadowy government officials to make sure the inevitable conviction is a fast one—and her time in Germany, recording isolationist broadcasts, having a romance with writer/producer/broadcaster Max Koischwitz (Carsten Norgaard), and receiving notes from and targeted for sexual abuse by Goebbels (played by Thomas Kretschmann). James believes Mildred is guilty and wants nothing to do with her outside the courtroom, hiring legal novice Billy Owen (Swen Temmel) to communicate with his client in her holding cell. As the case proceeds, James has a bit of a revelation, of course, believing that Mildred might not be as terrible as everyone thinks her to be.

His big moment comes when Mildred explains that she once tried to assassinate Goebbels, which is difficult to buy for a couple reasons. First, she'd probably be dead if that were true. Second, if she wasn't killed for attempting to assassinate one of the top officials in the Nazi government, can we really believe that she, as her and the attorney's main argument consistently is, was in fear for her life? That's just one of a few gaps in the logic of the movie's own defense.

Obviously, this is a dramatization of the Gillars case, so the filmmakers aren't obligated to put forth a strong legal argument, to display a tight understanding of the law, or to dissect the flaws of Mildred's narrative. The problem, perhaps, is that the screenwriters begin with the notion of Mildred's innocence—or, at least, the absence of overwhelming, inescapable guilt—and try to fashion the drama around that idea. It doesn't work, partly because of Williams' icy performance, but mostly because American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally assumes too much and evades anything that might get in the way of those assumptions.

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