Synopsis
Is it appropriate to laugh watching a film about flight, imprisonment and the holocaust?It is not only appropriate, you just can not help to laugh at least when this film is narrated over and over by Manfred Weil. With his Jewish sense of humor he reports about his Odyssey during the time of shoah.
About these extraordinary and for some degree just unbelievable tricks he played to outmaneuver all the Nazi bureaucracy and their collaborators.
But when it comes to the cruelties in the camps in France and Switzerland where he is imprisoned one remains speechless. How could you ever imagine what was going on there? Many people perished. At the end the father of Manfred Weil has been killed in Auschwitz.
However, this film does not end in tears. Manfred Weil survived every kind of distress until he died of a natural death aged nearly 95.
He became a wonderful artist who most of the time focused with his paintings on beautiful subjects - above all women.
"Good luck mend everything in those days" thus Manfred Weil summarizes his experiences during the seven years of expulsion, imprisonment in various camps and his adventurous escape. But above all he survived due to his unfailing sense for danger and his particular "chutzpa" this mixture of courage and charming impertinence.
After more than seventy years Manfred Weil visits the places of his sometimes dramatic, sometimes hilarious Odyssey during the time of shoah. The documentary Catch Me if You Can accompanies him on his journey and gives insight in the situation of the Jewish refugees and expelled people in Belgium, France and Switzerland during the Nazi regime. The fact that this retrospective means no Look Back in Anger is due to the distinct sense of Jewish humor of Manfred Weil.
A historical road movie of a special kind.