The subtitle of the documentary ANTWORT DES HERZENS (Hans Albert Lettow, FRG 1950) is: "A filmic symphony of good-will." The work commissioned by the Deutsche Caritas-Verband is not a sober institutional film, but gives a committed and vivid account of the many tasks of Caritas, the Catholic church's association of charitable institutions. The care of terminally ill patients is shown and the assistance offered to displaced persons and those who have gone off the rails. ANTWORT DES HERZENS reveals the despair still prevailing five years after the end of the war and calls for a humane and Christian ethics, which the “Third Reich” had so brutally negated. An especially successful example of the hitherto little explored field of church cinematography. (Jeanpaul Goergen)
