Michael Roemer, The Plot Against Harry Director, Dead at 97

Filmmaker Michael Roemer died at the age of 97, his family confirmed to Vulture. Born in 1928 in Berlin to a Jewish family, as a child Roemer escaped Germany right before the outbreak of World War 2 in a Kindertransport, a organized rescue effort to get Jewish children out of the country and into British foster homes. “I think I was the only child who didn’t cry. I was probably quite numb,” Roemer explained to Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri in an interview earlier this year. “My mother said that many of the parents who saw us onto the train took taxis to another railroad station in Berlin through which the train was going to pass, and they waved to the train as it went through the station without stopping.” He eventually immigrated to the United States and graduated from Harvard University, where he worked on his first film, A Touch of the Times.

Throughout his life, his filmmaking career felt as if it needed ample time to be appreciated. Time and time again, he would create a thoughtful and provoking film only for it to be released and admired years later. Nothing but a Man, a 1964 film about a Black newlywed couple in Alabama, was praised and awarded the San Giorgio Prize at the Venice Film Festival at the time of its release, but only in the 1990s, when it was re-released in the United States, did it gain cultural recognition when it was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1993. For his comedy film, The Plot Against Harry, it was first screened in 1971 but not given a theatrical release until 1989, and screened out of competition at Cannes in 1990. It was eventually nominated for six Independent Film Awards, and in 2023, the film was restored in 4k.

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