TCM - guest programmer Dolores Hart

In hiding from the police, Peter stifles Lisa’s screams.

A victim of the Auschwitz medical experimentation unit, Lisa Held (Dolores Hart) no longer feels at home in Europe and longs to go to Palestine. She finds an ally in her quest in Peter (Stephen Boyd), a Dutch policeman. A companion film to Otto Preminger’s Exodus (1960), Lisa (1962) is also a period piece that touches on some of the same issues. Although it doesn’t have the epic quality of Exodus, Lisa has plenty of action sequences that make good use of Cinemascope. As guest programmer on TCM, Mother Dolores Hart spoke about the making of the film and how she met with survivors. From a sheltered background, this was her first exposure to the specifics of the holocaust. The character of Lisa stayed with her for months afterward, she said. It’s a horrifying topic handled with sensitivity by director Philip Dunne [Wild in the Country (1961)]. Even in youth-oriented fare, co-starring with Elvis Presley [Loving You (1957), King Creole (1958)], Hart always had a seriousness along with her spectacular blue-eyed beauty. That serious side gets taken to the limit in Lisa where she’s almost unrecognizable. There’s an effective flashback sequence where a newly freed Lisa spots an Israeli tank lumbering through the forest. She tells Peter it was the only one with a Star of David used during the war. Continue reading →