Presented by Garth S. Jowett, University of Houston

"The seldom-seen The Glass Wall features issues that struggling immigrants faced when finding refuge in the United States after WWII. In his first American film, popular Italian actor Vittorio Gassman plays a Nazi concentration-camp survivor who stows away on a ship to New York in search of an American paratrooper he saved during the war. The immigration authorities give him 24 hours to find the man, known only as a jazz musician named Tom, before sending him back to Europe. The director follows Gassman on the gritty streets of New York, and captures the increased desperation of this Holocaust survivor as the deadline for finding Tom nears. A superb urban thriller, The Glass Wall fully captures a moment in time when many victims of the war were trying to enter the United States." —Garth S. Jowett