Pastor Hall is a 1940

1940 in film

The year 1940 in film involved some significant events, including the premieres of the Walt Disney classics Pinocchio and Fantasia.-Events:*February 7 - Walt Disney's animated film Pinocchio is released....

 British drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Ray Boulting and starring Wilfrid Lawson

Wilfrid Lawson (actor)

Wilfrid Lawson was a British character actor of stage and screen.-Life and career:...

, Nova Pilbeam

Nova Pilbeam

Nova Margery Pilbeam is a British film and stage actress. She was born in Wimbledon. Her father was RADA-trained actor Arnold Pilbeam.-Career:Pilbeam had widely noted roles as a child stage actress...

, Seymour Hicks

Seymour Hicks

Sir Arthur Seymour Hicks , better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, screenwriter, theatre manager and producer. He married the actress Ellaline Terriss in 1893...

, among others. The film is based on the play of the same title by German author Ernst Toller

Ernst Toller

Ernst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.- Biography :...

 who had lived as an emigrant in the United States until his suicide in 1939.

Plot

The film was based on the true story of a pastor who was sent to Dachau concentration camp for criticizing the Nazi Party. In the 1930s, a small German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 village is taken over by a platoon of stormtroopers

Sturmabteilung

The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...

 loyal to Hitler. The SS go about teaching and enforcing 'The New Order' but the pastor, a kind and gentle man, will not be intimidated. While some villagers join the Nazi Party avidly so and just go along with things, hoping for a quiet life, the pastor takes his convictions to the pulpit. Because of his criticism of the Nazis, the pastor is sent to Dachau concentration camp.