Rescuers: Stories of Courage -- Two Women

This fact-based diptych about two Gentiles who dedicated themselves to saving Jews during World War II was exec-produced by Barbra Streisand and directed by Peter Bogdanovich — but unlike some of their individual projects, Showtime drama The Rescuers is suffused with an engaging humility. As a Polish governess who rears her late employers' child amid the Nazi threat in Vilna, Perkins conveys determination without lapsing into self-consciousness. Ward, in a more constrained but equally convincing performance, is a Frenchwoman who begins her Resistance career by typing her monsignor's protest letters and ends up hiding a Jewish family in her home. The stories are a hair's breadth from melodrama, but Bogdanovich allows the facts themselves to prove that these women, guided by their Catholic faith and their moral courage, were true war heroes. B+