Gloomy Sunday
by Rolf Schubel
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DVD details
Actor: Ben Becker, Erika Marozsan, Joachim Krol, Stefano DionisiDirector: Rolf Schubel
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 114 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2010-04-06
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Gloomy Sunday
DVD Review: A triangle of love in the time of the Nazis
Summary: 5 Stars
[Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.]
Beware of spoilers.
This is the kind of movie that brings to us a deep and abiding sadness that ultimately results in what the Greek tragedians called catharsis. Set in Budapest just before and during World War II we see the tragedy that engulfed Europe played out in a triangle of love involving a Jewish restaurateur, Laszlo (Joachim Krol), a brilliant young pianist, Andras (Stefano Dionisi), and a beautiful waitress Ilone (Ericka Marozsan). That triangle is besieged by an outsider who is the antithesis of all that love should be. He is Hans Wieck (BenBecker), a German Nazi.
Ericka Marozsan who plays the waitress Ilone is strikingly beautiful and sweetly and irresistibly charming as she must be since the two men agree to share her. They can't help themselves and in differing ways she loves them both. Whom she doesn't love is Hans Wieck.
Like so many movies set during this most shameful time for Europe and much of humankind in general, there is something close to an idyllic scene before the deluge, and then it all come apart in the most horrific way, with the cattle cars and the mindless brutality of genocide and war. And yet there were those who endured, signified in the movie as Ilone puts it, "après le deluge, nous"(which is a play on the words of France's Louis XV who supposed said in the face of revolution, " après moi, le deluge," meaning after they kill me, the flood.
(This is an almost totally irrelevant aside, but as I looked up the Louis XV quote I ran across a surprising but strangely apt usage of the phrase by Roger Bannister, the first person to break the four minute barrier in the mile race. He is quoted as saying "après moi, le deluge," meaning in his case, "after I break four minute mile barrier, there will be many others." He was right.)
The plot revolves around a song "Gloomy Sunday," composed by the piano player. The song is sadly beautiful and for some people the effect is so intense that they kill themselves.
Now to a kind of explication of the story from the point of view of who got what and what the moral or existential lesson of the movie might be.
The film begins in the present. We see a maitre d' of a restaurant in Budapest--or perhaps he is the owner--awaiting an important party that will dine at his restaurant. They arrive. They are German. They dine. The song is played and the important man who had been there many years before during the war falls dead. We don't know it but he is the last victim of the song, and he is the ex-Nazi Hans, now a very successful business man. The maitre d' is the son of the beautiful waitress. But we don't know that yet. This is the kind of film that, when it is over, you will want to go back and see the initial scene again. When you do you will realize that it wasn't the song that killed him. The only way most people will realize that is to see the opening scene again. If you missed it, don't feel bad. I didn't even get it completely until just few moments ago.
Who got what? The evil Nazi who betrayed a friend and forced himself upon a woman he supposed loved and then betrayed her, became rich, successful and lived into his eighties. The brilliant composer died by his own hand ironically with the gun of the Nazi oppressor. The Jewish restaurateur, who is a wise and deeply loving man, is sent away on a cattle car and is never heard from again. Ilone is given the restaurant and bears a son. There is some ambiguity about who the father might be. He could be any of the three men. Since the way the scenes are ordered forcing us to see her pregnant at the grave of the young composer, yet only after she has been forced into intercourse by the Nazi, we are uncertain. The cinematic timing would suggest Hans, but what she says to the grave of the composer suggests the child is his. However when we see in retrospect (in the first scene of the movie) the man identified as her son (the maitre d') it is clear that the restaurateur is the father.
So who triumphs? Nobody of course. The seduction of Europe by fascism was a great tragedy for Europe. Ilone survives and the restaurateur survives in the person of his son. Again what is the message? And I think the answer is, there is no message, there is no contrived or ordered moral to the story. There are only the blunt and mindless facts of what happened to these people and to Europe leading to a sense of the melancholy mystery of life for which we have no answer.
Ericka Marozsan is my new true love. She is talented, captivating, sensuous, smooth and very winning. She is a bit too beautiful for these old eyes to bear. It is funny that I had never seen her before, but she plays mostly in Hungarian productions.
Description of Gloomy Sunday
GLOOMY SUNDAY - DVD MovieThe magic of music, the power of love, the evils of money, and the horror of genocide are the weighty themes tackled in Gloomy Sunday, a moving German-Hungarian film from director/co-writer Rolf Schubel. Released theatrically in 1999, it's said to have been "inspired by actual events," and it is true that the title song, written in the '30s by Rezso Seress (with Hungarian lyrics by Laszlo Javor), was a worldwide hit in its day; it's also a fact that the song has since been covered dozens of times, by artists ranging from Billie Holiday to Bjork and Elvis Costello. As for the suggestion that "Gloomy Sunday" was banned after being connected to multiple suicides, including the composer's, that's a bit more dicey. In any case, it plays a pivotal role in the love story set in Budapest during the ascension of the Third Reich and the onset of the Holocaust. Restaurant owner Laszlo (Joachim Krol) is in love with Ilona, his hostess (Erika Marozsán), a dark-eyed beauty who plays men as easily as Horowitz plays "Chopsticks"; she loves him as well, but that doesn't mean she won't welcome Andras (Stefano Dionisi), the restaurant's new piano player, into her bed as well. Everyone seems to handle that with admirable equanimity, at least until the young German Hans (Ben Becker) inserts himself into the scene. Having been rejected by Ilona, Hans throws himself into the Danube, only to be rescued by Laszlo; when he assures his savior that "We'll meet again," we know that's not necessarily a good thing. Indeed, when Hans returns to Budapest, he's a Nazi colonel. Things get hairy in a hurry after that: Laszlo is Jewish, Ilona still doesn't want Hans, and we're left to discover if the German officer is either another Oskar Schindler or a heartlessly venal criminal loyal only to himself. All of this is played out against the backdrop of a lovely city, with costumes, art direction, and a palette of rich, warm colors creating a convincing period feel. The DVD has no bonus features, but a cursory search of the 'net will turn up multiple versions of the title tune, a sweet but melancholy melody that sounds, as one character puts it, "as if someone were saying something you don't want to hear" but know to be true. --Sam Graham
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