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Wednesday November 26, 2003

Shoah love triangle a complex portrait of despair and defiance

by steven friedman
correspondent

Boy meets girl, yet girl is involved with another. So the boys share girl. If that’s not intriguing enough, another man professes his undying love for beautiful Ilona (Erika Maroszan). But this unlikely Budapest trio, plus one, copes with more than a tangled romance; they must cope with the dark clouds of the Holocaust.

Set in 1940s Hungary, Rolf Schubel’s “Gloomy Sunday,” from Nick Barkow’s best-selling novel of the same name, is a chilling period piece of love, friendship, betrayal and moral choices amid the horror of the Nazis. The melancholy song “Gloomy Sunday” infuses the melodramatic plot and provides the film with its leitmotif.

The film won two Bavarian film awards for best director and best cinematography, and played for more than 80 consecutive weeks at the same theater in Christchurch, New Zealand, a town with very few Jews.

Ilona, the alluring and vulnerable mistress of Lazlo Szabo (Joachim Krol), a prosperous businessman, begs him to hire a young, gifted and high-strung musician to play piano at Szabo’s restaurant. Andras Aradi (Stefano Dionisi) immediately falls under Ilona’s spell and becomes her lover with the tacit approval of Szabo, a Hungarian Jew. Ilona will not choose between them, so Aradi and Szabo agree to share her.

Aradi performs “Gloomy Sunday” in honor of Ilona, and inadvertently inspires German businessman Hans Wieck (Ben Becker) to propose to her before Wieck returns to Germany. Upon Ilona’s polite and demure rejection, Wieck jumps into the Danube but is rescued by Szabo.

Wieck vows to repay his debt of gratitude to Szabo in a scene that foretells the impending Nazi onslaught across much of Europe. Wieck says, “An eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth, I will do for you as you did for me,” to which Szabo replies, “But who would want a blind and toothless restaurant owner?” Wieck modifies himself and says, “No, it’s survival of the fittest.” Then Szabo opines, “No, animals behave like animals and people behave like people — at least they should.”

While the Nazis begin to ravage Europe, Aradi’s popular song also causes quite a stir throughout the world. Just weeks after the song’s radio premiere, more than 150 people have committed suicide while listening to “Gloomy Sunday.” This nearly throws Aradi into his own death spiral and he swears never to compose original music again.

The worldwide popularity of the actual song “Gloomy Sunday” did cause a spate of suicides in the 1930s by scores of mainly young Europeans distraught at the looming war and the inevitable atrocities. Two Hungarians, in fact, wrote the haunting melody in 1935. The BBC refused to air it, but “Gloomy Sunday” was popularized even more in the United States by Billie Holiday.

Three years pass and Wieck is back in Budapest as a Nazi high-commander. He is still in love with Ilona and indebted to Szabo, who sends his mistress to Wieck to protect his Jewish-owned restaurant. The increasingly edgy Aradi secretly follows Ilona to Nazi headquarters, now housed in the former mansion of a wealthy Jewish industrialist, and misinterprets Ilona’s meeting as evidence of a romantic relationship between his beloved and the German.

Aradi is not only despondent that Ilona won’t match his all-consuming passion and may be involved with the enemy; but also he is disconsolate as the Nazis overtake Hungary. Aradi’s expresses his inner turmoil with an inability to articulate the deeper meaning of his signature song.

Szabo, now no longer the freewheeling, bottom-line restaurateur, is the one who communicates the song’s significance to Ilona. He finally realizes that the Shoah is for real and says that given the choice of living and dying under Nazi cruelty, “Gloomy Sunday’s” message is that “every person has his dignity” and suicide may be the ultimate act of leaving this world with dignity intact.

At the same time, Szabo is literally fighting for the lives of Jews who are slated for transport to Auschwitz. Since Wieck has assured him of his safety, Szabo arranges for Wieck to remove Jews from the transport lists in exchange for gold, jewels and money that Wieck transfers back to Germany in coffins.

But then Szabo is arrested and delivered to the final transport to the death camps. What ensues is a fast-paced and wrenching conclusion filled with enough twists and disturbing emotional energy as Ilona races to save Szabo’s life.

“Gloomy Sunday,” in German with English subtitles, opens Dec. 5 at Lumiere Theatre, 1572 California St. at Polk, San Francisco; Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley; and Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael; and on Dec. 12 at Aquarius Theatre, 430 Emerson St., Palo Alto.

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