I just saw a great film about 1930s Budapest and the Holocaust, Gloomy Sunday.
Julane writes:
For one thing, the beginning and ending create and resolve a compelling mystery (most of the film is a flashback). For another, you may or may not believe that a song could drive people to suicide, but you must admit it is a beautiful, sad and haunting melody. The story held my interest, as did the characters. The other obvious appeal was the opportunity to gaze endlessly at the incredibly lovely and angelic Erika Marozsán. I am female and straight and I could not get enough of looking at her; I could easily believe that she might inspire a piece of music that conveyed its composer's hopeless longing for her.
According to the Los Angeles Times review of this film, "The song was actually composed in 1935 by Rezsö Seress, with lyrics by László Jávor, and did in fact accompany a number of suicides as Europe grew darker; Billie Holliday recorded a popular American version." So I guess it's not so far-fetched after all! Who knew?
Michael writes:
This atmospheric, deeply felt love story plays out in Budapest, 1935 to 1945, between a prologue and epilogue in our own day (1999). With the menage a trois the film has some of the giddiness of "Jules and Jim" but at the same time strongly recalls for me the novels of Alan Furth, set in the same period. I came across the film when I was researching the work of Joachim Krol (a secondary character in Tom Tykwer's Princess and the Warrior, and Inspector Brunetti in the four made-for-German-television movies based on Donna Leon's detective stories). As Laszlo, a businessman restauranteur/romantic with a generous heart, Krol again shows his vulnerability and sense of fatality. Erika Marozan is wonderfully attractive; one sees why the restaurant owner and the pianist both fall for her, as does Ben Becker as the German businessman (initially hapless and despairing, later, in uniform, with a confusion of feelings between tenderness and ruthless exploitation).
The German DVD of the film offers no subtitles (in any language), which is frustrating for a non-native speaker. Interviews with the actors and director are entertaining. Krol is just as thoughtful and sensitive as the character he plays. Both Erika Marozan (Hungarian) and Stefano Dionisi (Italian) speak in English; the contrast between their contemporary selves and the vivid, delicately shaded characters they play reminds us how well written and directed the film is. Among the extras on the DVD is a half hour program on the tune in the title -- "Gloomy Sunday." The program opens with a languid, despairing recording of the song by Billy Holiday, nothing short of electrifying. The tune is authentic; it was written in Budapest at that period and in fact it was associated with love suicides first in Budapest and then, later, abroad (a powerful plot element here and emphasized in a newsreel that the pianist-composer watches with profound unease). Hungarian authorities formally prohibited the playing of it for decades. (Sinead O'Connor is one of the more than 30 artists who have recorded it)
The characters linger in the mind and I puzzle at the plot elements. The contemporary epilogue, set in the same restaurant, deliberately recalls the flow of certain events of more than half a century earlier. There is a profoundly satisfying twist at the end that leads one to question, in retrospect, identities, relationships and outcomes both for the survivors and for those who perished.
