|  When
Gloomy Sunday (Ein Lied von Liebe und
Tod) begins,
a German enters a restaurant in Budapest with his
wife of fifty years, orders rouladen, admires a photograph
of a woman on display, and dies when a certain song
is played. Why does he go to that restaurant? Who
is the woman? Why does he die when the song is played?
To answer the mystery, the scene flashes back to
a time just before World War II. One of the two finest
restaurants in Budapest is run by László Szabó (played
by Joachim Król) with the charming assistance
of his beautiful mistress Ilona Varnai (played by
Erika Maroszán). Since American tourists expect
restaurants to have music, Szabó retains the
services of a pianist. When his pianist dies, he
seeks a replacement, various pianists audition, and
he hires an older man who plays sweetly. However,
András Aradi (played by Stefano Dionisi) arrives
an hour late for the audition, after the replacement
has been hired. Ilona notices something fascinating
about the handsome latecomer and prevails upon her
husband to hear him play; when he plays in a manner
deserving of applause, they agree to hire him instead.
Soon, it is Ilona's birthday. Various gifts are presented,
but Aradi's gift is a song that he composed for her,
entitled "Gloomy Sunday," which is so impressive
that Aradi ultimately receives a recording contract
from a Viennese music publisher. However, there is
a suicide the first time he plays the song, and several
others commit suicide after hearing the song. Of
course, the events of the Nazi rise to power in Central
Europe might easily have occasioned suicide, but
the press prefers to publicize the curse of the song,
which was actually composed in 1933 and was even
banned by BBC because of the supposed curse. One
of the regular patrons at the restaurant is Hans
Wieck (played by Ben Becker), who is enamored not
only of the song and the rouladen but also of Ilona,
to whom he proposes on his last night in town. When
she declines, he jumps into the Danube but is rescued
by Szabó while she is beginning a love affair
at Aradi's apartment. Wieck, nevertheless, returns
to Berlin and marries; but during the war he goes
back to Budapest as a colonel in the SS. In time,
he arranges to save some 1,000 Jews from the concentration
camps, but he accumulates Swiss francs and American
dollars for the privilege, hoping after Germany's
ultimate defeat to emerge as a rich man. Szabó is
Jewish, but Wieck promises to protect him from the
Final Solution, thus repaying him for saving his
life from the waters of the Danube, while retaining
his lust for Ilona. The Nazi presence, in any case,
is hardly benign for Hungary or for the prominent
characters in the film. In a flashforward, filmviewers
realize that the man who enters the restaurant at
the beginning of the movie is indeed Wieck. Whereas
the epilog of the story focuses on elderly Ilona
and Szabó, the haunting song plays over and
over again in the credits, including that of director
Rolf Schübel, who bases the somewhat old-fashioned
story on the novel by Nick Barkow. However, there
was indeed a Nazi named Kurt Becher who saved a number
of Jews from the gas chambers, so the German film
serves as a biopic of sorts, not unlike Schindler's
List (1993). MH
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Gloomy Sunday
by Nick Barkow
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