5.7.99 00:31:27
Entertaining tragedy

The Harmonists
***** (out of five)
Starring: Ben Becker, Ulrich Noethen, Meret Becker, Heino Ferch, Heinrich Schafmeister, Max Tidof, Kai Wiesinger, Katja Riemann. Producers: A Miramax Films release written by Klaus Richter, directed by Joseph Vilsmaier. In German with English subtitles. Rated: R, contains adult themes. Running time: 116 minutes.

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

In the late 1920s and early '30s when the German economy was in free-fall and Adolf Hitler's Nazis were on the rise, Germany was cheered by the glee-clubby sounds of a six-man group who called themselves the Comedian Harmonists.

Styling themselves after a popular American group called The Revellers, the five singers and one pianist hopped across Germany and the rest of Europe with springy songs that might include such silly phrases as ''Veronica, the asparagus is sprouting.''

Born out of desperation at a time when jobs were scarce, the Comedian Harmonists soon were on records and radio, were playing to sold-out audiences from Oslo to Paris and had their own groupies.

Albums of their songs can still be found in Europe, even though their melodious sounds were stilled on March 24, 1934, when they were forced to disband after a sold-out concert in Munich. It turned out that half the members were Jews. As a bureaucrat in the Reich Music Association coolly explains to them, ''Only Aryans are allowed in the Reich Culture Association and if you are not a member, you can't perform. It's that easy.'' Then he asks them to autograph one of their record jackets for his nephew.

Because of their widespread popularity -- even among some of the Nazi bigwigs -- the Comedian Harmonists performed longer than any other group that had Jewish members, but they had to accept fate and the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.

Their story is movingly told -- with some amusement, some sympathy and lots of romantic underpinnings -- in director Joseph Vilsmaier's wonderful The Harmonists.

With its emphasis on lush sets and period detail, The Harmonists recalls some of the musical biographies that were turned out regularly in the 1940s by MGM, right down to a montage sequence showing the group's swelling tide of success as they board trains and airplanes. Flashbulbs flare and a batch of their records dance across the screen.

Some of the performance shots are of the real Comedian Harmonists on stage before adoring throngs; their real voices are heard on the soundtrack with the actors lip-synching their tunes.

Yet unlike those old films, The Harmonists has a sharp edge. None of the musicians in those old MGM films had their careers cut short by outside political forces or were threatened with deportation to concentration camps.

Love triangle a human angle

To give the film a more human angle, writer Klaus Richter has given it a strong subplot revolving around a romantic triangle between the group's founders, Harry Frommermann (Ulrich Noethen) and Robert Biberti (Ben Becker) and a pretty student named Erna (Meret Becker, in real life Ben's sister) who works in a music store.

That tense competition between Harry and Robert over Erna, who loves them both in different ways, is compounded because the cool, shy, group-centered Harry is Jewish and the more tempestuous, outgoing Robert is not. It's never clear in this film, which is based on real life, how this romance will play out.

Harry toys with the idea of leaving Germany during a whirlwind trip to New York City where they play on board a U. S. Navy ship before an integrated (!) crew (one of the film's few mistakes; Germany wasn't the only country with race laws). However, Robert wants to return to Germany to care for his frail mother. As the Nazis turn German life upside down, the group is threatened by both inside and outside forces.

No Jews were spared

The film's point is that no one -- no matter if he had millions of adoring fans -- was spared if he was a Jew. The carefree Comedian Harmonists thought their immense popularity would make them immune. ''We bring in a lot of foreign currency,'' says one, with hope.

Seen as a sort of companion piece to the recent Oscar-winning documentary The Last Days, which looked at ordinary people trapped by Hitler's mad schemes, The Harmonists shows how everything in the Third Reich came down to a matter of race.

The Harmonists offers a daunting political message coupled with a breezy repertoire of goofy ditties and a stunning sense of its time and place.

The up and down romance between the three central characters is mirrored by other members of the group, too, including singer Roman Cycowski (Heino Ferch) who falls in love with a chorus girl (Katja Riemann) and persuades her to convert to Judaism, while the pianist Erwin Bootz (Kai Wiesinger) finds that his pro-Nazi sympathies are breaking up his marriage and endangering his ties to the group's three Jewish members.

This is a movie that mixes high-style entertainment with political issues and world events. It's a real rarity.

Back to top