Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Phoenix - Christian Petzold


 I'm not sure how this film came onto my radar but I heard about it, or saw a trailer and thought it looked interesting. I added to my Netflix queue (yes, I still get physical discs from Netflix), and when I received it on blu-ray, I realized it is part of the Criterion Collection (spine 809).

Now, Criterion is known for putting out classic films, or important films in a beautiful way - restoration, lots of extras, gorgeous packaging, etc. A film from 2014 (less than ten years ago) is rare unless they feel it is an important film, or something is very special about it. After watching it, I can understand why it is part of that collection. 

The story is not much. War torn Berlin, streets full of rubble after the war is done, and a woman returns from the camps to look for her husband to ask if he turned her in. Simple, yet in the hands of Christian Petzold, Phoenix is a gorgeous film. Nina Hoss plays Nelly, a Jewish woman who survived the camps though she has to have reconstructive surgery on her face. It is never explained how much damage took place to require this surgery - in fact the film focuses on the current post-war situation, not the camps. It is not a Holocaust film like Schindler's list, or Anne Frank, etc. I feel that it lands a bit more in the Carol Reed list of post-war films - The Third Man, The Man Between, Last Train to Munich, etc. There is intrigue, and a mystery that keeps you involved but it isn't really about the WAR. In reading about the film there was mention of Douglas Sirk. I am a big fan of Sirk and initially I didn't think of him while watching Phoenix. Most of his films are dramatic, well actually melodramatic. Lots of big dramatic scenes, break-ups, etc. Sirk also is very colorful, technicolor actually. Phoenix is much more subtle yet in a similar way to Sirk, it explores a relationship. 

Back to the story - Nelly (played by Nina Hoss) is looking for Johnny (played by Ronald Zehrfeld) Berlin. Before the war, Johnny played piano while Nelly sang in clubs and cabarets. Nelly is told to look in the American sector and she comes to a club named Phoenix. I won't say more about the plot, except that the song Speak Low by Kurt Weill is important to Nelly. During the film I kept wondering about that because Speak Low was written for a Broadway show which would have been once Weill had made it to the US - which he did just before the war? during the war? I was wondering about the timeline of it all and not surprisingly it is accurate. Speak Low came out in 1943, with Guy Lombardo's hit single in 1944... the film takes place in 1945. Also in doing research for this post, I read that the film is somewhat based on the novel "Return from the Ashes" by French author Hubert Monteilhet.

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