September Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: WHAT OUR FATHERS DID: A NAZI LEGACY -- two Nazi sons and a Jew burdened by history

The writer and co-producer of this odd holocaust film, available now on DVD and via Netflix streaming, is a most accomplished fellow -- Philippe Sands, international human rights lawyer, law professor, prolific author, the latest work of which is: East West Street: On the origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.

Published in May 2016 to a torrent of praise (press title, above, for review) it contains the material that led to our film plus the stories of two Nuremberg prosecutors whose work created the basis for the prosecution of war criminals.

The film itself,  WHAT OUR FATHERS DID: A NAZI LEGACY (2015), has won top prizes at several film festivals and a British film award. It is thus with ambivalence that I quarrel with it because Sands's body of work is completely admirable and the film is engrossing and thought-provoking.

Directed by Sands's friend, David Evans (of Downton Abbey, above), it begins as the story of Niklas Frank and Horst von Wachter, whose two highly placed Nazi fathers, Hans Frank and Otto von Wachter, executed the entire Jewish population under their jurisdiction in Poland and Ukraine. The film morphs into a warm yet toxic relationship among the three men -- Wachter, Sands, Frank (l - r, below).

The viewer goes along as the world and crimes of the two fathers are revealed until the viewer begins to feel unwillingly drawn into the relentless, emotional "right-fight" (I'm entirely right; you're entirely wrong) that escalates pitting Sands and Niklas against Horst. (One columnist wrote that the film should have been titled "Making Horst Crack".)

Sands is painfully connected to his subjects: his paternal grandfather was the sole survivor of a family of 80 Jews from western Ukraine murdered by the two senior Nazis. Hans Frank was Hitler's personal lawyer and appointed governor of occupied Poland; he turned it into a killing field. Frank's mandates were carried out by Otto von Wachter -- an Austrian lawyer who served as civil administrator of Krakow and Galicia (Ukraine). (Below, front row, Frank, l, with Hitler.)

We learn through Sands's interviews with each son (both born in 1939 and now nearing 80) that Hans Frank and his wife were cold, estranged parents. Niklas learned kindness from his nurse; he matured clear-eyed about the crimes of his father having already been primed by the indifference of both parents. He described his father once as 'a slime-hole of a Hitler fanatic' ; his book, Der Vater (1987) was a controversial bestseller in Germany -- said to have been the first time a child of a high-ranking Nazi broke the silence of Nazi descendants.

Horst, on the other hand, grew up in a loving family (above). "I know that the whole system was criminal and that he was part of it, but I don't think he was criminal....." he says. Horst claims his father believed and even told Hitler that his racial policies could not endure. Otto's views appeared to have concerned his superiors enough for Heinrich Himmler to have offered him the option to change posts; dutiful Otto stayed on the job and carried out Hans Frank's extermination directive. Hans was executed following the Nuremberg trials. Otto fled, taking refuge in the Vatican and dying of illness at 49 while under its protection.

At the overgrown killing field where his relatives were executed and their bones remain (above), Sands confronts Horst with his father's 1942 signed paperwork and continues to press Horst to admit his father's guilt. Niklas joins in and all three grow obstinate. Frank and von Wachter both had command authority over the mass murder but Horst remains mealy-mouthed -- his father was not evil. Niklas declares that Horst is a Nazi at heart and renounces their friendship from childhood (below, an almost proud Niklas with photo of his executed father).

The film reveals that Horst chose not to follow the professional path for which he was groomed. Refusing to go to law school, he found employment as an assistant to a Jewish artist, assuaging his soul, at least, that his daily life served as protest against anti-Semitism. Horst retains an empathic view of Judiasm but no matter the evidence, cannot bring himself to condemn his father.

It's too easy to condemn Horst for being in denial of his father's guilt and to applaud Niklas's clarity about his father's crimes -- it means none of the familial ties or the environmental conditioning have been factored in, such as the coldness of the Franks that led a son to hate a father nor the relent-less pressure of conformity by the Nazi culture that carried Otto in its tide.

The mindset that was to govern Germany originated in a Prussian Calvinism practiced by Wilhelm I (1797-1888) King of Prussia, ('the soldier king,' with his wife Augusta, at right), the first German head of state of a united Germany (Prussia was a territory/ kingdom that combined with others to form the German empire). "Soldatic virtues" included duty, discipline, subordination, loyalty. Prussian men were instilled with a range of strictures that were to infiltrate the character of a united Germany. And when Hitler came to power in 1933, education and public opinion were commandeered entirely; the force of Nazism suppressed or replaced the individuality, empathy, and objectivity required for public opposition.

In a recent interview with the aged (105) secretary of Joseph Geobbels, Brunhilde Pomsel, she describes herself as a product of Prussian discipline and sense of duty: "... After the rise of the Nazi party, the whole country was as if under a kind of spell...the idealism of youth might easily have led to you having your neck broken." In effect, for an individual to oppose Nazism went against the human instinct to seek safety and protection in the prevailing wind. Humans bond together for survival.

Philippe Sands, his family having been murdered by the two fathers, is an understandably emotionally-fraught narrator as he presses Horst, the troubled, guilt-ridden older man, to 'crack' -- not Sands's finest moment. Oddly, at least one virtue of this film is in its revelation of myopia that freezes belief like a dragonfly fixed in amber.

The above post was written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman.

Sunday Corner with Lee Liberman: Foyle's War -- our war from across the pond

You may have watched some of this British series (2002-2015) on PBS filled with absorbing stories and British acting elite. But a serial watch on Netflix of all 28 feature-length episodes is better. Taken as a whole it feels like 3-D immersion into World War II years (later of the post-war and early Cold War) in bucolic Hastings by the sea, while combat rages in Europe.

Every chapter of FOYLE's WAR has an intriguing mystery, several layered story-lines, believable conversation, and memorable imagery. At end you've grown completely fond of the exacting, self-effacing Chief Inspector Christopher Foyle (accomplished actor Michael Kitchen), his plucky, quirky, entrepreneurial assistant Sam (Samantha) Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks), and their mate, Sergeant Paul Milner, home from defeat at Trondheim missing half a leg, to help Foyle solve crimes (Anthony Howell).

Foyle has an RAF pilot son, Andrew, played by charming Julian Ovenden, below, left (Lady Mary Crawley's suitor, Charles Blake, in Downton Abbey). Ovenden left the scene before Andrew and Sam had progressed beyond 'will they, won't they', but several RAF-related stories unfold first. In one, a pilot who loves Andrew conceals his homosexuality and pays with his life; in another, an airforce officer (Roger Allam) resorts to crime to cover up sexual abuse of a young subordinate. But Andrew doesn't leave the scene before we share his flying experiences testing radar technology and experiencing "battle fatigue."

Our affection for the main characters is maintained by side-trips into their private lives and vicarious participation with Foyle in the moral choices he must make in each case -- he is the foil of wrong-doing, the moral center, our better selves. There's satisfaction also in the body of work as a whole -- the circumstances of war are so deeply, accurately embedded in the story lines that one absorbs history by osmosis, aided by many guest stars such as below (l to r) a youthful Rosamund Pike, David Tennant, and Emily Blunt from early episodes.

The stories begin in 1940 with pro-fascist, anti-Semitic views rife in the British upper classes and general hostility brewing as refugees pour into England to escape the Nazi's. The authorities are detaining enemy aliens and the public is griping about foreigners. In tracking down the killer of 'the German Woman', Foyle discovers that his superior (Edward Fox) had previously pulled strings enabling his judge colleague's German wife to avoid internment as an enemy alien. Meanwhile, a renown Jewish musician is locked up for shamefully trivial reasons.

Another episode is led by Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) as Guy Spencer, self-styled British patriot, who whips public opinion and schmoozes pro-Nazi political elites. Spencer is relishing his glorious future under the Nazi's; Foyle needs to take him down without violating his right to free speech -- fortunately there's treason.

And onward, episode by episode, to the abuse of conscientious objectors (and anyone with a whif of socialist leanings), food shortages and other privations. Land girls tend the fields and kids collect trash (a chop bone yields enough glycerine to make cordite for two cartridges). Random bombs fall on Hastings and secret installations are multiplying. One hides the building of coffins; another conceals anthrax experiments. A Hastings murder leads Foyle to the secret SOE -- Special Operations Executive, MI5's branch of 'secret ops and dirty tricks' and (below) agent Hilda Pierce (Ellie Haddington), a spinster of complexity.

We meet English tycoon, Sir Reginald Walker, doing illegal business with the Germans. Sir Reginald's son Simon has built himself a Nazi shrine in the basement of the family estate where he meditates on German greatness. Below, Laurence Fox (nephew of Edward Fox, episode 1) has a juicier part in Simon than ever he did as the sidekick of Inspector Lewis.

After Pearl Harbor, American troop arrivals upset Hastings. A landowner has his acreage paved over for an American air base. The Yanks are paid more and they eat more. Racism against black soldiers creates incidents and Yanks impregnate local girls. One episode features Charlotte Riley as a young mother dying to emigrate to America with her baby's black father and maliciously blocked by red tape and violence.

At last, VE day, but not all flags and balloons; folks are exhausted, poor, and lives have to be rebooted. Now come the post-war stories. One is the repatriation of prisoners of war, except that our wartime ally Stalin has revenge in mind. Returning Russian POW's who had fought with the Germans are massacred fresh off the Ship Almanzora in Odessa -- a famously open secret. Foyle, assigned to recover a Russian escapee, finds that the Russians do not want to leave. And he doesn't want to see them murdered off the boat in Russia either.

Special mention goes to Andrew Scott (below, who also plays Moriarty in Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock), for his moving portrayal of a soldier who as a boy saw his aristocrat father murder his mother. Aiming to des-troy his father's reputation, he faces hanging, refusing to defend himself against false charges. (Hints are that Foyle himself may be his real father.)

The last season finds Foyle induced into working for MI5 in London where the mood and color of espionage is gray. I agree with creator Anthony Horowitz who says this may be some of his best work especially 'Elise', the very powerful final episode, in which MI5 contributed to the deaths of many agents dropped into France. The testing of the atomic bomb in New Mexico is recreated and Cold War engaged, and Sam gets a life of her own. Now the question is will prolific mystery maker Anthony Horowitz and his endearing policeman Christopher Foyle be coaxed back for more? Will Foyle's War ever be recognized here for the exceptional work it is?

Anthony Horowitz (shown above, right, with Prince Charles) is also the author/adapter of Agatha Christie's Poirot in the 1990's and early Midsomer Murders; he was commissioned by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to pen Sherlock Holmes novels (The House of Silk and Moriarty) and to add to the Ian Fleming list of Bond novels with Trigger Mortis. He has many screenplays to his credit and has made himself a national treasure with all, as is now Michael Kitchen's Christopher Foyle, himself.

Click HERE for Anthony Horowitz's excellent discussion of the making of the last series, which I think can be taken to mean that he's got more Foyle in him before he quits.

The above post is written by TrustMovies' 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

Josh Aronson's doc ORCHESTRA OF EXILES blends music, WWII, heroics and Holocaust

Chalk up another -- and new to me -- hero in the fight against the Nazis in the years leading up to World War II, one whose weapon was music, as made by some of the world's greatest musicians: Bronislaw Huberman (1882-1947). Huberman, evidently one of the world's great violin-ists, was a child pro-digy, who, as he grew, took Europe and then much of the western world by storm, selling out concerts wherever he played.

According to this documentary, ORCHESTRA OF EXILES, written and directed by Josh Aronson, an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker for his 2000 documentary Sound and Fury, Huberman was much more than a great violinist. He was a patriot of the yet-to-be-created state of Israel and an anti-Nazi who rescued up to a thousand Jews (who probably would not have survivied the coming Holocaust), as he planned and then created the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra. (Mr. Aronson is shown above with a young actor from one of the many recreated segments of his movie.)

Unfortunately, it is these recreated dramatizations that turn Aronson's film, which is from time to time quite interesting, into a sorry mish-mash of style and content. Utterly unnecessary, these "scenes" (one of which is shown below), shot in hi-def and color that jolts the viewers out of of the black-and-white ambience of the 1930s time period (shown above), simply raise a red flag that screams "fake!" every time they appear -- which is way too often throughout.

Clearly these are actors who (especially the one chosen to represent Huberman), look little like their historical counterparts, and so simply call further attention to the bad mix. Dramatically, these small sections also suck. They feel like padding (they most likely are) to make the movie into something full-length, and when set against the history told us and the generally excellent archival photos shown us, they seem silly and intrusive. In the most ridiculous of these scenes, we're told the story of a young musician saved by the music academy's janitor from the clutches of a group of Nazi youth by being locked in a bathroom. To accompany this tale, we get visuals -- again in high-def color -- of a line of bathroom stalls and a door handle turning momentously. Yikes!

Yet the story of Huberman (above) is a worthy one, and the talking heads assembled -- ranging from Zubin Mehta to Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Joshua Bell -- are impressive. Bell's particular connection to Huberman is especially tantalizing (though not as interesting as the Wikipedia entry on this same subject).

One of the things the movie manages to remind us of is that the Jews of 1930s Germany and elsewhere in Europe should not be blamed for not knowing, or being able to figure out, their future. They assumed that, as bad as things might get, these Nazis were not a permanent fixture (they were right about that) and that somehow they would, as ever, survive these bad times, just as they had so many others. Most of them did not. But would we middle-aged and beyond citizens act much differently, if we found ourselves in similar circumstances today? I doubt it. Look now at how we behave as, little by little, our rights disappear under the current umbrella of the wealthy/corporate/government collusion.

TrustMovies is happy to have seen this documentary --  he learned something from it -- but he certainly wishes it were better con-ceived and executed. Orchestra of Exiles, from First Run Features and running 85 minutes, opens this Friday, October 26, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, with a limited nationwide run to follow.

Note: The release of ORCHESTRA OF EXILES comes as, in October 2012, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra travels to the United States to perform in New York, Palm Desert, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Presented by American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, benefits at Carnegie Hall in New York City (October 25) and at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (October 30) highlight the Israel Philharmonic's 28th tour of the United States. (Click here for more information.)

Tinto's brassy SALON KITTY (1976) brings some awfully naughty Nazis to Blu-ray

What in the world? Trust-Movies had heard about SALON KITTY off and on for more than three decades since its release in 1976. Riding the wave of Radley Metzger soft-core and Gerard Damiano hard-core, Italian impresario/
would-be history buff/sexcapade connoisseur Tinto Brass came up with the marketable notion of combining the sex and decadence of Visconti's The Damned (including two of its stars, Ingrid Thulin and Helmut Berger) with the based-on-fact tale of a brothel catering to important Nazi military men that simultaneously recorded their most debauched activities, while assessing the level of their fidelity to the Führer.

To this end, the brothel must be stocked with the cream of the Aryan crop -- ladies who were both gorgeous and loyal to National Socialism. In what is definitely Signore Brass' (shown at right) finest moment, the recruitment and training of these young ladies are shown to us in the kind of full-bodied (and then some!) attention-to-detail that might be described as eye-opening and shocking -- if it weren't so damned funny. Not simply full of full-frontal (and this goes for both the gals and the guys), the movie's private parts are often played with, decorated and -- in my favorite moment -- used a bulls-eye by a randy Reich marksman.

The young ladies first appear to us in military uniform (above) looking exceedingly daunting. And then, uh, out of uniform, below.

Soon they are introduced to the cream of the SS, who, when called upon to serve their country in an unusual new manner (below) are more than willing to strip --

and, as it were, engage....

Up to this point, what we've seen is simply raunchy, randy, rather silly fun.  But then our young ladies must be trained to service every possible type of desire, and at this point things take a decidedly more unusual turn.

In these short scenes, I think, the movie reaches its pinnacle and nadir simultaneously -- jolting us beyond mere titillation and turn-on into something that touches the profoundly trangressive because it combines things we don't often see, let alone think about, in the same frame.

All this takes place within the first half hour or so of the movie, and once the brothel has been set up -- Mr Berger (above, in Nazi drag) plays as the officer in charge and Ms Thulin the madam -- the film wanders into more typical  territory, with the young whore we get to know best (Teresa Ann Savoy, above, with Berger, and below) falling in love with a military man (Bekim Fehmiu, below, right) who's had second thoughts about Socialism, Nazi-style.

Did I mention that the movie offer a collection of musical numbers, too? Yes, with Ms Thulin (below) singing her heart out in English -- or perhaps she's been dubbed. Here, Brass filches from Fosse's Cabaret, but the numbers at least make for interesting filler.

Overall, Salon Kitty is an original, all right, but this is not necessarily a recommendation. A crazy combo of cunts (natural, shaved and decorated), cocks (mostly flacid, just like the storytelling, but a few at half-mast or higher) and cabaret, the movie moves too soon from stupidly bold and bizarre to simply soap opera.

For Berger fans, however, the film offers a nice surprise: Throughout the actor has been dressed to the teeth (mostly in Nazi-themed black leather) while around him clothes are coming off like crazy and bodies writhing to beat the band. Finally at the finale, the actor gets his moment in the sun (in the steam room, actually), and, yes, he's a sight to behold.

Salon Kitty is available now, for rental or purchase, on DVD and Blu-ray -- and the transfer for the latter is a damned good one: crisp, rich and bright with gorgeous colors and decent enough sound quality.  Oddly, Netflix doesn't stock the Blu-ray edition, only the DVD, so for Blu-ray, you'll have to go to GreenCine for rental, and for sale, to the film's distributor Blue Underground. (Blockbuster appears to stock the movie, and in Blu-ray, too, but when you click "Get It", you discover that you can't -- a typically annoying Blockbuster move.)