Taking Sides (film)
Encyclopedia
Taking Sides is a 2001 German-French-Austrian-British co-production starring Harvey Keitel
and Stellan Skarsgård
set during the period of denazification
investigations conducted in post-war Germany after the Second World War. The film, which was directed by Hungarian director István Szabó
, is based on the real interrogations that took place between an U.S. Army investigator and the musical conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler
who had been charged with serving the Nazi regime. It is based on the play of the same title
by Ronald Harwood
.
The film was shot on location in Germany
with the dialogue in German and English, although in the version released in the US and the UK, everyone speaks English.
) is conducting Beethoven's 5th Symphony when yet another Allied bomb raid stops the performance. A minister in Hitler's government comes to Furtwängler's dressing room to advise him that he should go abroad, and escape the war. The film then jumps to some time after the Allied victory, and we see US General Wallace (R. Lee Ermey
) task Major Steve Arnold (Harvey Keitel
) with "getting" Furtwängler at his denazification hearing: "Find Wilhelm Furtwängler guilty. He represents everything that was rotten in Germany".
Arnold gets an office with Lt. David Wills (Moritz Bleibtreu
), an American Jew, and Emmaline Straube (Birgit Minichmayr
), daughter of an executed member of the German resistance
. Arnold questions several musicians, many of whom know Emmaline's father and say that Furtwängler refused to give Hitler the Nazi salute.
Arnold begins interrogating Furtwängler, asking why he didn't leave Germany in 1933 like so many other musicians? Why he played for Hitler's birthday? Why he played at a Nazi rally? And why his recording of Bruckner's 7th Symphony was used on the radio after Hitler's death? Arnold gets a second violinist to tell him about Furtwängler's womanizing and the conductor's professional jealousy of Herbert von Karajan
.
In a sub plot, Arnold is assisted by a young Jewish lieutenant from the Big Red One. The young officer begins to have sympathy for the conductor as well as for the young German girl who works as a clerk in their office. This causes friction between Arnold and his job investigating former suspected Nazis.
In a voice-over, Arnold explains that Furtwängler was exonerated at the later hearings but boasts his questioning "winged" him. The film closes with actual footage of the real Furtwängler shaking hands with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
after a concert. A close-up then shows the conductor surreptitiously wiping his hands with a cloth after touching the Nazi.
took power. He played at numerous concerts attended by Nazi officials. A recording of the Adagio of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony
was even played after the announcement of the death of Hitler. In 1945, he eventually went to Switzerland
after playing a concert in Vienna. These facts, compounded by circumstances of the denazification hearings, caused Furtwängler's case to be significantly delayed.
Furtwängler was specifically charged with supporting Nazism by remaining in Germany, performing at Nazi party functions and with making an anti-Semitic remark against the part-Jewish conductor Victor de Sabata
. He was eventually cleared on all these counts.
finds the movie "both interesting and unsatisfying. The Keitel performance is over the top, inviting us to side with Furtwängler simply because his interrogator is so vile. There are maddening lapses, as when Furtwängler's rescue of Jewish musicians is mentioned but never really made clear. But Skarsgård's performance is poignant; it has a kind of exhausted passivity, suggesting a man who once stood astride the world and now counts himself lucky to be insulted by the likes of Major Arnold."
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle
finds that the movie's promise to provide a balanced argument "goes unrealized, and all we're left with is the spectacle of an idiot bullying a genius. Harvey Keitel's performance as the smug, self-satisfied major is terribly miscalculated, unless he intended for us to loathe the spectacle of a small, stupid man glorying in his sudden power. That's possible. Stellan Skarsgård plays Furtwängler with an air of exhaustion that seems a generous attempt to justify the script's weakness, that the conductor doesn't defend himself vigorously enough. Of the two men, it's the major who acts more like a Nazi."
Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...
and Stellan Skarsgård
Stellan Skarsgård
Stellan John Skarsgård is a Swedish actor, known internationally for his film roles in Angels & Demons, Breaking the Waves, The Hunt for Red October, Ronin, Good Will Hunting, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist,...
set during the period of denazification
Denazification
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering...
investigations conducted in post-war Germany after the Second World War. The film, which was directed by Hungarian director István Szabó
István Szabó
István Szabó is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, and opera director.Szabó is the most internationally famous Hungarian filmmaker since the late 1960s. Working in the tradition of European, auteurist art cinema, he has made films that represent many of the psychological and political...
, is based on the real interrogations that took place between an U.S. Army investigator and the musical conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...
who had been charged with serving the Nazi regime. It is based on the play of the same title
Taking Sides (play)
Taking Sides is a 1995 play by British playwright Ronald Harwood, about the post-War U.S. denazification investigation of the German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler on charges of having served the Nazi regime. Harwood drew inter alia on a detailed diary kept by Furtwängler of his...
by Ronald Harwood
Ronald Harwood
Sir Ronald Harwood CBE is an author, playwright and screenwriter. He is most noted for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay...
.
The film was shot on location in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
with the dialogue in German and English, although in the version released in the US and the UK, everyone speaks English.
Plot
The film opens at the end of World War II in Berlin. Wilhelm Furtwängler (Stellan SkarsgårdStellan Skarsgård
Stellan John Skarsgård is a Swedish actor, known internationally for his film roles in Angels & Demons, Breaking the Waves, The Hunt for Red October, Ronin, Good Will Hunting, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist,...
) is conducting Beethoven's 5th Symphony when yet another Allied bomb raid stops the performance. A minister in Hitler's government comes to Furtwängler's dressing room to advise him that he should go abroad, and escape the war. The film then jumps to some time after the Allied victory, and we see US General Wallace (R. Lee Ermey
R. Lee Ermey
Ronald Lee Ermey is a retired United States Marine Corps drill instructor and actor.Ermey has often played the roles of authority figures, such as his breakout performance as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, Mayor Tilman in the Alan Parker film Mississippi Burning, Bill Bowerman in...
) task Major Steve Arnold (Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...
) with "getting" Furtwängler at his denazification hearing: "Find Wilhelm Furtwängler guilty. He represents everything that was rotten in Germany".
Arnold gets an office with Lt. David Wills (Moritz Bleibtreu
Moritz Bleibtreu
Moritz Bleibtreu is a German actor.Bleibtreu was born in Munich, the son of actors Monica Bleibtreu and Hans Brenner, and the great-grand-nephew of the actress Hedwig Bleibtreu.Bleibtreu grew up in Hamburg...
), an American Jew, and Emmaline Straube (Birgit Minichmayr
Birgit Minichmayr
Birgit Minichmayr is an Austrian actress and singer born in Linz, Austria. Birgit Minichmayr studied drama at the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna.-Career:...
), daughter of an executed member of the German resistance
German Resistance
The German resistance was the opposition by individuals and groups in Germany to Adolf Hitler or the National Socialist regime between 1933 and 1945. Some of these engaged in active plans to remove Adolf Hitler from power and overthrow his regime...
. Arnold questions several musicians, many of whom know Emmaline's father and say that Furtwängler refused to give Hitler the Nazi salute.
Arnold begins interrogating Furtwängler, asking why he didn't leave Germany in 1933 like so many other musicians? Why he played for Hitler's birthday? Why he played at a Nazi rally? And why his recording of Bruckner's 7th Symphony was used on the radio after Hitler's death? Arnold gets a second violinist to tell him about Furtwängler's womanizing and the conductor's professional jealousy of Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
.
In a sub plot, Arnold is assisted by a young Jewish lieutenant from the Big Red One. The young officer begins to have sympathy for the conductor as well as for the young German girl who works as a clerk in their office. This causes friction between Arnold and his job investigating former suspected Nazis.
In a voice-over, Arnold explains that Furtwängler was exonerated at the later hearings but boasts his questioning "winged" him. The film closes with actual footage of the real Furtwängler shaking hands with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
after a concert. A close-up then shows the conductor surreptitiously wiping his hands with a cloth after touching the Nazi.
Cast
- Harvey KeitelHarvey KeitelHarvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...
... Major Steve Arnold - Stellan SkarsgårdStellan SkarsgårdStellan John Skarsgård is a Swedish actor, known internationally for his film roles in Angels & Demons, Breaking the Waves, The Hunt for Red October, Ronin, Good Will Hunting, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist,...
... Wilhelm FurtwänglerWilhelm FurtwänglerWilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained... - Moritz BleibtreuMoritz BleibtreuMoritz Bleibtreu is a German actor.Bleibtreu was born in Munich, the son of actors Monica Bleibtreu and Hans Brenner, and the great-grand-nephew of the actress Hedwig Bleibtreu.Bleibtreu grew up in Hamburg...
... Lieutenant David Wills - Birgit MinichmayrBirgit MinichmayrBirgit Minichmayr is an Austrian actress and singer born in Linz, Austria. Birgit Minichmayr studied drama at the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna.-Career:...
... Emmi Straube - Ulrich TukurUlrich TukurUlrich Tukur is a German actor and musician.-Biography:Tukur spent his youth near Hanover where he finished his final secondary-school examinations in 1977. He also achieved a high school degree in Boston during an exchange of students where he met his first wife, Amber Wood. With her, he had two...
... Helmut Alfred Rode, 2nd violinist - Oleg TabakovOleg TabakovOleg Pavlovich Tabakov is a Soviet and Russian actor and the artistic director of the Moscow Art Theatre.-Theatre career:...
... Colonel Dymshitz - Hanns Zischler ... Rudolf Otto Werner, oboist
- Armin Rohde ... Schlee, timpanist
- R. Lee ErmeyR. Lee ErmeyRonald Lee Ermey is a retired United States Marine Corps drill instructor and actor.Ermey has often played the roles of authority figures, such as his breakout performance as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, Mayor Tilman in the Alan Parker film Mississippi Burning, Bill Bowerman in...
... General Wallace
Historical basis
Even though many prominent contemporary German artists left, Furtwängler did not leave Germany in 1933 after Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
took power. He played at numerous concerts attended by Nazi officials. A recording of the Adagio of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony
Symphony No. 7 (Bruckner)
Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 in E major is one of his best-known symphonies. It was written between 1881 and 1883 and was revised in 1885. It is dedicated to Ludwig II of Bavaria. The premiere, given under Arthur Nikisch and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the opera house at Leipzig on 30...
was even played after the announcement of the death of Hitler. In 1945, he eventually went to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
after playing a concert in Vienna. These facts, compounded by circumstances of the denazification hearings, caused Furtwängler's case to be significantly delayed.
Furtwängler was specifically charged with supporting Nazism by remaining in Germany, performing at Nazi party functions and with making an anti-Semitic remark against the part-Jewish conductor Victor de Sabata
Victor de Sabata
Victor de Sabata was an Italian conductor and composer. He is widely recognized as one of the most distinguished operatic conductors of the twentieth century, especially for his Verdi, Puccini and Wagner. He is also acclaimed for his interpretations of orchestral music...
. He was eventually cleared on all these counts.
Reception
Roger EbertRoger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
finds the movie "both interesting and unsatisfying. The Keitel performance is over the top, inviting us to side with Furtwängler simply because his interrogator is so vile. There are maddening lapses, as when Furtwängler's rescue of Jewish musicians is mentioned but never really made clear. But Skarsgård's performance is poignant; it has a kind of exhausted passivity, suggesting a man who once stood astride the world and now counts himself lucky to be insulted by the likes of Major Arnold."
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
finds that the movie's promise to provide a balanced argument "goes unrealized, and all we're left with is the spectacle of an idiot bullying a genius. Harvey Keitel's performance as the smug, self-satisfied major is terribly miscalculated, unless he intended for us to loathe the spectacle of a small, stupid man glorying in his sudden power. That's possible. Stellan Skarsgård plays Furtwängler with an air of exhaustion that seems a generous attempt to justify the script's weakness, that the conductor doesn't defend himself vigorously enough. Of the two men, it's the major who acts more like a Nazi."