DECEMBER 28, 2024 – Late yesterday evening I stumbled across an extraordinary film, which I highly recommend to my readers. First are four things to know about it:
FIRST: It’s among the sub-genre of World War II movies that doesn’t depict weapons of war (e.g. The Edge of War; The Wannsee Conference (see 12/26/22 post); Darkest Hour (see yesterday’s post)). Like The Wannsee Conference, which was filmed almost entirely inside a single room of the villa Am Großen Wannsee in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, the main setting of Taking Sides is inside a spacious office on the second floor of the damaged (former) Nazi Ministry of Culture in the American Sector of Berlin in late 1945.
SECOND: Classical music plays a central and sophisticated role in the film. If you’re a music-lover, this feature alone—so rare in movies—will captivate your attention. But to appreciate the film, there is absolutely no need to care one whit about classical music. All that’s required is the basic knowledge that art plays a significant role in the make-up of national culture.
THIRD: The film has only five main characters – U.S. Army Major Steve Arnold (Harvey Keitel), an investigator in the post-war de-Nazification efforts; Lt. David Willis (Moritz Bleibtreu), an assistant in Arnold’s office; and Fraulein Straube (Birgit Munichmayr), Arnold’s secretary; and Wilhelm Furtwängler, one of the most famous conductors of the 20th century and director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922 to 1945 and again from 1952 until his death in 1954. Looming over these characters throughout the film is the Titan himself—Ludwig Van Beethoven—plus, to my surprise and delight (see 10/4 and 10/9/24 posts), a brief but significant appearance by the Austrian symphonist, Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)[1].
FOURTH: The casting, acting, directing, and most critically, the script, are “five out of five stars.” I guarantee that this thought-provoking film will compel considerable soul-searching long after the credits roll.
* * *
Again, an interest in classical music isn’t necessary to become engrossed in Taking Sides—nor, for that matter, is an interest in or knowledge of World War II beyond the historical fact of the Holocaust. From the broadest perspective, the film analyzes the moral and ethical dangers in trade-offs between principles and payoffs. The context of the film is accommodation of the Nazi regime in exchange for . . . a whole raft of direct and indirect benefits justified by all sorts of reasons and rationalizations. Giving an accused Nazi sympathizer the benefit of the doubt—that accommodation wasn’t the result of acceptance or active support—doesn’t obviate the charge that accommodation was the moral equivalent of acceptance and validation, and thus, the basis for moral indictment.
Self-justification (one’s own survival; protection of family; the ability to “fight another day”) in the face of the Nazis or any other repressive regime creates the most searing moral dilemma, but whether we recognize it or not, we encounter similar challenges, albeit to lesser degrees of magnitude, throughout our lives. Joining the crowd in its humiliation of a fellow student in school; not speaking up at a work meeting when someone is unjustly criticized; justifying one’s support of a political candidate because of a policy position adopted by the candidate, even though his overall character is patently unbecoming of a leader; or withholding condemnation of a party leader, knowing that anything other than sycophancy will undermine the member’s standing within his party.
Or, to throw a monkey wrench into the discussion, accommodating god-awful oppressors in one context to save their potential victims in another . . .
Or even more extreme, to make the case that in opposing evil no soldier, no citizen should be allowed to run or surrender, ever, no matter what. In resisting evil as horrific as the Holocaust, the moral person has but two choices: be killed by the agents of evil or by one’s own hand.
To understand the impact that Taking Sides had on me, you must bear in mind the role of music in my life: it was everything to my parents, sisters, and paternal grandfather (the violinist who played in the pit in silent movie houses; then packed off to France in WW I, hauling ammunition around behind the front by day, playing his violin for the top army “brass” by night; then opening a music school where he taught hundreds of kids how to play the violin). And yeah, for certain phases of my life, classical music has played a vital role, causing me to think and often say, “I don’t know how I could live without it.”
Moreover, for the above-referenced people and for me as well, Beethoven was/is indeed the Titan of all composers. Though his personality was very challenging, to put it charitably, his music plumbs the depths of all human emotions at the same time it soars to the pinnacle of aesthetic beauty.
As a symphonist, Bruckner achieved in some of his work near-Beethovian quality. Last October (see 10/4 and 10/9 posts) I wrote about the effect that his seventh symphony (and the most widely performed) has had on me. The second movement—the Adagio—is nothing short of divine.
One of my favorite renditions of Bruckner’s seventh is a 1992 recording of the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Romanian conductor Segui Celibidache (for one thing, I prefer his tempi to those chosen by other conductors, allowing the orchestra to “milk” the music for all it’s worth). In the course of researching Celibidache, I learned that after Furtwängler’s fall from grace in 1945, Celibidache had expected to be his anointed successor. However, Celibidache lost out to the wunderkind Herbert Von Karajan, who would go on to great fame as the 34-year-long successor of the unrivaled Furtwängler.
Now comes this obscure film about Furtwängler, his rivalry with “Little K,” as he referred to Von Karajan (who is mentioned a lot in the film but never appears), because Furtwängler couldn’t stand to say his name!
For much of the film, Furtwängler presents himself as a sympathetic character—and highly respected by music loving Fraulein Staube (whose father, by the way, had been executed for his involvement in the plot to kill Hitler) as well as Lieutenant Willis (born in Leipzig of Jewish parents, but grew up in the U.S.), whose father took the young David to a Berlin Philharmonic performance of Beethoven’s Fifth conducted by Furtwängler. That experience had “flipped the switch” for David, who become an aficionado of great music. Major Arnold, on the other hand, is a royal pain in the butt—crass, short-tempered, a bit nuts, an outspoken former insurance “claims assessor” who takes no prisoners.
As the film progresses, however, Arnold’s obsessive mission starts making sense when it comes to holding Nazi sympathizers and enablers accountable. His orders are to “go after” Furtwängler in particular given the conductor’s high standing among Germans.
By the end of the film the viewer is put in the hugely uncomfortable position of having to “take sides” between “complex rationalizations” and a very basic principle of humanity: Thou shall not kill (or torture or commit genocide).
In a climactic scene, Arnold—the unlikable American major who couldn’t care less about being unlikable—unleashes his rage against the now meek and unsettled Furtwängler, seated before Arnold’s desk. In essence Arnold asks, “How could you accommodate the purveyors of evil?” None of Furtwängler’s intelligent and perfectly “rational” rationalizations can appease the Major.
Arnold then draws a deep breath and calls on Fraulein Straube to “put on the record” (the office is equipped with an old phonograph). She does so, and nearly knocking my socks off, the phonograph plays the Adagio from Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. It’s what was played over the radio after the announcement that Hitler had committed suicide in late April 1945. It was, of course, a recording of Furtwängler conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. Arnold then skewers his nemesis by saying, “To conduct Hitler’s funeral music, they chose you, Wilhelm, didn’t they—not Little ‘K’—because they loved you!”
The case against Furtwängler, however, is not entirely clear-cut (he purportedly helped many Jews escape, though Arnold takes a cynical view of those efforts). Arnold himself doubts he can win the case to black-list the conductor, so the case is turned over to local authorities who, not surprisingly despite their own de-Nazification, exonerate him. In the final frames of the movie, actual footage is shown of Furtwängler leading the Berlin Philharmonic on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday—an event that Arnold points to repeatedly as evidence of Furtwängler’s accommodation of the Nazi leader. In the very next-to-last frames, Hitler steps up to the stage and seeks to shake hands with the great conductor. Furtwängler hesitates at first but then acquiesces. The last frames are close-ups of Furtwängler’s hands immediately after the handshake. He can be seen switching his handkerchief from his left hand to his right hand and squeezing it—as if subconsciously expunging the evil that had rubbed off Hitler’s hand.
Depending on whom you consult, the jury is still out on Furtwängler, much as it is with Shostakovich and his relationship with Stalin. But no matter how you come down on the hard evidence, the moral dilemma of trading principles for payoffs—all against the backdrop, of course, of the extraordinary aesthetic and emotional geniuses, Beethoven and Bruckner, appreciated as much by really evil people as by the Lieutenant Willises and Fraulein Straubes of the world.
The bottom line: put Taking Sides at the top of your movie list. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9quzpymm98&t=535s
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Again, no need to know or care a thing about Bruckner. The significance of his work, a minute or two of which you will hear, is fully explained by the characters.
