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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

It is 1935. The German group called The Comedian Harmonists are at
the height of their popularity. They are world famous and we see them formally
dressed in tails performing on stage one of their favorite harmonies, “Veronika.”

The film flashes back to Berlin in 1927. The weak Weimar Republic
is in power and will remain so until 1933, when Hitler’s Third Reich took
over and put its anti-Semitic policies to work. This will provide the backdrop
for this true story as it tells about the rise and fall of the musical
group and their personal lives and the events in Nazi Germany that made
it impossible for them to exist as they once were, since half of their
six members were Jewish and Jews were no longer allowed to publicly perform
in Germany under the Nazis.

Harry Frommermann (Ulrich) is the unemployed Jewish actor (and dead-ringer
for Robert Benigni) and self-taught musician and baritone, who tells his
agent that he is a musician not an actor. The agent is cynical about Harry’s
alleged ability to arrange music. He informs him, “There are 3 million
unemployed Germans on the streets who are arrangers.”

Harry runs an ad in the paper after hearing a record of an American
Negro group called “The Revellers” singing in harmony. He is further influenced
by the music of Duke Ellington. He now thinks that he could put together
such music for a German capella group, consisting of five singers in harmony
with a piano accompanist. The first one that he hires for the group is
the very Aryan looking, Robert Biberti (Ben Becker), the son of an opera
singer, with an untrained but beautiful voice, who then gets the rest of
the group together from among his acquaintances: Roman Cycowski (Heino
Ferch), born in Poland, who wants to perform at the grand opera and will
become
a cantor in America when the group is disbanded in the late ’30s; Erich
Abraham Collin (Heinrich Schafmeister), has just passed his exam at the
conservatory; Ari Leschnikoff (Max Tidof), a gifted Bulgarian tenor, who
is working as a singing waiter; and, Erwin Bootz (Kai Wiesinger), a barroom
pianist, completes the group as the non-singing member. Then came long
hours of practice without being paid as they worked on getting their syncopated
sound together and their full routine of double-entendres, such as their
“Asparagus are Sprouting” number. Some of the other lighthearted songs
they sing are, “Beautiful Isabella From Castile” and “When Yuba Plays the
Rumba on the Tuba.”

Their big break comes as they audition for a revue show and get the
job, as Bob puffs on his big cigar and boldly works out the financial arrangements
for the group. Then recordings follow and sold-out concert appearances
and tours throughout Europe.

The clash between Harry and Bob is over a music student and part-time
employee at a music store owned by an elderly patriotic Jewish couple,
the very attractive Erna Eggstein (Meret Becker) whom they both fall in
love with. Incidentally, she is the real sister of Ben Becker. The romance
between Harry and Erna starts first as Harry shyly pursues her, encouraged
by her only too willing consent. Harry must first go to the grave site
of his parents and tell them that he has fallen in love with a non-Jewish
woman. When Bob meets her he also falls for her, having led a wild bachelor’s
life he knows instinctively that this is the one for him. When he takes
her to a boxing match, he finds that Erna is dissatisfied that Harry doesn’t
pay her enough attention and does not take her studies seriously. So when
Bob asks her to move in with him she does, even though she still loves
Harry.

This is a time of great change and upheaval in Berlin, and there
is an international flavor in the air. Therefore there are great changes
in the way people relate to others. Bootz will live with a Polish Jewish
girl, but will dump her when the Nazis are starting to flex their muscle
in the mid-thirties. Roman’s Aryan fiancée will convert to Judaism.
Collin, the third Jew of the group, will marry a French prostitute working
in the red light district of Berlin.

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As far as the Nazis, their hatred is very apparent and very gripping
across all levels of society during this time. This film takes, in my opinion,
an erroneous view of their activity by soft-pedaling it and stating that
it was only among the lower-classes that anti-Semitism was prevalent. That
the upper-classes and the cultured-classes were generally supportive of
the Jews. This is just not true. It is a rewriting of history that is not
based on the facts. Daniel Goldhagen’s book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,”
makes it clear, leaving no doubt, that anti-Semitism was rampant among
all classes. The majority of Germans were anti-Semites, and there is no
getting away from that. And, just because the group continued to have sold-out
concerts after it became known that there were Jews in the group and that
the notorious Nazi Julius Streicher, publisher of Stürmer (a major
Nazi newspaper) and a fan of their music, was able to grant them special
permission to continue performing during this difficult time does not mean
that Jews weren’t persecuted at that time. That is just ignoring the truly
horrible and pervasive Nazi reign of terror that began then but didn’t
really go into full blast until Kristallnacht in ‘38. But the anti-Semitic
policies were certainly more wide-spread in the early 1930s than what what
the film portrayed. It should also be noted that Streicher was executed
as a Nazi war criminal, as a result of the Nuremberg trials (he was not
a good guy!).

There is one scene that shows the Nazi S.A. Brownshirts in action.
We see how it is directed against the Jewish music store owners who can’t
understand what is happening to their country and why they are being singled
out and why their store is being smeared with anti-Semitic messages, asserting
that their son died fighting for Germany in the last war. The Holocaust
came a few years later; but, there is no doubt that the initial plans for
the “Final Solution” were underway, even if there were a few Germans who
were not filled with hatred. Erna would be one example.

The scene when the group comes to perform in New York on board the
USS Saratoga, gets everything it can about that scene wrong. New York never
looked so unreal and artificial and cardboardlike. The real problem the
group has in New York is whether they should return home or desert Germany,
as a conflict develops over this matter between Bob (who doesn’t want to
leave his elderly mother alone) and Harry, who sees the handwriting on
the wall in Germany, and feels he has nothing left there. But it is settled
when the rest of the group decides to return to a changing Germany. Their
country is now being purged of its international communistic and bourgeois
influences, in favor of nationalism, by the intolerant Nazis who have taken
complete control of the arts.

Their final concert is a standing ovation triumph to their popularity,
even as they are forced by Nazi law to disband the group. There is a crush
of people surging onstage to give them warm support and encouragement.
As a result, two groups are formed: the Jews leave Germany and play in
exile (actually having great success in Australia), and the gentiles stay
in Germany. Eventually, neither group can be successful separately. The
internationalism of their music loses favor during the war and both groups
disband by 1941.

In an epilogue, it is mentioned how all the members survived WW11.
All the Jewish members went to America as did Erna, who married Harry;
but, later on, divorced him in the early 1950s.

There was something emotionally flat and unconvincing about this
story that not only rubbed me the wrong way, but made me think how apologetic
the filmmaker was to the real events of history. He tried to force-feed
the audience into believing so many untruths about what actually took place,
that it is hard for me to say that this film made up for its distorted
history lessons with its pleasing music and delightful cabaret-like mood
and its splendid cinematography. Its call for the world to be less nationalistic
and more global minded had a pleasing ring to it, but that is simply not
enough to counter how tame the film appears as a whole.

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This look at adolescent down-and-outers living an Australian industrial-park nightmare is so overwrought and unrelievedly iron that it comes close to playing like a parody of teenage angst movies. Goosed up with auto-smashing violence, Satanism and plentifulness of fancy editing tricks, Geoffrey Wright’s follow-up to his controversial 1992 “Romper Stomper” sports the clarify of fashionably nihilistic gear to put it over with a certain segment of up on young moviegoers, but its lack of beseech on to all intents all aesthetic levels will mostly limit its commercial prospects to a hard-centre dry-as-dust-metal and leather alienate.

Joe (Aden Young) represents perhaps the extreme definition of an underprivileged kid: Unemployed for four years, he lives in a squalid home on the barren outskirts of Melbourne that’s half-shack, half-fortress, with a lunatic father whose only companion is a shrieking parrot. Joe shows signs of sensitivity in his feelings for the cute but guarded Roslyn (Nadine Garner), but he never gets anywhere with either her or Savina (Tara Morice), a co-worker at his new job at a grocery store, because local Romeo Dazey (Ben Mendelsohn) has in both cases gotten there first.

Nevertheless, the smooth Dazey takes Joe under his wing after a fashion, showing him the racing cars at his dad’s shop and hanging out with him at an illicit latenight drag race. This sequence reps the film’s major set piece, as hundreds of tough-acting teens gather in an abandoned rail yard to see who’s got the hottest rod. Unfortunately, the evening doesn’t go well for Joe, who’s beaten behind the wheel and smashes up the car of the gathering’s biggest maniac , who labels him “Psycho Joe.”

Meanwhile, Savina puts a voodoo hex on Dazey for spurning her, and Joe tries to take advantage of Savina’s vulnerability by being nice to her, but it all backfires in tragedy when she takes her devil worship to a fatal extreme.

When Joe’s house then gets trashed, the youngster becomes unhinged and undertakes a shooting spree that threatens Dazey, his family and Roslyn. A less-than-convincing metal-on-metal battle between the two kids in hot rods brings things to an unedifying end.

Wright works overtime trying to supply the film with the kind of blindly destructive visceral force that’s de rigueur these days for stories of angry, alienated youth, relying upon jump cuts within the frame to speed up the action and tossing in lots of violent rage and engine revving.

But only the two male characters, Joe and Dazey, are remotely interesting and , unfortunately, the more Wright chooses to concentrate upon Joe and his many problems, the more ordinary and less interesting he becomes; conversely, just as Dazey begins seeming more complex, the less is seen of him.

As for the females, Roslyn remains a one-dimensional object of the boys’ desire, while Savina, with her sullen temper and unabated appetite for demonism, is a royal pain throughout.

Despite the hyped-up technique, aggressive style becomes trying after a while , and pacing through the midsection is sluggish. Some trimming wouldn’t hurt a bit. Tech credits are serviceable.

Marie-Dominique (Sophie Marceau) and Bertrand (Vincent Perez) have been married for 15 years. They have a young son (Sasha Alliel), a lovely where it hurts and outwardly a blissful marriage. But Marie-Do has reached the end of her manacle, poorly of her engine- driver husband’s phobia with cycling and possessive, self-centred ways. She finds unexpected support when she meets script writer Antoine (Charles Berling) and they begin a passionate affair. Marie-Do decides to denouement her marriage with Bertrand and start afresh with Antoine, but Bertrand refuses to leave their apartment.

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WITH ITS cutesy alliteration, “Mostly Martha” sounds like the title of a children’s movie, but the film by German writer-director Sandra Nettelbeck is all grown up. Sweet without being saccharine and funny without being forced, the closely observed romantic comedy treats the culinary arts as a metaphor for personal healing. It’s a food-fueled love story about a type-A chef who learns, through her encounter with a difficult child and a slovenly Italian who comes to share her pristine kitchen, that man does not live by foie gras alone.

Martha (Martina Gedeck) cannot communicate except through cooking. A three-star chef in a fancy Hamburg restaurant, she expresses emotion through meal preparation. If she likes you, she’ll cook for you like you’ve never been cooked for before, but God help you if you complain. Steak not rare enough? Martha will leave her station to serve you herself – that is, she’ll slam a piece of bloody red meat on your tablecloth, impaled with a knife.

When she talks to her perplexed therapist (August Zirner), with whom her weekly sessions are a condition of employment, Martha talks recipes, not recurring nightmares. Her life, as she sees it, is under control.

Enter Lina and Mario. When a tragic accident forces Martha to take in her young niece Lina (Maxime Foerste) indefinitely, and when the restaurant’s pregnant sous-chef (Katja Studt) is replaced with Mario (Sergio Castellitto), an unshaven, “Volare”-singing substitute, the souffle of our heroine’s world starts to deflate.

On the home front, Martha runs into trouble integrating her 8-year-old charge into her bachelorette lifestyle, keeping the child up all hours at the restaurant and then sleeping through the start of school the next morning. At work, meanwhile, Martha’s tightly wrapped stove-top style clashes with the looser manner of Mario, who treats the kitchen less like a lab than an artist’s studio.

What sets “Mostly Martha” apart from the familiar opposites-attract and singleton-with-child formulas are the nuanced performances Nettelbeck coaxes from her trio of actors. Foerste avoids playing Lina as a mere brat, generating comedy and pathos with her guileless portrayal of a lonely girl. Castellitto also resists the temptation to act the buffoon, reining in his tendencies toward broadness when the character gets too close to shtick. And Gedeck brings a believable softness and vulnerability to what could easily have become a caricature of the brittle yuppie striver.

None of the ingredients overpower this well-balanced dish. Rather, the honest writing, sensitive direction and genuinely touching performances serve its simple yet persuasive message that food, no matter how delicious, is no substitute for love.

MOSTLY MARTHA (PG, 107 minutes) – Contains material related to the death of a parent and an untranslated German vulgarity. In German with subtitles. Area theaters.

The Talkie:

People today often wax nostalgically for the1950’s, when life was slower
and everything seemed calmer.  But the people in the 50’s yearned
for the 1920’s.  The period between the wars when America’s economy
was expanding and it looked like war was a thing of the past.  Hollywood
catered to the nostalgia with several films set in that time, among them
Cheaper by the Dozen.

Based on a true story, Cheaper by the Dozen is the chronicle
of Frank Gilbreth, an efficiency engineer who applies his theories of time
management not only to companies, but also to his family.  Having
twelve children, six boys and six girls, there needs to be some strict
policies if there is to be order in the house.  He lines the children
up for inspection, whistling like Captain Von Trapp from The Sound of
Music, whenever he returns home from a trip so he can make sure that
they are washing properly.  Always looking for ways to save time,
he illustrates the most efficient way to take a bath, and even has all
of the children’s tonsils removed at the same time in their home, turning
a room into an operating theater.

The movie is a slice-of-life picture, presenting a series of comic and
not so comic events in the life of this large family.  Some time funny,
occasionally touching, the movie shows how this group handles the conflicts,
disagreements, and setbacks that invariable occur.

The film is pleasant to watch, but when all is said and done, it’s mental
bubblegum.  The characters are all two dimensional, each one having
one trait, be it the authoritarian father, the faithful wife, or the elder
daughter who wants to wear makeup, and they never breaking out of their
mold.  The situations are entertaining, but nothing more.  
When the movie was made in 1950, the audiences of that time probably found
it novel and unique, but looking at it today, after having seen countless
reruns of Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver, the movie
plays like a long sitcom.

The acting was average.  Clifton Webb, was adequate as the father
of the house.  He was the straight man for most of the jokes, but
it was still hard to like him.  He wasn’t able to make his character
sympathetic from my point of view.  Myrna Loy (surprisingly billed
third after Jeanne Crain,) who was delightful in the Thin Man movies,
does not shine in this film.  She never really comes across as being
her husband’s equal, something Nora Charles never had problems doing. 
Crain, who played the eldest, was fairly wooden and looks like she had
a hard time with the role.  She was never able to sell her lines,
it usually felt like she was acting in a school play rather than in an
“A” film.

That is not to say that the movie is bad, because it isn’t. Cheaper
by the Dozen is a quaint picture that has many enjoyable moments. 
Just seen through the lens of fifty years, it isn’t fresh anymore.

 

The DVD:

Audio:

The menu on this DVD gives you the choice of the original mono English
soundtrack, a stereo English track, or a mono Spanish track, but that is
incorrect.  The mono tracks are not present, they are both two channel. 
I was little if any difference between the English tracks that were labeled
mono and stereo, they sounded virtually identical and I believe they were
both two channel mono.  There are subtitles in English and Spanish. 
The sound was adequate, though not exciting. There was no noticeable hiss
or hums, and the dialog was clear.  The music was not dynamic and
full, but that is not surprising for a film made in 1950.

Video:

The full frame transfer was very nice.  Filmed in Technicolor,
the colors were bright and vivid.  The shadows lost a little detail,
but on the whole the picture was very sharp.  There was some print
damage in the form of dirt as specks but they weren’t distracting. 
An enjoyable transfer.

The Extras:

The DVD includes a trailer to the movie (oddly in black and white though
the feature is in color,) one for the 2003 remake, and a trailer to the
1952 sequel Bells on Their Toes.  There is also a one minute
clip from a news reel of one of the actual Gilbreth’s daughters accepting
an award for the movie.  This last piece was very washed out, but
nice to see.

Final Thoughts:

This movie is a nice family film.  It is not a laugh a minute joke-fest,
but an enjoyable light drama from the 50’s.  It has the feel of a
sitcom and, in many ways, it is.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t a good
film, just that it is not be as fresh as it was when it was filmed.  
While there is nothing objectionable in the film, there’s nothing very
memorable in it either.  Rent it.

In the late 19th century, the Opera Populaire is the arts and entertainment hub of Paris society. But in its underground caverns, a immaterial, masked figure lives in the semi darkness, hiding from the creation, known to the operation, the artists - and especially to ballet mistress Madame Giry (Miranda Richardson) - as the Phantom of the Opera (Gerard Butler). As changed management (Ciarán Hinds, Simon Callow) and the new patron, Raoul (Patrick Wilson) gulp down over, the Phantom demands that childlike chorus chorus-member Christine Daae (Emmy Rossum) be given the present role, replacing temperamental diva Carlotta (Minnie Driver). Christine, whose childhood rapport with Raoul is rekindled as grown up romance, has been secretly tutored by the Spectre (but never face to face) and her beautifully pure voice is an instant hit with audiences. The facially deformed Phantom’s interest in Christine turns to a devious, at the end of one’s tether love, and he draws Christine to his ‘music of the night’, while Raoul fights desperately to keep her. When she spurns him, the Phantom wreaks a terrible revenge.