Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod
Director: Rolf Schübel
Country: Germany
Year: 1999
Runtime: 114 minutes
Language: German with English subtitles
Awards: Bavarian Film Awards - Best Cinematography/Best Direction, Coachella Valley Festival of Festivals - Audience Award, German Screenplay Award, Guild of German Art House Cinemas, Guild Film Award – Gold, Mar del Plata Film Festival - OCIC Award - Honorable Mention
If you’re a Billie Holiday fan, you’ll immediately wonder if this film utilizes that most famous song of the American Depression. Indeed it does. And it does more. The film is, you might say, the history of that song’s composition. And we’re told it’s all true. A pianist wrote the song for the beautiful wife of his boss, the owner of a restaurant. But what begins as a menage a trois becomes a quartet, when the Nazis enter town and a blond Aryan Nazi officer also covets the wife. And gorgeous she is! As is the Budapest we see. Then, switching gears, the film goes from love story to a horrifying tale of Nazi treatment of Hungarian Jews. This film has everything, not the least of which is the gorgeous score based almost entirely on the evocative music of the song. Is the song a bringer of tragedy or are the tragedies mere coincidences? ~ Nick Salerno
Principal Cast: Ben Becker, Stefano Dionisi, Joachim Krol, Erika Marozsán
Writers: Nick Barkow, Rolf Schübel, Ruth Toma
Producer: Martin Rohrbeck
Cinematographer: Edward Klosinski
Film Editor: Ursula Höf