Arts Entertainment
HARMONISTS
from page 77
researching his film The Harmonists,
he traveled to Palm Springs, Calif, to
film an extended interview with
Roman Cycowski, the last surviving
Comedian Harmonist. Cycowski was
one of the Jewish members, and he
told Vilsmaier a story that epitomized
the group's peculiar status.
"They never thought they were in
danger," said Vilsmaier through an inter-
preter, "because they were completely
unpolitical persons and they thought the
whole thing was just a nightmare that
would be over in a certain time."
Then several members found them-
selves traveling on a train from Berlin
to Hamburg; it also carried the heads
of the Nazi Party to a convention. In
the dining car, Roman Cycowski found
himself face to face with Adolf Hitler.
"He could never forget looking in
Hitler's eyes," Vilsmaier explained, "and
[Hitler] really didn't show any reaction
and simply walked away. This is a
moment in his life he would never for-
get, he told me. After that encounter,
for the first time, he had a feeling that
this would not end positively."
Actor Heino Ferch, who plays
Roman Cycowski in The Harmonists,
sums up the group's inevitable con-
clusion: "Sometimes, if you're not
interested in politics, politics is inter-
ested in you."
But both Vilsmaier and Ferch
believe that the Comedian Harmonists'
immense popularity with the German
public, as well as the foreign revenue
their concerts and recordings brought
in, did make it difficult for the Nazis
to clamp down on them immediately.
"If you realize they performed for 2
1/2 years after Hitler was in power,"
. Ferch explained, "that was quite a long
German director
Joseph Vilsmaier:
"The message I want-
ed to make was those
things must never be
allowed to happen
again."
time for a Jewish and non-Jewish group
to continue. One of the big officials in
the party must have had his friendly
hands on them to let them go that far.
The Harmonists is helping not only
to spur renewed interest in the group's
music, but put the times they lived
through (all six members survived the
war) into a new light. Both Joseph
Vilsmaier and Heino Ferch, neither of
whom is Jewish, are very conscious of
the historical aspects of the Comedian
Harmonists' story.
For Vilsmaier, the most heartening
part of the film's successful run in
Germany was the fact that most of the
audience was under 40 years old.
"The message I wanted to make was
those things must never be allowed to
happen again," he said, "and my idea
was to bring this message in particular to
young people. If you take someone say
15 or 18 years of age, his grandparents
are mostly dead, and his parents may be
45 to 50, and this means they were also
born after the Nazi years. They don't
have any personal identification with
13
those times, they don't have such a direct
connection to this history of Germany"
Vilsmaier believes the medium of
film connects with audiences on a
direct emotional level, and therefore
the work of organizations like the
Spielberg Foundation and documentary
filmmakers who record the recollections
of Holocaust survivors are vital.
In fact, it was a 1975 German doc-
umentary about the Comedian
Harmonists that began the current
revival, which includes the current
Broadway production Band in Berlin
and Harmony, an upcoming musical
written by Barry Manilow.
"What makes [The Harmonists] differ-
ent from other pieces," explained Ferch,
"was that the director was trying to get,
in a clever way, the heart of the people.
Not showing only the dark side of the
war, but dealing with the entertaining
and unpolitical aspects of the group. Yet
the audience knows all the time that
there must be a sad ending because it's
the wrong time for this group."
Although the original Comedian
Harmonists no longer existed after a cer-
tain point, two groups were formed, one
by the Jewish members in exile, and one
by the non-Jewish members in Germany.
Roman Cycowski, a baritone who
had originally moved to Berlin from his
native Poland to study opera, contin-
ued performing with the Jewish splin-
ter group, which enjoyed a great deal of
success, first in Vienna then Australia.
But when Cycowski received news that
his father, an Orthodox Jewish cantor,
had been killed in Poland, his career
took a different path.
"The moment when he got the
information," Ferch said, "he decided
to fulfill the wish of his father to be a
cantor. "
Moving first to San Francisco, where
he performed and also taught other
cantors, Roman Cycowski eventually
settled in Palm Springs, where he died
last November at the age of 97.
In The Harmonists, Roman is por-
trayed as being the most comfortable
with who he was. One key scene shows
him asking the non-Jewish woman he
loves to convert so they can marry, and
in another, he declares his devotion to
his adopted country, Germany.
Although Germany didn't reciprocate
his feelings, the woman did convert, and
while many of the other relationships
crumbled under pressure, the Cycowskis
remained married the rest of their lives.
Heino Ferch doesn't know if this
quiet, dignified man could also be called
heroic, but he finds Roman Cycowski
admirable, adding, "He must have been
very satisfied with this huge life." P1
The Harmonists opens Friday,
March 26, at the Maple Theatre.
`The Ilarmonists' • A Film Review
MORRIE WARSHAWSKI
Special to The Jewish News
T
he Comedian Harmonists
may not be a household
term, but according to
Roman Cycowski, the last
survivor of the group, "If we hadn't
had to separate, we would be more
famous than the Beatles today."
A new feature-length German film,
The Harmonists (with English subtitles)
is a portrait of the world's first boy-
group — five male singers and one
pianist — who took Germany and all
of Europe by storm from 1927 to 1934,
Morrie Warshawski writes about the
arts from his home in St. Louis.
3/19
1999
88 Detroit Jewish News
before they were disbanded by the Nazis
because three of them were Jewish.
Director and cinematographer
Joseph Vilsmaier (Hunger and
Stalingrad) has resurrected this engag-
ingly sad story from a part of German
history that continues to make many
Germans very uncomfortable.
There are still people who remem-
ber hearing and seeing the Comedian
Harmonists and being captivated by
their famous songs — "Veronika, der
Lenz ist da" and "Mein kleiner gainer
Kaktus." It is to Vilsmaier's credit
that he tackles the story from all its
angles, presenting the good, the bad
and the ugly.
When we enter the film, the
Harmonists are already together and
singing in a concert. We flash back a
few years to the poor hovel where
Harry Frommermann (theatrical
actor Ulrich Noeten in his first film
role) lives with his parrot Paganini.
Harry can't make a go of it as an
actor, so he decides he will become a
music arranger and form an a cappel-
la group fashioned after the
Revellers, an American group that
sang Negro spirituals.
Harry puts an ad in the paper, and
soon he's formed a sextet that includes
Robert Biberti (Ben Becker), a hefty
young blond baritone who has busi-
ness acumen; Roman Cycowski
(Heino Ferch), a religious Jew; the tall
and imperious Erich Abraham Collin
(Heinrich Schafrneister); Ari
0
Vilsmaier's Berlin has all the bright,
colorful and decadent markings of
pre-war Germany.