Reexamining a Painful Past

Nearly 60 years after World War II unleashed its horror across the continent, European filmgoers are ever more transfixed by tales of human triumph over a world gone mad with hatred and killing.

Just as war films are strong contenders for this year’s Academy Awards, the 49th annual Berlinale film festival here is replete with revisits of the Holocaust, its victims, its perpetrators and its survivors.

From the festival’s opening presentation of a German-Jewish lesbian love affair in Max Faerberboeck’s “Aimee & Jaguar” to Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan’s documentary on the trial of Nazi henchman Adolf Eichmann in “A Specialist,” the Berlinale has been a journey into the host country’s dark past.

“There wasn’t always so much willingness to produce stories from the Third Reich, except in America, because the war was still too close for us until recently,” says Faerberboeck, whose sensuous portrayal of Berlin women coping with the chaos of wartime has drawn sellout crowds in German cinemas since its Feb. 10 debut. “I think there was not enough confidence among directors or the public that the stories would be treated without resorting to cliches.”

But with the astounding success among German filmgoers of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film “Schindler’s List,” producers and directors here realized that “German people want to come and see these films, even if they take them into the eye of the hurricane of that huge historical nightmare,” Faerberboeck says. Spielberg’s best picture nominee “Saving Private Ryan” opened in Berlin in October and was one of the biggest box-office draws in Germany in 1998.

In “Aimee & Jaguar,” he tells the unlikely story of a Jewish lesbian journalist, Felice Schragenheim, who seduces a German mother of four, Lilly Wust, whose husband is a Nazi soldier fighting at the front. The couple and their hedonistic female entourage recklessly defy Allied bombings and Gestapo manhunts to conduct their love affairs in an apartment flanked by rotting corpses and rubble--the kind of “dancing on the volcano” that Faerberboeck says was an escape for wartime Berlin women who had been pushed to the edge.

Although the couple’s success at eluding the Gestapo for nearly two years would seem to strain credulity, the film recounts a true love story. Wust, now 86, says that affair was her life’s emotional zenith despite the death of her lover nearly 55 years ago.

Dragged off by the Gestapo during the frenzied crackdown after the failed July 20, 1944, assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, Schragenheim (Jaguar) was never again seen by Wust--Aimee in the film--and is believed to have died in the forced marches of concentration camp prisoners in the waning days of the war. (In the film, actress Juliane Koehler plays Aimee, and Maria Schrader plays Jaguar).

Now enjoying the fruits of literary and cinematic fame after decades of privation, Wust says she shared her long-taboo love story first with Austrian writer Erika Fischer and now with Faerberboeck so that Schragenheim would not be forgotten.

“My goal with all of this has been to create a memorial to Felice,” says Wust, a spry and gritty pensioner whose gravelly voice betrays years of chain-smoking. “I didn’t want my friend to be left buried under this terrible history, like the millions of others.”

Although “Aimee & Jaguar” was the biggest box-office draw in Germany in its opening days, the story of forbidden love didn’t impress some critics as a film of importance.

“It’s cardboard,” complains Claus Mueller, the German head of the International Film and Television Exchange in New York. “I think people are going to see it because they are curious how lesbians make love, not because they want to learn more about war times.”

Negotiations are in progress with U.S. distributors for rights to the Senator Film production, but no firm deal has been agreed to, says a spokeswoman for Senator.

Another film commemorating the Holocaust that debuted at the Berlinale has recently opened in Los Angeles: “The Last Days,” which recounts the wartime suffering of Hungarian survivors interviewed as part of Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation project.

“A Specialist,” the documentary on Eichmann’s 1961 trial in Israel for organizing the mass deportation of European Jews, also debuted at the Berlinale, as did “The Girl of Your Dreams,” by Spanish director Fernando Trueba. A slapstick mockery of Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, Trueba’s film has failed to convince audiences or critics that it is as successful in blending comedy and pathos as Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-nominated “Life Is Beautiful.”

Like those who tackle the war themes from a serious perspective, Trueba says his unconventional handling of the war’s horrors was possible because of the passage of time.

“The historical subject matter is, of course, very serious. But we can address these issues now with humor as well because time makes it less risky,” he told journalists at a news conference on the occasion of his film’s debut.

The 12-day Berlinale, which moves to a posh new central venue in renovated Potsdamer Platz next year for its 50th anniversary celebrations, culminates Sunday with Golden Bear awards for art, documentary and feature films.

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“The historical subject matter [of World War II and the Holocaust] is, of course, very serious. But we can address these issues now with humor as well because time makes it less risky.”

FERNANDO TRUEBA, director of “The Girl of Your Dreams,” a slapstick look at Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels