Universal language

“Jules and Jim” meets “Casablanca” meets “Schindler’s List.”

That’s how writer-director Rolf Schubel might have pitched “Gloomy Sunday,” his unlikely word-of-mouth art-house hit entering the 46th week of its Los Angeles run.

The film is a chronicle of two men -- a restaurant owner and a piano player -- who fall for the same woman in pre-World War II Budapest, just before the arrival of the Nazis. Along the way, the musician writes a melancholy tune, “Gloomy Sunday,” that becomes a worldwide hit, just as the real-life song did in the 1930s when it was popularized in the U.S. by Billie Holiday. Based on Nick Barkow’s novel of the same name, the movie ends with an unexpected twist that turns a love story into a thriller.

Taken with the characters and the haunting legend of the 1935 tune that triggered a host of suicides, people have returned for multiple viewings. Box office at the Music Hall theater in Beverly Hills doubled Labor Day weekend and increased an additional 50% last weekend. Before it’s through, the movie, which cost less than $200,000 to shoot, could double, triple or even quadruple its current $1.5-million domestic gross, predicts the owner of the venue.

“Nothing in my experience has hung on like this,” said Greg Laemmle, president of the family-run Laemmle Theaters. “My father, Bob, who has a more extensive time frame, compares ‘Gloomy Sunday’ to ‘King of Hearts’ and ‘Harold and Maude.’ ... In Hollywood, you generally get as much out of a picture as fast as you can before it goes to video.”

The success of the 1999 German-language film, written by Schubel and Ruth Toma, has prompted comparisons to 2002’s “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which also took time to percolate.

Premiering in Chicago in June 2003, the film rode a three-star review from Roger Ebert and a four-star rating from the Chicago Tribune to a 20-week run at a suburban Wilmette theater. There it drew a more mature, primarily Jewish audience, as it did in South Florida last winter and during its 44-week Boston run. Still, the movie has exhibited crossover appeal, playing in one New Zealand theater for a record-setting 3 1/2 years.

“Word of mouth takes longer to kick in with an older audience because they’re not seeing each other in school or on the playing field,” said Neil Friedman, president of Menemsha Films, who picked up the rights last year. “Still, you’d think that in the 11th month of domestic release, sales would be dwindling instead of spiking.”

Character actor Joachim Krol (“Run, Lola, Run”), whom Friedman calls the “Gene Hackman of Germany,” plays the restaurateur, and Italian Stefano Dionisi (“Farinelli”) portrays the pianist. The centerpiece, however, is Hungarian-born Erika Marozsan, who, despite the lack of an international profile and a proficiency in German, beat out name actresses for the role. Working with a dialogue coach, she managed to memorize the text phonetically in a matter of months.

The global reach of the film -- years after the shoot -- came out of left field, the 32-year-old actress concedes during one of the post-screening question-and-answer sessions. (Today she’ll meet with the audience after the 7:40 p.m. show; Saturday, after the 5:10 and 7:40 shows; Sunday, after the 2:40 and 5:10 p.m. shows.)

But then nothing in her film career has been predictable. Discovered on the streets of Budapest, the one-time ballerina was cast as Juliet in a film version of “Romeo and Juliet” at 15. Though she’s appeared in a series of European films and stage productions, “Gloomy Sunday” is, as she puts it, her “initiation into the world.”

Sipping a glass of wine at a restaurant near the Music Hall theater, she reflects on the public -- and personal -- effect of the movie.

“Though the film did well in Hungary, we haven’t spoken enough about our guilt in the Second World War, so it’s difficult for us to confront,” Marozsan said. “At 18, I discovered that my mother’s mother was Jewish, which increases my identification with the story. Under communism, my parents converted to Catholicism and buried their roots. I’m still working on what it all means for me.”

As it happens, the actress now has three “Holocaust-themed” movies on her resume. (“It’s my fate, I guess.”) The second, “The Ghetto,” is in post-production, and she’s about to shoot “The Last Train,” directed by Armin Mueller-Stahl (“Music Box”).

Now that she’s on the radar screen, American producers have phoned with offers, and she’s met with casting directors for heavyweights such as Coppola, Spielberg and Soderbergh. Flattering, to be sure, she said. But when it comes to mapping out a future, Hollywood may not be part of the plan.

“While it’s a sort of validation, I don’t want to overreact,” she said. “In some ways, I still feel like a ballerina -- I could start dancing again or choreographing. That acting is a hobby, a passion rather than an addiction, makes life easier. It permits me to enjoy the moment -- regarding every job as a gift.”

The gift is mutual, say those who have taken the movie to heart. Claire Weissman, 75, has seen it seven times. “All these blockbusters annoy me,” said the Encino resident, “but this was an old-fashioned film with great relationships and plot. I’m Russian-Jewish and was very moved by the way it personalized those times with such great taste and feeling.”

Laverne Lucian first caught “Gloomy Sunday” last spring and has gone back three times since. “It knocked my socks off,” said the 65-year-old retiree, who lives in Van Nuys. “You come out feeling like you’ve had a full meal -- including dessert, given that ending.”

Currently in four theaters nationwide, the film is set to expand. By November, Friedman said, it should be on 25 to 30 screens. He only has 33 prints, but, if momentum continues, more may have to be ordered.