The Harmonists

Rating:
Summary: The Harmonists: A Gem
Review: I saw this movie in the theater and on the video as well. It was more compelling on a big screen, of course, but it is watchable more than one time, also. The production values, score, musical dubbing and sets are first rate; the ensemble actors do a fabulous job of making the viewer believe it is really they who are vocalizing, not lip-synching. You grow to really enjoy these fellows as individuals during the course of the movie and you really care about what will happen to their lives. The other reviews mentioned how dramatic is the story line, but it is the developing team work of the singers which carries the momentum. from the first hilarious meeting-up scenes to the thrilling stage presentations of their performances. I can't recall feeling more flooded with emotion during a movie than while watching the scene of their last performance in a career cut short because of Nazi anti-Jew regulations in the 1930s. At the close of the movie, there is a reprise in which you get a written report on how their later lives turned out. It's quite surprising.

While the movie's overriding message is one of vast sympathy for all the victims of Nazi persecution, the subtext, equally powerful, is the evanescence of live-performance art. The non-Jewish Harmonists, especially the bass, come across in a noble way that surely must characterize some ordinary German citizens of that time. This is a grand movie indeed! Note: A couple of the Harmonists were party animals, and the R rating comes from a few scenes with brief female nudity.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, gripping, and based on a true story!
Review: I was unaware that this was based on a true story until the very end of the film, when photographs of the original Comedian Harmonists were shown. The story line is so gripping, it almost seems too contrived to be true. And, given the immense talent and popularity of the group (in its heydey), I was surprised that I had never heard of them. The story is about a group of six musicians, three of whom are Jewish, who rise to fame in Germany in 1930s. Tension grows within the group as the Nazis become increasingly powerful in Germany. After the group performs aboard the USS Saratoga in New York harbor, there is some question about whether they will return to Nazi Germany or stay in the US. The group plays its final concert to a sold-out crowd shortly after the New York trip. The movie will leave you wanting to know much more about its members, particularly Mr. Frommerman, and its music. As an added bonus, the five-part harmonies are FANTASTIC. This is one of the most gripping shows I've seen in several months, it came as a complete surprise.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, gripping, and based on a true story!
Review: I was unaware that this was based on a true story until the very end of the film, when photographs of the original Comedian Harmonists were shown. The story line is so gripping, it almost seems too contrived to be true. And, given the immense talent and popularity of the group (in its heydey), I was surprised that I had never heard of them. The story is about a group of six musicians, three of whom are Jewish, who rise to fame in Germany in 1930s. Tension grows within the group as the Nazis become increasingly powerful in Germany. After the group performs aboard the USS Saratoga in New York harbor, there is some question about whether they will return to Nazi Germany or stay in the US. The group plays its final concert to a sold-out crowd shortly after the New York trip. The movie will leave you wanting to know much more about its members, particularly Mr. Frommerman, and its music. As an added bonus, the five-part harmonies are FANTASTIC. This is one of the most gripping shows I've seen in several months, it came as a complete surprise.

Rating:
Summary: Portraying the horrors of Hitler incrementally
Review: If you thought "Schindler's List" came off a little heavy-handed and patronizing, you are not the only one. I find movies such as "Sophie's Choice" and the "Comedian Harmonists" to be infinitely more effective in relaying the sadness and depressing realities of the Nazi fanaticism. Whereas "Schindler's List" is one numbing horror story after another, the smaller stories mentioned above have the ability to focus the viewers attention and admisration on a smaller range of characters and themes.
Watching this film was simultaneously uplifting and depressing-the fine characters practicing their art while the politics trudge on. The last concert scene is one of the more heartrenching aspects of this film. Hitler's drones allowing one last go-around before the Jews are disbanded from the group forcefully. It's amazing how petty the politics were-ranging from music,literature and artwork. We all know the end result, but it's more interesting to me to see it's effects and roots from a different viewpoint.
The music of course is the big draw here. Good acting and singing easily overcome some of the staid visual direction. Some scenes looked like they were slapped together. The sets were obvious and did not successfully visualize pre WW2 Germany and the depressed economy.

Rating:
Summary: Enormously Entertaining And Enormously Touching
Review: In 1927 in Berlin, Harry Frommermann (Ulrich Noethen), a poor, talented musician, puts an ad in a paper asking that anyone interested in forming a singing group meet with him. Robert Biberti (Ben Becker) shows up, equally poor but brash, confident, full of drive. Soon there are five of them, plus the piano accompanist. They are all young, all talented singers, all unknown. Frommermann is the creative force, choosing the songs and creating the vocal arrangements. And of the six, three are Jews (including Frommermann), and three are gentile (including Biberti). By the end of 1927 they have become a huge success in Germany as The Comedian Harmonists. The perform in white tie and tails, sing complex harmonies, all sorts of songs, and use their voices to imitate instruments. In the next few years their success extends to Europe and the United States. Some say, even now, that they are one of the greatest vocal groups of the century. After Hitler comes to power they are quickly banned from singing any songs written by Jews. Even so, they believe their popularity will provide them protection. At the end of a successful tour in the United States they debate about returning to Germany, but decide to go back where their friends and families are. In 1934, the group is banned from performing in public, and the Nazis strongly hint that the Aryan members of the group should reform without the Jewish members. Eventually the Jews leave Germany and the Aryan members stay put. Both form new groups but without any particular success. Both groups disband in 1941.

This movie works on many levels:

--It's a clear-eyed view of the growing racist changes in German society after Hitler comes to power. It shows how people didn't want to see what was happening around them. A Jewish music shop owner who has racist slogans painted on her window blames it on kids.

--It tells not only the story of The Comedian Harmonists, but the stories of the individual members. One Aryan who is married to a Jew divorces her as soon as he can and eventually marries the daughter of a wealthy Nazi. The Aryan girlfriend of a Jewish member of the group unhesitatingly converts to Judaism so they can marry in his faith. They eventually wind up in San Francisco in a happy marriage that lasted over fifty years. One Aryan member (Biberti) helped design rocket bombs during the war. One Jewish member (Frommermann) became a U.S. citizen, immediately joined the Army and spent the war years entertaining U.S. troops. One Jewish member after the war became a manufacturer of eye glass frames.

--It resurrects the style and skill of The Comedian Harmonists, who in America have been long forgotten. Throughout the movie the group performs some of their best songs, with the actors expertly lip synching to superbly restored original recordings.

There are many movies which show the impact of Nazism in the Thirties and Forties. I suppose the fate of a successful singing group, in that context, might not be considered worth too much attention. But this is an accomplished movie, with great acting. It is entertaining and enormously affecting. It's a movie well worth having. The DVD transfer is excellent.

Rating:
Summary: Ausgezeichnet! (And darned good too!)
Review: Let's get the negatives over first. Just about every musical has some hokey scene where musicians who have either just met for the first time or who have yet to gel suddenly click and produce music that, if not miraculous, is at least fit to be included on the soundtrack album. It happens in Hollywood flicks and it happens here too. After being rejected at their first audition, a struggling German vocal group in late '20s Berlin is just about to pack it in, when in a burst of inspiration they turn their pity party into an extraordinary vocal jam session (where their uncanny ability to imitate musical instruments is revealed) and the rest is, as they say, history: their ultimate success, a given.

That much may seem like formula--and maybe some of the boy-girl aspects of storyline may seem like familiar territory as well (two friends and musical collaborators competing for the love of the same girl). But the movie IS fact based, and presumably reasonably true to actual events. Of course, when those events take place against the historical backdrop of the rise of Nazism and the first intimations of the Holocaust to come, then they take on an additional poignancy. The inevitable squabbles and petty jealousies of musical partners will soon to be dwarfed by the sheer enormity of the historical events brewing all around them. We know it: they don't (yet). Therein lies much of the film's emotional power.

Much has been made of the fact that half the group, who come to be billed as "The Comedian Harmonists," was Jewish and that they nonetheless enjoyed considerable popularity in a society beginning to seethe over with anti-Semitism. In fact, the film plotline has top Nazi officials numbering among its biggest fans. The suggestion is that even the cruelest of hearts could be touched by music this bright, happy and fun. The tendency toward denial among German Jews (and other Germans!) is also hinted at. Surely, these beloved artists would be spared from the coming nightmare! It can't happen "hier"!

The movie is somewhat evocative of other films involving struggling entertainers in the pre-Hitler era. Like CABARET, it is a supremely entertaining musical with a political punch. But it's not nearly as dark as that film, or as other films that tread similar terrain (Bergman's SERPENT'S EGG, Visconti's THE DAMNED). Aside from their considerable musical talent, these characters are actually everyman types. Oh sure, they party hard and get their start singing in a brothel. But they all possess a certain innocence nonetheless. This is not quite the demimonde: it's more a bunch of blokes getting together to make light, humorous, jazzy music while the world around them crumbles.

They are indeed Comedians as well as Harmonists. But, as they say, sometimes the line between comedy and tragedy is a fine one.

Rating:
Summary: "The Harmonists" Shine!
Review: My friend and I first saw this movie at a theatre in Detroit when it first came to the USA. We enjoyed the movie very much, and the music is excellent! The only thing we didn't like were the English subtitles. Also, the cast of "The Harmonists" did an excellent job telling the story of the Comedian Harmonists. In addition, it is easy to understand why Barry Manilow and his callaborator, Bruce Sussman, were inspired by this movie and have written a musical called HARMONY as a result of this inspiration. Hopefully, HARMONY will make its debut on Broadway in 2003, and many more people will become aware of the fabulous Comendian Harmonists.

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT PERIOD GERMAN "MUSICAL"
Review: My trail to this film started at National Public Radio (NPR) which broadcast music by the Hudson Shad; an American vocal group originating in Chicago that formed several years ago to replicate the sound of the Comedian Harmonists. And they did! At the time, about two years ago Hudson Shad had been in a well received musical play "Banned In Berlin" about the rise and fall of the original Comedian Harmonists. Although American audiences liked "Banned In Berlin," the Germans went wild about this play which recreated the ethos of a Germany before Adolf Hitler. Naturally, when I obtained a VHS of The Harmonists I thought it would be a film version of the play.

My first criticism of the film is that to this day I have no idea who sang in it. Nevertheless, whoever they were the singing is well done. The film is a musical drama. Moreover, the English subtitles are quite accurate (I studied German for three years in college ... but it is fading). Mainly, the story is about the lives and career of the Comedian Harmonists group that was a hodge podge of ethnic and religious singers who formed a group in Berlin for turning their talent into money. Life was very hard for people in the economically depressed post-World War I of Germany in the 1920s. Forming their singing group that enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame and fortune was something of a miracle.

The film deals smoothly with subplots of the various romances leading to marriage for some of the Harmonist singers. There is the eternal mixed religion problems that are sorted out as love conquors all for some members of the singing group. That is until Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933. Then rejection of ethnic diversity by the Übermenschen and in particular the position of Jews in Nazi Germany become troubling issues for the Harmonists. Because by 1933 the Comedian Harmonists had a fiercely loyal following even among some of the Nazi leaders, they naively supposed that their careers would not be harmed amid the growth of state sponsored violence against Jews in the streets. Wrong! The rest is history.

My personal favorite by the original Comedian Harmonists and now our contemporary emulators, the Hudson Shad is "Aufwiedersehn." For me it was a perfect way for the Comedian Harmonists to say farewell to their tearful fans on the night they were banned in Berlin. I would like to know who sang this rendition so I can to thank them.

I think this is an excellent film made by fine actors and crew. The Nazi political and Jewish holocaustic controversies in and around contemporary Germany are not a problem for this film because these constituted minor factors within the plot development in The Harmonists. It is a quasi-biographical musical story about an extraordinarily talented and internationally popular German singing group which was dispersed by the Nazis. But compared to what happened to their contemporaries, the individuals who made up the Comedian Harmonists at least all came out of it alive. Their main tragedy was losing their popular and lucrative singing group.

What I especially enjoyed about discovering the Comedian Harmonists and their modern day reincarnation as the Hudson Shad is the sense of pre-Hitler Germans; who evidently had fun loving and decent souls embodied in the music of this group. And so the film Harmonists recreates a sense of how it was in Germany before sectors within a totally civilized and advanced society became homocidal. In such a society there was no place for the music of the Comedian Harmonists. And so they had to disperse. I found myself becoming nostalgic and wistful for this time,this place and these people who existed long before I was born. The Harmonists can produce such feelings in the viewing audience.

Rating:
Summary: from the view of a german
Review: the average american movie goer might not expect too much from a german movie,and mostly isn't that wrong.But when we make good movies,than they're really great.
If you want to get a feeling about "how could all these have happened?"you'll find a splinter of it in a movie that describes the life of six artists from the late 20s to the life under Nationalsozialismus before WWII.Seldom a movie made me cry like this, the struggle of the six for their art and the daily life struggles, the love they shared and they shouldn't have shared, their creed,they fought for and how the good in life ends under the boots of evil- and more, ends, cause too many turned their heads, reminding everybody of us on the words of german poet H.Heine:In einem Land, in dem Bücher brennen, brennen bald auch Menschen(in a country where books burn,soon will burn humans)written 100 years before Hitler. The movie not only is a must for every german, it also is a must for everybody who wants to understand what will be the consequences of turning your head and keep silent.
Excellent sound, graet acting and camera combined with a detail-obsessed directing and a music that is eternal, based on a story only life can write.
But when the US-DVD is available only with 2.0 sound german audio-track and english subtitles and your german isn't that bad at all,stay with the german region 2 coded version with its 5.1 audio track.Listen to the original sound of "Die Comedian Harmonists" and if you want more information you can have a documentary video tape from 1976 (german director E.Feschner) with interviews with all that time still alive members of the group, called The Comedian Harmonists-6 Lebensläufe, available from Studio Hamburg,in case amazon doesn't carry it)

Rating:
Summary: An excellent film!
Review: The Harmonists is a gripping tale about a group of singers and a piano accompanist who won the hearts of the world through their music. It is based on a true story, taking place in 1930 Berlin. In the advent of Nazism, the three Jewish members were prohibited from performing with them, and the group had to choose between music and politics. The actual recordings of the original group's music are used, with a deeply nostalgic effect. The music speaks to the heart, from joyous songs about springtime to sad farewell songs. Music is portrayed so powerfully that the Jewish leader of the group finds himself physically sick and unable to continue singing when the group attempts to fill a request from a major local Nazi leader.

The film focuses on the founding of the group, their difficulties as a growing group, their world success, to their eventual fall. It explores the conflicts within the group and the political tensions outside the group. The music is nostalgic, even to those who have never heard it before. The story is timeless. The action is gripping. The problem is real.