Reich & roll

The true story of Germany's Beatles

by Alicia Potter

THE HARMONISTS. Directed by Joseph Vilsmaier. Written by Klaus Richter. With Ulrich Noethen, Ben Becker, Heino Ferch, Heinrich Schafmeister, Max Tidof, Kai Wiesinger, and Meret Becker. A Miramax Films release. At the Avon.

Along with Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful, this tidy bio-pic about the Comedian Harmonists, the real-life 1930s German singing ensemble, strikes an unsettling cinematic trend: the blithe Nazi-era flick. Indeed, Hitler makes but one garbled speech on a squawkbox, and the film practically wafts away on the Harmonists' pit-a-patter melodies and winking repertoire ("When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba" is particularly merry). Yet what distinguishes this effort from Benigni's wide-eyed conceit that comedy trumps atrocity is German director Joseph Vilsmaier refusal to glorify his subjects' denial or optimism; instead, this bittersweet eulogy makes it ruefully clear that the Harmonists symbolize the voice of a Germany lost to tyranny.

From 1927 to 1935, the partly Jewish Harmonists kicked keister as the Weimar Era equivalent of the Fab Four, a sweet-as-stollen sextet whose technical brilliance, ingenious arrangements, and silly lyrics sold thousands of records and packed concert halls. Clearly, their music is ripe for revival: in addition to this film, a bad pun of a Broadway production, Band in Berlin, opened recently, and Barry Manilow -- yes, Barry Manilow -- is trading the Copacabana for the cabaret in a staged salute to Deutschland's darlings.

The film trills the Harmonists' story from the beginning, when a drama student named Harry Frommermann (Ulrich Noethen, bringing an ironic gravity to his elfin, Benigni-like looks) places an ad seeking singers who are, among other things, "beginners, not over 25 years old." His search unites an expectedly disparate -- albeit surprisingly mature-looking -- bunch, with personalities to appeal to every frau: there's robust bass Robert Biberti (Ben Becker), suave tenor Erich Collin (Heinrich Schafmeister), gentle baritone Roman Cycowski (Heino Ferch), lusty tenor Ari Leschnikoff (Max Tidof), and sleepy pianist Erwin Bootz (Kai Wiesinger).

Naturally, the Harmonists' rise is anything but harmonious. The requisite quarrels erupt, and with ponderous foreshadowing the Jewish Frommermann and the Aryan Biberti emerge as the group's dominants; they even vie for the heart of the same earnest university student (Meret Becker). In turn, the pair break out as the film's most vivid characters; the others, especially Tidof's dim-witted lothario, fade to amiable archetypes as the Harmonists warble around Europe in fat-cat style.

The metaphor of harmony swells in portent as the songmeisters' success parallels that of another crowd favorite: Hitler. Soon the sextet's belief that it's the group, not the individual, that counts comes under fire when Nazi leaders single out the three Jewish Harmonists -- Frommermann, Cycowski, and Collin. Yet an entertaining Jew is a spared Jew, at least for a little while, in this jolting portrait of selective racism: Frommermann inks an autograph for the Third Reich's minister of music (Jürgen Schomagel), and, at a concert, Gauleiter Julius Streicher (Rolf Hoppe), in reality a rabid anti-Semitic pornographer, practically busts his brown-shirt buttons as he invites the entire ensemble home for a Teutonic folk song or two.

For the most part, Vilsmaier, who also serves as cinematographer, cleaves to the standard bio-pic formula of rags, riches, and redemption, infusing the film with just enough warmth so that it feels neither rote nor overly referential. At its best, The Harmonists moves on the momentum of the music itself, most notably a smoky jam session in which Biberti unleashes a floor-thumping backbeat and Frommermann mimics, with uncanny accuracy, the lament of a muted trumpet.

But implicit in the apolitical ensemble's renditions of such sentimental schmaltz as "Happy Days Are Here Again" is the disarming reality that the Harmonists, like many of the Germans who adore them, are blind to the enormity of Nazism. This accurate detail could be construed as a plea for historical denial, a yearning for innocence disguised in the trappings of nostalgia. Yet the film in no way fuels the fantasy that music salved Germany's political wounds or ultimately sheltered the Harmonists from the Nazi horror. On the contrary, their naïveté begets their downfall. Vilsmaier portrays the ensemble as tragically quixotic, six talents who won fame but lost reality in a world that believed "the darker the times, the brighter the theater." As this poignant, deftly acted homage tells it, the theater didn't get much brighter than this.