The “Baton-Routine” – Taking Sides
At first sight, the photo looks authentic. It is browned and slightly out of focus, which contributes to this impression, as do the scalloped white edges of the kind that were popular in the 1930s. Yet the picture is a deceptively real piece of photomontage that Hungarian director István Szabó produced for his film Taking Sides. The source material was a photograph of the conductor at a concert that the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra performed in 1935–36, attended by Adolf Hitler and other prominent National Socialist figures. Instead of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, however, we can make out Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, who plays him in the film. We see him bending down from the orchestra stage after the concert, reaching out his right hand to shake Hitler’s. In his left hand, he is holding his baton and a handkerchief. Szabó kept the two photos – the original and the montaged image – alongside other historical photos in his copy of the screenplay, a testament to the value he ascribed to the documentary material, which acted as both a prop and a source of inspiration for the film.
The photo is a visual emblem of the subject of the film. As in his screen adaptation of Klaus Mann’s novel Mephisto, Szabó’s 2001 work also deals with the relationship between art and politics and how the individual becomes enmeshed in the machinations of a totalitarian regime. The film focuses on the question of whether the famous conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler was guilty of collaborating with the National Socialists and sanctioning them. Taking Sides is a chamber piece in which Major Steve Arnold (played by Harvey Keitel), acting on behalf of American occupation forces, interrogates Furtwängler about his career in the Third Reich before the case is to turned over to the committee for the denazification of artists. The musician is subjected to three interviews with the American officer. Arnold is supported by two others: the young lieutenant David Willis (Moritz Bleibtreu), a refugee from Germany now in the U.S. Army, whose Jewish parents were murdered by the Nazis, and the secretary Emmi Straube (Birgit Minichmayr), who records everything. Her father, a part of the anti-Hitler resistance, has been executed. While Arnold is convinced of Furtwängler’s guilt and seeks to convict him, the other two admire the conductor and defend him.
Arnold’s aggressive line of questioning puts Furtwängler under tremendous pressure and tangles him up in contradictions. He accuses him of having collaborated with the Nazis and of having remained in Germany solely for the sake of his career. He also suggests that the musician knew about the persecution of the Jews: “Because if he didn’t know anything … Why did the Jews in this country need to be rescued?” Furtwängler tries desperately to explain why he was reluctant to leave his homeland and why he made compromises and believed he could keep art and politics separate. In the end, however, he has little more to counter Arnold’s accusations with than his idealistic notion of art: “I know that a single performance of a great masterpiece is a stronger and more spirited negation of the evil spectre of Buchenwald and Auschwitz than words are.”
Szabó does not take sides in the film. Its title is an invitation for viewers to form their own opinions. The characters are skilfully created to oppose one another, but neither of the two main figures engages our sympathies on their own. This effect is accentuated by the camerawork, which uses close-ups of the faces of the two protagonists to capture their feelings. The audience also finds itself to be of two minds, faced with the need to reach a moral verdict. Although Arnold presents the more compelling arguments, his callous and vitriolic manner, as well as his rough interrogation methods, make him unsympathetic and repellent. In contrast, Furtwängler arouses empathy by being visibly shaken by the accusations and ultimately conceding: “Yes, I should have got out in ’34. It would have been better if I’d left.”
The photomontaged image is an important cinematic device for Szabó and is used repeatedly in the plot. Major Arnold deploys the picture as proof that Furtwängler was in close contact with the Nazi elite. At the same time, he uses it to debunk the attempts to exonerate the conductor made by the orchestra members he interviews. The clichéd story that Furtwängler had taken a stand by refusing, in Hitler’s presence, to give the Nazi salute at a concert is scorned by Arnold, who calls it a “baton routine”. It is refuted by the photo. In an interview with second violinist Helmut Rohde, Arnold compels him to give the Nazi salute with the baton in hand. He ironically acknowledges this action with the words, “Now I understand, you nearly gouged my eye out.”
Szabó repeatedly uses documentary material in the film, which he contrasts with dramatised scenes. The conclusion, involving images from a newsreel report, is magnificent. It becomes a metaphor for the film as a whole. Furtwängler performs in front of a large audience including civilians and many wounded soldiers. Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who is sitting in the front row, jumps up during the final applause to congratulate the conductor and shake his hand. Immediately afterwards, we see a close-up of Furtwängler wiping his hands with a handkerchief, rendered in slow motion – an unconscious act indicating that he feels he has sullied himself.
The quotations are taken from Sandra Theiß, Taking Sides: Der Filmregisseur István Szabó, Mainz, 2003, pp. 285, 274 and 276.
The Akademie der Künste recently set up the István Szabó Archive for the work of the great European director and acquired the screenplays of his most important films.
Author: Werner Heegewaldt, director of the Archives, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
Published in: Journal der Künste 22, Mai 2024, p. 64-65