Page 15 - Boca Club News - September '20

Boca Club News, Page 15
The Arts

Film Review:

“Playing for Time”

By Nils A. Shapiro greeted the trainloads In one scene after another, we in the audience absorb
I must be honest in telling you up front: This is not the of arriving prisoners the prisoners’ need to accept degradation---that starts
kind of film you will find “entertaining” in the usual sense. as they marched into upon arrival with the cutting of hair to baldness---the
In fact, I viewed all two-and-a-half hours of it on Netflix the camp, personally compromising of self-respect, the ignoring of constant
alone yesterday when my wife, Linda, was busy in her art pointing out which hunger, the frustrations that boil over into fighting among
studio working on one of her paintings, since I knew that ones should be sent themselves, the overcoming of fear in order to focus on just
she would not have been able to watch this film after the to the gas chambers the will to survive.
first few minutes because it would have greatly upset her. (women, children, the Finally, the women learn that the Allies have landed in
But my purpose in writing these review columns is to sick and elderly), and Normandy. There is some faint hope when the frequency
bring to my readers’ notice films that, for one reason or which should be sent of bombs falling on the camp from planes high in the sky,
another, they should know about...and leave the rest to them. to the barracks, being answered by the Nazis’ thundering anti-aircraft guns, begin
Playing for Time was a made-for-TV film based on a play considered fit enough to come more often and it appears that the Nazis are planning
by Arthur Miller and shown for the first time in the U.S. in to work. to evacuate the prisoners from the camp.
1980. The play itself had been based on an autobiography, Vanessa Redgrave When a strange young face suddenly appears in the
“The Musicians of Auschwitz,” by a woman, Fania Fenelon, was selected by barracks doorway, under a helmet very different from the
with whom Miller had collaborated on his script. Director Daniel Mann deep low Nazi metal helmet, a face with a surprised look,
Ms. Fenelon---also known as Fania Goldstein, because and Arthur Miller for the leading role of Fania Fenelon, and but with the promise of a smile---after years of these women
her mother was Jewish---had been a survivor of the it is one of the most powerful performances of her lustrous being surrounded by unthinkable atrocities---we in the
Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two. career, earning her, as Best Actress, one of the six Emmys audience cannot help but share their shock, after having
Born in Paris, she had graduated from the conservatoire, given to this film. (Ironically, this casting was objected almost abandoned all hope, of deliverance back into the
been awarded first prize in piano, and played and sang in to strenuously by the actual survivors of the Auschwitz land of the living.
bars while working her way through school. When the women’s orchestra because of Redgrave’s positive political Playing for Time is the most powerful depiction of what
Nazis invaded and occupied France, she worked with stance regarding the Palestine Liberation Organization.) it must have been like to have lived through those years
the resistance before being shipped in a packed train to But audiences older than the Millennial generation will of unspeakable experience of any film I have ever seen. It
Auschwitz. recognize such other faces as Jane Alexander (who plays should be required viewing for every Holocaust denier. For
The film describes her experience as a member of the Alma Rose, portrayed as a stern and demanding orchestra the rest of you, see it as a work of cinematic art.
camp’s all-women orchestra--one of the few; most musical conductor who realizes that only through firmness and *****
groups in concentration camps were comprised of men. tight control can she maintain her orchestra at a level Playing for Time is one of the hundreds of film selections
They were organized for two purposes: to play as prisoners that will please the Nazis enough to ensure their group’s on the streaming service, Hoopla, that is available at no cost
are marched in and out to their places of work each day, ability to stay alive), Viveca Lindfors, Maud Adams, to cardholders of the Boca Raton Public Library. For more
and as entertainment for the Nazi camp commanders and Christine Baranski, Marisa Berenson, and Shirley Knight information and to subscribe to this free service, contact
guards. as a prison guard who in one moment can callously snatch the Library.
In this case, one of the officers is Dr. Mengele---known a young boy from his newly arrived prisoner mother, show
as “the Angel of Death”---whose name many of my readers him off around the women’s prison barracks while almost
will recognize as the infamous Nazi surgeon who conducted desperately cuddling him as if her own child, return him to
gruesome “medical experiments” on live concentration the mother days later...then, without a moment’s hesitation,
camp prisoners (not shown in this film), and who shoot and kill another prisoner who gets in her way.

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