"Gloomy Sunday" was a movie I happen to see by chance. Apparently my city is the only city in North America that is showing this movie. It is playing in one theatre in a small suburb. My father and I went to see this movie he wanted to see it because we are Hungarian and wanted to hear what kind of music would be played. To my surprise I found that I had actually enjoyed the movie. My expectations were low, only because I didn't have a clue as to what to expect but, I'm very happy I saw this film. It's one of the best films I've seen so far this year. The movie is about a few things. One of it's main story-lines concerns a love triangle concerning Laszlo (Joachim Krol), Ilona (Erika Marazan) and Andras (Stefano Dionisi). Laszlo owns a restaurant and Ilona is his girlfriend. Laszlo is hoping to have some music in his restaurant and hires a piano player, Andras. Andras likes Ilona. And Ilona it seems likes Andras. So he movie it seems will be a love story set during the beginning of WW2. But, there's also another story building. Andras has written a song called "Gloomy Sunday". He has written for Ilona. But soon the song becomes a hit. It's a beautiful song that seems to have a very strange effect on whoever listens to it. Soon afterwards people are committing suicide. And here we have a case of fact stranger than fiction. For it is this part of the story that is actually true. "Gloomy Sunday" is based on this story with the love theme used as a backdrop. I don't know if or when this movie will be wider release in North America. But I hope people will go see this movie. In fact though I doubt that people from this country have even heard of this movie. Here is a movie that NEEDS to be better known. It is a small gem. *** out of **** or a 7\10.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)

This is the kind of movie that brings to us a deep and abiding sadness that ultimately results in what the Greek tragedians called catharsis. Set in Budapest just before and during World War II we see the tragedy that engulfed Europe played out in a triangle of love involving a Jewish restaurateur, Laszlo (Joachim Krol), a brilliant young pianist, Andras (Stefano Dionisi), and a beautiful waitress Ilone (Ericka Marozsan). That triangle is besieged by an outsider who is the antithesis of all that love should be. He is Hans Wieck (BenBecker), a German Nazi.

Ericka Marozsan who plays the waitress Ilone is strikingly beautiful and sweetly and irresistibly charming as she must be since the two men agree to share her. They can't help themselves and in differing ways she loves them both. Whom she doesn't love is Hans Wieck.

Like so many movies set during this most shameful time for Europe and much of humankind in general, there is something close to an idyllic scene before the deluge, and then it all come apart in the most horrific way, with the cattle cars and the mindless brutality of genocide and war. And yet there were those who endured, signified in the movie as Ilone puts it, "après le deluge, nous"(which is a play on the words of France's Louis XV who supposed said in the face of revolution, " après moi, le deluge," meaning after they kill me, the flood.

(This is an almost totally irrelevant aside, but as I looked up the Louis XV quote I ran across a surprising but strangely apt usage of the phrase by Roger Bannister, the first person to break the four minute barrier in the mile race. He is quoted as saying "après moi, le deluge," meaning in his case, "after I break four minute mile barrier, there will be many others." He was right.) The plot revolves around a song "Gloomy Sunday," composed by the piano player. The song is sadly beautiful and for some people the effect is so intense that they kill themselves.

Now to a kind of explication of the story from the point of view of who got what and what the moral or existential lesson of the movie might be.

The film begins in the present. We see a maitre d' of a restaurant in Budapest--or perhaps he is the owner--awaiting an important party that will dine at his restaurant. They arrive. They are German. They dine. The song is played and the important man who had been there many years before during the war falls dead. We don't know it but he is the last victim of the song, and he is the ex-Nazi Hans, now a very successful business man. The maitre d' is the son of the beautiful waitress. But we don't know that yet. This is the kind of film that, when it is over, you will want to go back and see the initial scene again. When you do you will realize that it wasn't the song that killed him. The only way most people will realize that is to see the opening scene again. If you missed it, don't feel bad. I didn't even get it completely until just few moments ago.

Who got what? The evil Nazi who betrayed a friend and forced himself upon a woman he supposed loved and then betrayed her, became rich, successful and lived into his eighties. The brilliant composer died by his own hand ironically with the gun of the Nazi oppressor. The Jewish restaurateur, who is a wise and deeply loving man, is sent away on a cattle car and is never heard from again. Ilone is given the restaurant and bears a son. There is some ambiguity about who the father might be. He could be any of the three men. Since the way the scenes are ordered forcing us to see her pregnant at the grave of the young composer, yet only after she has been forced into intercourse by the Nazi, we are uncertain. The cinematic timing would suggest Hans, but what she says to the grave of the composer suggests the child is his. However when we see in retrospect (in the first scene of the movie) the man identified as her son (the maitre d') it is clear that the restaurateur is the father.

So who triumphs? Nobody of course. The seduction of Europe by fascism was a great tragedy for Europe. Ilone survives and the restaurateur survives in the person of his son. Again what is the message? And I think the answer is, there is no message, there is no contrived or ordered moral to the story. There are only the blunt and mindless facts of what happened to these people and to Europe leading to a sense of the melancholy mystery of life for which we have no answer.

Ericka Marozsan is my new true love. She is talented, captivating, sensuous, smooth and very winning. She is a bit too beautiful for these old eyes to bear. It is funny that I had never seen her before, but she plays mostly in Hungarian productions.

Beautiful Budapest, end of the thirties. Lazlo Szabo a middle-aged jew Hungarian runs a chic restaurant with a beautiful waitress,Ilona who is also his mistress. One day they decide to hire a pianist, and it's Ilona who choose. And it's a good choice because the handsome young man, Andras, creates a wonderful mood on the premises. Little by little he falls desperately in love with Ilona and composes specially for her a song, very melancholic, and a bit misterious. He calls it " Gloomy sunday ". This song brings surprisingly a lot of suicides. The love-triangle functions pretty well until the time a german customer, Hans, who comes regularly in the restaurant falls in love with Ilona, without success.A few years later the german army invades Hungary, Hans is back as a highly placed officer and the jewish condition of Lazlo is going to complicate the lives of the four protagonists. This movie is a master- piece and I'd bet if the film had been produced in Hollywood with Stone, Douglas and Harrison Ford, directed by Cassavetes it would have gained several Oscars. It has all a movie fan can expect from a good film -and more. Beautiful scenery, very good story, marvelous music, talent of the actors, and even a bit of sex. I rarely see a picture twice on the same day. This time I did.