PLAYING FOR TIME
US, 1980, 149 minutes, Colour.
Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Alexander, Maud Adams, Christine Baranski, Verna Bloom, Marisa Berenson.
Directed by Daniel Mann.
Playing For Time is a moving telemovie with a superb Emmy winning performance by Vanessa Redgrave. There was much criticism at the time about her playing a Jewish entertainer in Auschwitz. Miss Redgrave's sympathy for the P.L.O. antagonised many Jewish people. However, she portrays Fania Fenelon with great dignity and sympathy as well as wisdom. The screenplay is by Arthur Miller and evokes memories of so many concentration camp films and the television series, Holocaust. However, with its focus on women, with its more special focus on a group of musicians playing for the administrators of the camp and considered as no better than prostitutes by so many other prisoners, the film is a different viewpoint on the concentration camps. Human dilemmas are quite well presented and there is a basic message that faith in humanity is necessary to sustain hope in situations of despair.
Jane Alexander in the supporting role of the orchestra conductor also won an Emmy for her performance, as did the production and the screenplay. There is excellent support from a gallery of American character actresses with Melanie Mayron standing out. Direction is by Daniel Mann, a director who has drawn Oscar winning performances from Shirley Booth, Anna Magnani, Elizabeth Taylor, and has a wide range of entertainments to his credit. The film is moving and provocative.
1. The impact of the film? The awards it received? The background of interest in The Holocaust during the '70s? Arthur Miller's dramatic work and his contribution to the screenplay? Vanessa Redgrave and her political stances and choice for the central role? The strong supporting cast?
2. Fania Fenelon as a French celebrity, her experience of arrest and imprisonment, surviving and compromise, love and hate, support for fellow prisoners, trust in humanity and survival? The film as based on her memoirs?
3. The viewpoint of the screenplay on World War Two, the Nazi rise to power, cruelty, the concentration camps, the humiliation of prisoners, women prisoners, Jewish prisoners? The compromises in the concentration camps and moral issues? The film's judgment on Nazi Germany?
4. The impact of the film as a telemovie? Its delineation of character, portrayal of situations? Length? Commercial interruptions (and appropriateness)? The importance of music for the plot and for atmosphere? The use of concentration camp sounds for background to the more intimate dramatic action? The interpolation of documentary footage?
5. The prologue and the establishing of Fania Fenelon as entertainer? Her role in Paris? The suddenness of her arrest? The long train trip and its taking the passengers further and further away from how? The mystery of their destination? The cramped conditions in the train, the bucket, the deaths? The arrival at camp? The immediate humiliations? The interaction between the women prisoners? The importance of the prologue in establishing Fania as musician, the invitation to play in the orchestra?
6. The tour de force performance by Vanessa Redgrave? The introduction and her presence in the cabaret, singing style, Jewish and Catholic background, wealth and position, her sympathy in the train, her being humiliated, her capacity for survival, her loss of emotion and feeling, her playing and singing, her growing sense of sorrow. her coping with the crises in the imprisonment, the support she gave as well as the criticism offered of the behaviour of fellow prisoners, the contacts with the administration of the camp? Vanessa Redgrave's presence, ability to convey emotion, the use of long close ups to portray her feelings, thoughts, dilemmas? The impact of her final singing of The Marseillaise?
7. The portrait of Fania Fenelon - as singer, fashionable entertainer, sympathetic human being, her arrival and the question of her coat, the humiliation of the stripping and the shearing of the hair, barracks life and the clashes, the continual hunger? The hard manual work with the intercutting of the prisoners going to be executed, the ovens and the burning, the flaws? The approach to join the orchestra? The personality of the conductor? The audition and her condition that her friend be part of the orchestra? The singing from Madame Butterfly, and the use of Madame Butterfly throughout the film and its lyrics corresponding to the situations of the prisoners? The clashes with the conductor? Her promise to orchestrate and her inability to do it? The performances before the camp administration? The reaction of Mengele? The woman Commandant and her support of Fania, getting her things e.g. putting on the boots? Fania's capacity to hear the stories of the fellow prisoners e.g. the young girl in love, the communist who spoke frankly, the girl and her prostitution for food, the countess, the woman who knew the hospital patients would be gassed?
8. Fania as a symbol of humiliation and suffering, dilemmas and compromise, hope and survival? The old man who singled her out for survival to tell the story? His continued reappearances as a kind of chorus?
9. The contrast with the personality of the conductor? Her relationship with Mahler, her role in Vienna, the musical family background? Her imperious manner, cold personality, dedication to art and her reflections on music? Her not looking out the windows at the suffering and the humiliation? The music that she favoured? Her reaction to the group singing 'Stormy Weather'? Her role of authority among the prisoners, with the line-ups? and information given? Her acquiescing to the authorities? Concerts, her using the music as a way of surviving? The personalities in the group and her harshness with them? Her taking Fania away for talks and the clashes that ensued? Her being humiliated by the authorities? Jealousy of Fania and feelings of resentment? Her growing emotional response to the camp situation? The offer for her to go on concert tour? Her needing approval from Fania? Her emotional response to this and the irony of Frau Schmidt's invitation and the pathos of her death? The grief of the other prisoners passing by her coffin?
10. The girl who prostituted herself: in the train, the bond with Fania, the story about her boyfriend in the Resistance, her huddling close to Fania, her need to be eating? Her singing and being part of the orchestra? Her gradual move into prostitution? The food and her need for it, her unwillingness to share it? The clashes with Fania about approval and disapproval? Tempting Fania with the food and her long pause before eating it? The resentment of the other prisoners? The liberation and her beating Fania, going in the truck with the soldiers? The pathos of the experience in the camp?
11. The other members of the group: the communist girl and her forthright talk about death, the young girl in love with her, the sick woman in the hospital, the new conductor and her madness, the countess and her story about her past life, the angry young woman wanting to go to Israel after the war? A cross section of women in the concentration camp?
12. The Mala incident? Interpreter, escape, hanging?
13. The authorities in the camp? How harshly presented? Mengele and his reputation? His love of music? Admiration for Fania? Visits to the barracks?
14. The woman Commandant and her harsh manner yet trying to be pleasant? The splits in her personality? Favours for the group? Brutality towards incoming prisoners? Getting the boots for Fania? Taking the baby and fondling it? Eventually giving it back? Her inability to cope with the liberation?
15. Frau Schmidt and her harshness, manipulation and accumulation of wealth, wanting to get out, poisoning the conductor?
16. The Nazis and their administration of the camp, harshness and cruelty, starving the prisoners, the burnings, the selection of prisoners for execution? The truckloads of incoming prisoners? The human suffering, especially with mothers separated from children? The bombings and the move towards liberation? The arrival of the Russians and their horror at finding the group of prisoners? The rounding up of the Nazis?
17. Survival, for what? The importance to tell the story and witness to such suffering? The sensitivity presented in the film? Fania's faith in human nature, even of the Nazis? The symbolism of the title, the place of music, performing it, as a means for survival as well as for culture and the hope of the spirit?
