‘Winter Journey‘, a film directed by Anders Østergaard and Erzsébet Rácz, brings to the screen the book by Martin Goldsmith, who is also co-author of the screenplay together with the Danish director. Goldsmith is a renowned musicologist, the son of a family of German Jewish musicians who took refuge in the United States during World War II. As in many other Holocaust survivor families, the parents were silent or told very little about what they went through. The book and now the film recreates the dialogues between Martin and his father George, and reveals little-known episodes in the history of racial persecution that were the prelude to genocide. I had the chance to see this original and impressive film at one of its first screenings, at the Haifa International Film Festival, which this year is a virtual event. It is a film that proves that the theme of the Holocaust is far from being exhausted in cinema. ‘Winter Journey‘ also features the latest on-screen role of the great actor who was Bruno Ganz. And what a role!
The film reveals a biography from a period of history that, although it seems to have been quite intensely explored, still keeps many secrets and dark details, little known to the general public. Gunther Goldschmidt was a young student at a music academy, a Jew from a wealthy and culturally assimilated family, when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Within a few months, along with the entire Jewish population of Germany, he would be reduced to the rank of semi-citizen, deprived of basic rights, including the right to continue and complete his musical studies or to play in one of the great orchestras of Germany. He will find a temporary relief in the activity of the Jewish musicians orchestra of the Jüdische Kulturbund, a cultural organization that Nazi propaganda used as a facade for abroad, and which could operate under increasingly strict conditions of censorship and restrictions. Can culture be a shield in times of hardship? What about love? (In the Jewish orchestra Gunther meets the beautiful violinist who would become his wife). Martin, the son, tries to understand, he needs to know the history of his parents and family, maybe first of all to come to peace with his own identity. The father, George, gradually unravels the layers of silence, rediscovers for himself, for his son, and for us, the readers and spectators, the hidden secrets related to fear, humiliations, broken hopes and illusions. His survival in the end seems more like a lucky game of chance. He and his wife managed to reach the shores of the United States due to their talent and musical professions, in one of the last ships from Europe before America went to war. The rest of the family perishes in the flames and ashes of the Holocaust. Gunther Goldschmidth, now George Goldsmith, after arriving in the new country, will give up his career as a musician. The reasons are not elucidated, the son, the spectators, the readers are left to judge them.
The screenwriter and directors build the film as a reconstruction of Martin’s searches and of the dialogues with his father, carried out in the 1990s, after his mother’s death. The technique of pseudo-interviews is used, with Bruno Ganz taking over the role of the father, and with the camera imitating the style of video filming from 20 or 30 years ago. Documentary sequences and reconstructions are interspersed with actor scenes that combine synthetically to recreate the atmosphere of Germany that sinks into the night of dictatorship. In addition, music, a lot of music, especially of the German composers whose performances gradually became forbidden to Jewish musicians. The relationship between father and son is extremely interesting. The dialogue between them is triggered by the search of the son who is looking for his roots, trying to complete the ‘missing chapters’ (I use the title of another recently read book, with a similar theme) from the family history and his identity. However, Martin the son does not appear in the frame at any time, he is permanently behind the camera, although his voice is the one that leads his father’s confessions. George is permanently in front of the camera and he gradually reveals his life story and the mechanisms of survival and adaptation in the extremely difficult circumstances in which life put him. The huge actor who was Bruno Ganz ends his career with a strong, convincing, moving role. ‘Winter Journey‘ becomes a metaphor not only for the biographical journey of the hero of the film Georg Goldsmith but also for the journey in winter, without return, of the actor Bruno Ganz.