I enjoy totalitarian entertainment as much as the next man, which maybe is why I was so let down by this movie, recently shown at the 16th International Film Historical Congress in Berlin. I expected singing, dancing, and good cheer. But it was straight propaganda instead. Ilse Werner meets craggy, Aryan Carl Raddatz, when he gives her tickets to see the opening of the '36 Olympics, in particular Hitler and the crowd of 500,000 Hitler-saluting. They fall in love that weekend, but then Carl is ordered to go to Spain on a secret mission for the Luftwaffe. After, we presume, bombing Spanish peasants, he comes back three years later and wants to find Ilse, but the new war gets him distracted flying missions locating British shipping for U-Boots to sink. This means a lot of really loud heel-clicking and outlandishly fascistic uniforms (Carl has the usual eagle-and-swastika badge, then a gold Nazi eagle pin on his breast pocket, and a little ceremonial sword hung from his hip). Nearly all of the comic relief is military (e.g. a fat butcher in the Wehrmacht who steals French pigs; Luftwaffe mechanics with thick Berlin accents). And every third shot is framed to include a) a Nazi eagle and/or swastika, b) a framed photo of Hitler, or c) a poster shouting, "Watch out for spies! Be careful in conversations!"
Despite the hurried appearance of big-name stars, there's almost no music in this picture, and a lot of that isn't hit songs, but Nazi children's choirs in regional dress, blond and muscular U-Boot sailors singing mournfully to an accordion, and rousing march music played alongside documentary footage of aerial bombardment. Nor is there ever any tension that Ilse won't marry Carl; the surprise is that her old beau/would-be beau (this is unclear), who ends up as Carl's bomber navigator, abandons his passion immediately on learning that she's his commanding officer's squeeze and gives her away with immense enthusiasm.
Some Nazi entertainment is a blast ("Gasparone," for example.) This film isn't; there's not much there for humor, romance, or music, and the pacing is leaden. But the film is a powerful experience. With its unintended ironies, "Wunschkonzert" is more painful and shocking than any Hollywood weepie about the Second World War. "The young people today," Ilse's aunt says knowingly, "act as though we hadn't made the same mistakes 30 years ago!" That was in 1940, supposedly referring to flirtation and love. Then the troops are marching off to war, and Auntie, Ilse, and her suitor drink: "To the beautiful future!"
