The Piano Player (1999)

Beautiful acting and directing. Very well written script.

One woman and three men.

Human Relationship at its best.

One woman can change everything wrong in life...

Restaurant ( Food ) is the most important thing beside woman.

It is better to feel than to think and be creative...

Thanks and Regards.

Sam Rupani

Houston, Texas, U.S.A.

Fmovies: It doesn't happen very often that I rate a movie 10 out of 10. Not even "Citizen Cane" got this highest mark.

But "Gloomy Sunday" really deserves it. A film that brings real pulsating life onto the big screen: Love - (mainly) three men who try to find their luck with the same woman.

Friendship - between two men and a woman. Loyalty to the end. Betrayal - Hans turns out not to be a real friend of Ilona and László. Melancholia - they do what they have to do, what life demands of them. Passion - in the good and the bad sense of that word. Revenge - not all sinners can get away with it, even if it takes time... The background for all this is the 30s and 40s in Budapest, Hungary, the Nazi threat right before your entrance door.

You might argue that the song itself isn't as powerful as you might expect it. All right. But the script is superb, a story that could really have happened like this, a narrative that doesn't bore you and develops it's characters properly so you understand them. Without inflating them to some unrealistic capsules. The figures aren't painted black and white, there is the grey you usually find in real life. The performances of the main actors are superb. Thinking of Ben Becker and Joachim Król this isn't a surprise. But also Erika Marozán and Stefano Dionisi, which I haven't seen in another movie before, do everything to grant them an Academy Award.

Maybe I can't express my admiration properly in English (which is a foreign language for me), but if anything I wrote gave you the idea that the movie might be interesting ... give it a try!

Rolf Schubel, the director, has created a movie around a menage a trois that was very civilized. Ilona loves Joachim, but she also loves Andras, the piano player. Andras, is the composer of the suicide provoking song that was the rage of the 30s in Budapest, as well as in the rest of Europe.

The setting is a somehow fancy restaurant in Budapest at the onset of World War II. Laszlo, the owner, is having an affair with Ilona, his assistant, who also works at the restaurant. Enter Andras: Ilona is instantly smitten by his good looks, his obvious youth, in contrast with Joachim, who is much older but might not be exactly what she wants to find between her sheets. Joachim goes along with the very civilized arrangement among them. One night is spent with Andras and the next one with Laszlo, who after all, is the one with the money and paying the bill!

Of course, the story is too good to be true. There is Hans, the young German who adores the fine cuisine offered at the restaurant and is taken with Ilona's beauty. Hans will return as a Nazi officer and he'll be the force that destroys the happiness of this trio and who, at the end, has to pay for the horrible things he did in his youth. This part was very predictable, since one knows after seeing so many stories like this, it always ends tragically because of Nazis, even friendly ones, as Hans was, deep down inside hates Joachim because he had what he never could have, Ilona. Therefore, Joachim will have to disappear from the picture.

The film is easy to watch. The melody will stay with the viewer forever, but alas, like a good Hungarian dishes, too much paprika will spoil the goulash.

The Piano Player fmovies. This beautiful and moving film provides via a sensitively handled love affair an intriguingly subtle morality play.

The owner of a restaurant saves the life of a German who is trying to commit suicide after being turned down - by the restaurateur's mistress.

This character goes on to achieve power as a Nazi. He uses his power to save 1000 Jews from the concentration camps, and makes a fortune for himself in the process.

He does good simply to benefit himself. Was it right to save his life? Had he died, so many other lives would not have been saved. His life is interlinked with the lives and deaths of other people.

It would be unfair to elaborate further on this theme, as it would give away the plot.

The film also returns to the idea of life and death with its theme of suicide; suicide being the ultimate way to take control of your own life.

With all of these thoughts, it is still an entertaining and uplifting movie, with the most exquisite theme. Life and death are united in the English lyrics given at the end, which combine gloom and hope in the most extraordinary fashion.

A fair bit of philosophy built into a simple and tastefully done move makes for good entertainment.

"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 710.

The charm of this film consist in the way to tell old things, in the description art of a well - known world.

"Gloomy Sunday" is a kind of Frankenstein's creature: pieces of "Lili Marleen", "Casablanca" or "The story of 1900", slices of Hungarian's atmosphere, Nazi ghost and menage en trois.

For all that, it is a good movie, his virtue is, in fact, just absence of originality. Like many other movies, the spell is result of a mysterious flavor who persist in your memory months, years and in special moment it saves the image of a sweet trip.

Undoubtedly, it is the story of a song, in same measure that the song is the only character. But, at second sight, it is a warm homage to Mitteleuropa, the gorgeous Kakania's spirit. The lost of youth and the last recollection's skin. The shadow of Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" is powerful and insidious.

A subtle wishfulness anatomy. And a song like his backbone.