Steven Mackintosh
MOVIE REVIEW
'The Aryan Couple'
This stylish British thriller piles on the suspense.
By Kevin Thomas
Times Staff Writer
December 10, 2004
Nearly 60 years have passed since the end of World War II, yet "The Aryan Couple" demonstrates that, although the events of the Holocaust have been exhaustively documented, they can still serve as a background for acute suspense. In a seamless blend of fact and fiction, this handsome film is a splendid, stirring feat of the imagination in which a gifted, well-chosen cast headed by Martin Landau and Judy Parfitt have been matched by John Daly's astute direction and by Daly and Kendrew Lascelles' script, which is at once a clever feat of adroit dramatic construction, succinct characterization and an appreciation of the resilience of the human spirit.
In an unnamed city in Hungary, 1944, Landau's Josef Krauzenberg is quietly drawing upon his formidable resources of courage and dignity, on the most difficult day of his life. A steel magnate, he first bids goodbye to his devoted office staff, a fraction of his more than 3,000 employees. In the evening, he and his elegant wife, Rachel (Parfitt), will leave their townhouse for their country palace, which houses their renowned art collection. They will be entertaining at dinner none other than Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler (Danny Webb), who has in hand documents for them to sign, which state that in return for all their holdings the Krauzenbergs and their 30 relatives will be given safe passage to Palestine via Switzerland.
That such a transaction could even be contemplated was due to the Europa Plan, devised by activists in Slovakia's Jewish Center, by which Slovakian Jews could be saved from deportation and extermination by ransom. The group also tried with little success to export the plan to other European countries, including Hungary.
After months of negotiations and wrangling with the Germans, Josef Krauzenberg fully realizes how risky the deal he struck with the Germans is for him and his relatives. For that matter, so does Himmler, who has arrived without advance notice to Adolf Eichmann (Steve Mackintosh), a fanatic anti-Semite and chief of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo, because he fears Eichmann will betray the Krauzenbergs, whose relatives he has already rounded up. Himmler understands that because of the stature of Krauzenberg and his steelworks, such treachery would not be in the best interests of the Third Reich. Himmler doesn't subject the Krauzenbergs to Eichmann at their dinner table but allows him to join them for coffee afterward. It boggles the mind to witness the cultured and sophisticated Krauzenbergs being forced to entertain not one but two of history's greatest monsters.
They are, however, not entirely alone. Their last remaining servants, "The Aryan Couple," are a young German husband and wife, Hans (Kenny Doughty) and Ingrid Vassman (Caroline Carver), and the relationship between the Krauzenbergs, who are childless, and the Vassmans is one of deep mutual respect and affection. Yet the question of what is to happen to the Vassmans in the wake of their employers' scheduled departure doubles the film's suspense quotient.
In Landau's Krauzenberg, loosely based on the Hungarian Jewish industrialist Manfred Weiss, a gentle manner hides firm resolve while Parfitt's Rachel has an aristocratic manner and an acerbic bitterness that borders on dangerousness, given the circumstances. On the surface the Vassmans seem uncomplicated and obedient, but appearances prove deceptive. In Webb's Himmler a veneer of gentlemanliness could scarcely be thinner, and although not on his best day was the real Eichmann ever as good-looking as Mackintosh, the actor has a blandness of appearance and manner that makes this historic epitome of evil all the more chilling. As a brutal Eichmann aide, Christopher Fulford heads a fine supporting cast.
Engrossing and satisfying, "The Aryan Couple" shows just how vital a movie made in the solid British style of traditional filmmaking can be.
'The Aryan Couple'
MPAA rating: PG-13 for violence, disturbing images and thematic elements
Times guidelines: Too intense for children
Martin Landau...Josef Krauzenberg
Judy Parfitt...Rachel Krauzenberg
Kenny Doughty...Hans Vassman
Caroline Carver...Ingrid Vassman
Danny Webb...Heinrich Himmler
An RS Entertainment release of a Film and Music Entertainment presentation. Producer-director John Daly. Executive producers Ilya Golubovich, Arkadiy Golubovich. Screenplay Daly, Kendrew Lascelles. Cinematographer Sergei Kozlov. Editor Matthew Booth. Costumes Jagna Janicka. Production designer Andrzej Halinski. Art director Art director Joanna Doroskiewicz, Set decorator Wieslawa Chojkowska. Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes. Exclusively at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.
The Aryan Couple - N.Y. Times
''The Aryan Couple,'' directed by John Daly, is a minor example of a major genre: the feel-good Holocaust movie.It is not that Mr. Daly's film, which begins with a tour of the desolate modern-day landscape of Auschwitz, lacks seriousness. On the contrary, it is drenched in a somber piety abundantly conveyed by Igor Khoroshev's overwrought score and etched into the earnest faces of the talented cast. The problem, as it is so often in well-intentioned movies of this kind, is that rather than illuminate the enormity of Nazism, ''The Aryan Couple'' trades upon our knowledge of it for emotional impact.
The history that suggested this fictional story involves the Europa Plan, an arrangement conceived in 1944 in which wealthy European Jews traded their wealth and property for their lives. Martin Landau, with marvelous dignity, plays Josef Krauzenberg, a Hungarian steel manufacturer who is about to sign over his factories, his palace and his art collection to Heinrich Himmler in exchange for the safe passage of himself; his wife, Rachel (Judy Parfitt); and their extended family to Switzerland and then Palestine. Left behind will be his servants, Ingrid and Hans Vassman (Kenny Doughty and Caroline Carver), the Aryan couple of the title, who are actually undercover Jewish operatives in the anti-German resistance.
In other hands the story might have made for a sinister, queasy thriller, perhaps in the manner of early Hitchcock. But in spite of the relish with which able British actors portray high-ranking Nazis -- tapping their cigarettes on silver cases, knocking back draughts of whiskey, clicking their heels, just as in a hundred other movies -- ''The Aryan Couple'' sags and slogs.
The climactic dinner party, in which both Himmler (Danny Webb) and Adolf Eichmann (Steven Mackintosh) show up at the Krauzenberg mansion, could have been a macabre set piece, with the ultimate barbarism dressed up in the raiment of civility. Hitchcock or Roman Polanski might have known what to do with it, but Mr. Daly is too flat-footed and cautious a director and too timid a writer to give the horror of the situation its full measure of absurdity.
Instead there is an inadvertently ridiculous concluding chase, complete with drawn pistols and chuffing trains, in which we find ourselves rooting for Himmler against Eichmann and cheering (or chuckling) when a particularly odious Nazi dies an extravagantly hammy death. By then the simple gravity of the early scene has been frittered away in ungainly speechifying and sluggish suspense.
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