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Film Reviews
the casual viewer, however, is the real significance of
Alma's confounding passivity and elusive personality.
Rather than choosing just one Alma persona to
portray, Bride of the Wind chooses many Almas, as
many Almas as there were men in her life. She
embodies a somewhat late version of a classic nineteenth century phenomenon, a "type," one of those
spiritualists, actresses, artist's models, dilettantes, and
demimondaines that Sheldon Norman Grebstein has
called the "Victorian Vamp" ("Dreiser's Victorian
Vamp," American Studies [Spring 1963]: 3-11). They
appeared at the time on stage as Sarah Bernhardt, in
the paintings of Edvard Munch, and in novels like
Emile Zola's Nana (1880), Theodore Dreiser's Sister
Carrie (1900), Henry James's The Bostonians (1886),
and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (1905), and
they figured latterly in the screen personae of Marlene
Dietrich and Greta Garbo.
This "Alma" is nebulous and vague because, like her
mother (a professional actress), she enacted with
breathless variety and virtuosity the "roles," the fantasy projections, of her lovers. Her real talent was not
creative but imitative. She excelled in what historian
Bram Djikstra describes as "the characteristic feminine imitative capacity of 'reflecting' the world in
which [she ] lived without ever really understanding its
deeper meaning, its intellectual dimension" (Idols of
Perversity [1986], p. 121). Thus, for Mahler, she was the
maternal secretary and muse; for Kokoschka, the
erotic model and dangerous lover; for Werfel, the
creative artist. Dissatisfied with choosing just one kind
of "Alma" to depict, Bride of the Wind chooses many.
As Alma did herself.
JOHN C. TIBBETTS
University of Kansas
CONSPIRACY. Produced by Nick Gillott; directed by
Frank Pierson; screenplay by Loring Mandel. 2001;
color; running time 96 minutes. Distributed by Home
Box Office (HBO).
Conspiracy is a docudrama about the infamous
Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, at which
Nazi officials discussed implementation of the "Final
Solution." Chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, head of the
Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the meeting
brought together a dozen representatives from state
and party agencies involved in the genocide of Europe's Jews. The notoriety of the meeting stems in
large part from the fact that a summary of the proceedings-the so-called Wannsee Protokoll authored
by Adolf Eichmann, who was also present-survived
the war. Historians have used the document to implicate a broad spectrum of German bureaucracies in the
mass murder, to demonstrate the leading role played
by the SS, and to underscore the cold premeditation
with which the killing was conceived and planned.
The significance of the meeting, however, remains a
matter of some disagreement among scholars of Nazi
Germany who have been involved in a broader debate
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
about the origins of the "Final Solution." Christian
Gerlach, for example, has recently suggested that the
prevailing interpretation of the conference as a discussion of logistical details actually underestimates the
importance of the event. Gerlach argues instead that
the conference must be understood as having been
closely connected with Adolf Hitler's decision to extend the genocide from Eastern European Jews to
Jews throughout Europe, a decision that Gerlach dates
to just a few weeks before the conference (see Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Erniihrung, Volkermord: Deutsche
Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg [1998], chapter 2).
One reason historians disagree over such issues is
that the Protokoll itself is a deliberately vague summary of the conference rather than a precise transcript
of the discussions. Eichmann drafted the document to
privilege the interests of the SS, and specifically the
RSHA, for which he worked; he referred to the mass
murder of the Jews only euphemistically. For the
purposes of making a film, then, the Protokoll provides
a plot summary but not a script.
In translating the document into a film, therefore,
the makers of Conspiracy took certain liberties. Cinematic license is most conspicuous when the film presents conversations that are mentioned neither in the
Protokoll itself nor in related documentation. One
tendency of these embellishments is to overstate the
degree of disagreement and dissent at the conference,
elevating what were most likely technical concerns into
moral objections. For example, Friedrich Wilhelm
Kritzinger, representative of the Reich Chancellery, is
depicted as a bold dissenter, protesting to the meeting
that Hitler had personally assured him that killing of
Jews would not be the state's policy. There is no
documented instance, however, of Kritzinger actually
having said this. It is likely that this fictitious comment
was inserted into the script to reinforce the dramatic
function assigned to Kritzinger in the film, namely that
of moral dissenter, a role which he, in actuality, did not
play at the conference.
Similarly, the film shows Heydrich working behind
the scenes, pressuring and cajoling Kritzinger and
Wilhelm Stuckart of the Interior Ministry, ultimately
securing the assent of both men to his point of view.
We do not know whether these private conversations
really occurred. Heydrich is also depicted asserting to
his listeners that the labor mobilization of Jews would
merely serve as a cover for their liquidation. But both
the Protokoll and the reality of Nazi measures at the
time suggest a more complicated relationship between
forced labor and extermination.
Conspiracy will naturally be compared to the German film Die Wannseekonferenz (dir. Heinz Schirk;
1984), a similarly conceived docudrama based on the
Protokoll. The earlier German film conforms to the
text of the Protokoll more closely, but this does not
necessarily mean that it is more historically accurate.
For example, Conspiracy's most dramatic deviation
from the Protokoll is its presentation of a discussion of
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Film Reviews
the murder process, including the nascent technology
for mass gassing and cremation. This addition, however, is justified. In his interrogation by the Israelis in
1960, Eichmann admitted that such a discussion had
indeed taken place, but he had deleted it from the
official summary.
Jointly underwritten by HBO and BBC, Conspiracy
features high production values and well-known actors. Kenneth Branagh dominates the film with his
characterization of Heydrich. Branagh evokes the cultured yet swashbuckling image that Heydrich cultivated, so much so that I wonder whether the film
makes Heydrich into a more compelling figure than he
actually was. Moreover, Branagh comes off as seeming
a good deal older than Heydrich, who was thirty-seven
years old when he presided at Wannsee. Stanley
Tucci's interpretation of Adolf Eichmann as a proactive anti-Semite represents a refreshing departure
from the old, and inaccurate, cliche of the "banal"
bureaucrat.
"This film," we are informed in the closing credits,
"is based on a true story, with some scenes, events, and
characters created or changed for dramatic purposes."
Although academic specialists will doubtlessly be perturbed by inaccuracies and interpolations, Conspiracy,
to its credit, does not stray very far from what is
factually plausible. The main danger with this kind of
film is that most viewers will not be able to tell the
difference between plausible speculation and documented fact.
ALAN E. STEINWEIS
University of Nebraska,
Lincoln
LUMUMBA. Produced by Jacques Bidou; directed by
Raoul Peck; screenplay by Raoul Peck and Pascal
Bonitzer. 2000; color; 115 minutes. France (French,
Belgian, German, and Haitian coproduction); French
with English subtitles. Distributed by Zeitgeist Films.
In 1961, shortly before his assassination, newly elected
Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba predicted: "History will one day have its say, but it will not be
the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington or the
United Nations will teach." Three decades after Lumumba's untimely death, Raoul Peck has created a
powerful testament to the possibility of a history as
written by the vanquished. Peck has said: "This film is
not an 'adaptation,' it aims to be a true story. I want to
extract the cinematic narrative from reality by remaining as true to the facts as possible." With an eye for
authenticity and an urge toward documentation, Peck
attempts to rescue the story of Lumumba's brief,
explosive political career and its attendant legacy from
its relative obscurity. For Peck, this represents more
than a simple retelling of the historical facts from a
new perspective. Audiences familiar with the history
covered in the film will recognize many of film's pivotal
scenes as living recreations of famous still photographs
and newsreel footage from Lumumba's short political
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675
life and assassination. In Lumumba, Peck is doing far
more than simply recreating Lumumba's story and
Congolese history for a generation and a wider audience that mayor may not be familiar with it. Instead,
he is using the debris of official history to craft a
meditation on the early postcolonial moment in a way
that gives a new significance to the events surrounding
Lumumba's murder. His documentary-style recreation
of authentic still photographs and newsreel footage is
alternately both arresting and dynamic, as he takes
hold of the historical record and recreates it as a
brilliant meditative lament for what might have been.
When Lumumba died in 1961, the innocence of the
early postcolonial moment largely died with him. With
Lumumba, Peck has managed to produce a film that
celebrates the innocence of that moment at the same
time that it laments its loss. "Yes, I, too made mistakes
and it would all end badly," intones the film's voiceover, which we are meant to take as Lumumba's
after-death reflections, "We thought we controlled our
own destiny but other powerful enemies were pulling
the strings." As a postcolonial lament, Lumumba is
very much about what liberation has cost and will
continue to keep costing people of African descent at
home and abroad. "You won't tell the children everything will you? They wouldn't understand. Don't tell
them that. Say nothing," the voice-over instructs an
unnamed listener as the soldiers dismember Lumumba's body.
In his final letter to his wife, Lumumba anticipated a
day in which "Africa will write its own history, and it
will be, to the north and south of the Sahara, a history
of glory and dignity." That fabled day of African
liberation has clearly not arrived, although the Belgian
government recently issued an official apology for its
role in Lumumba's death. What the film does, then, in
memorializing the long-forgotten voice of pan-African
liberation, is to bring viewers who are both familiar
and unfamiliar with that dream directly back to a
moment when it still seemed a not-too-distant possibility. The film's ultimate brilliance lies in its ability to
do this at the same time that it calls viewers not only to
question what they already know about Lumumba,
Congolese history, and the early postcolonial moment
but also to query the construction of history itself as a
presumably static or neutral act.
AMY ABUGO ONGIRI
University of California,
Riverside
No MAN'S LAND (Nikogarsnja zemlja). Produced by
Frederique Dumas-Zajdela, Marc Baschet, and Cedomirc Kolar; written and directed by Danis Tanovic,
2001; color; 98 minutes. Slovenia; Bosnian, Serbian,
Croatian, French, and English dialogue. Distributed by
MGMlUnited Artists.
Danis Tanovic, a brilliant documentary filmmaker
from Bosnia and Herzegovina, focuses on the plight of
three soldiers trapped in a trench midway between
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