Playing for Time

 

Playing for Time 1980

• Director: Daniel Mann and Joseph Sargent
• Seen by this director: Mann: Teahouse of the August Moon. Sargent: Warm Springs, Out of the Ashes, Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,
• Based on the book by Fania Fénelon
• Cast: Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Alexander, Maud Adams, Christine Baranski, Robin Bartlett, Marisa Berenson, Viveca Lindfors, Melanie Mayron, Max Wright, Shirley Knight
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Vanessa Redgrave – Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, The Thirteenth Tale, The Butler, A Song for Marion, Coriolanus, Atonement, The Pledge, Girl Interrupted, Cradle Will Rock, Lulu on the Bridge, Deep Impact, Mrs Dalloway, Wilde, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Howards End, The Ballad of Sad Café, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Prick Up Your Ears, The Devils, O What a Lovely War, Isadora, Blow-Up, Camelot
• Jane Alexander – Terminator Salvation, Fur, Warm Springs, The Cider House Rules, Kramer vs Kramer
• Maud Adams – Radioskugga, James Bond
• Christine Baranski – The Big Bang Theory, Mamma Mia 1&2, Into the Woods, Chicago, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
• Robin Bartlett – The Glass Castle, Inside Llewyn Davis, Shutter Island, Postcards from the Edge, Moonstruck, Sophie’s Choice
• Marisa Berenson  - Colour Me Kubrick, Cabaret
• Max Wright – The Norm Show, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Snow Falling on Cedars, Alf, Reds
• Shirley Knight – The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, As Good As It Gets, The Outer Limits and many other series
• Why? A good film.
• Seen: Once before. Now 18 September 2023        

             Fania Fénelon (Redgrave), a celebrated and renowned musician from Paris, ends up in Auschwitz. She’s Jewish and a member of the resistance.

       She’s recruited into the prison women’s orchestra. They play for the pleasure of the Nazi guards, they play as other prisoners arrive at the camp and are separated into queues, as they are marched off to work, as they are marched to the gas chambers.

       The other prisoners hate them.

       Fania struggles to keep her sanity and humanity in the midst of the horror.

       It’s perhaps the best film about Auschwitz I’ve seen and in an excellent cast, Redgrave is nothing less than phenomenal.

 5* of 5