Phoenix—Movie Review

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by Peter J. O'Connell

Phoenix. Released: July 2015  (USA). Runtime: 98 mins. Rated: PG-13 for some thematic elements and brief suggestive material.

In The Art of Fiction (1884), the novelist Henry James wrote: “We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnee; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.” Alfred Hitchcock applied a similar idea to film, although he used the term “MacGuffin” (“a plot device that motivates the characters and advances the story”) instead of donnee.

Movie audiences usually readily accept the donnees/MacGuffins of certain genres, science-fiction, say—time travel is possible; some characters have superhuman powers; etc. But they sometimes at first resist them in other types of films. The question then is whether the skills of the filmmaker and his cast and crew are sufficient to overcome the initial resistance and bring about what the poet Coleridge called the “willing suspension of disbelief” that is essential for enjoying fiction and drama.

Such issues as these come to the fore in considering the German film Phoenix, recently released in the U.S. Phoenix, directed and with a screenplay by Christian Petzold, is set in the devastated Berlin of 1945. Nelly (Nina Hoss), a Jewish singer, has survived a concentration camp but suffered facial disfigurement there. Brought by her friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) to Berlin, Nelly undergoes plastic surgery but insists on having her face restored as much as possible to what it was like before her imprisonment rather than what the doctor recommends, something closer to that of a popular celebrity. The doctor does what Nelly asks.

When her operation is over, Nelly sets out to find her husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), who is not Jewish and does not know that she survived the camp. She finds him working as a busboy in a nightclub, the Phoenix. But Johnny does not recognize Nelly as Nelly! What he thinks is that she is simply someone who resembles Nelly, resembles her enough to be passed off as Nelly to a Swiss bank, which would enable Johnny to obtain control of money owed to Nelly as a result of the deaths of her entire family at the hands of the Nazis.

Johnny persuades Nelly, now calling herself “Esther,” to go along with his scam. “Esther,” struggling to recover from both physical and psychological trauma, finds herself being “trained” by Johnny to be Nelly. Seeking love and caught up in a world of multiple—and lost—identities, Nelly disregards warnings from Lene and other sources about Johnny's true nature. The scam proceeds through various twists and turns to a stunning conclusion in which Nelly/Esther sings again after years of fear.

Yes, Petzold and his cast and crew do bring about that “willing suspension of disbelief” of which Coleridge wrote. Petzold directs in a spare, straightforward way that, paradoxically, makes his plot, with its demanding donnee, more convincing than if he had attempted various maneuvers to make it more “believable.”

“Believability” comes from the superb acting of Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld. Seldom has the tentativeness of trauma been more tenderly depicted than in Hoss' performance here. And the ruggedly handsome Zehrfeld masterfully walks the line between attractiveness and sleaziness. Both Hoss and Zehrfeld deserve international recognition. And so does director Petzold.

“Footnote” to the film: Impersonation or “doubling” or assumption of a new identity figured in a number of entries in the popular film noir genre of the World War II and postwar years. Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) is a notable example. Interesting films dealing with plastic surgery from that era include Dark Passage (!947), with Humphrey Bogart, and Strange Impersonation (1952), with Paul Henreid.