----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Donald Larsson inquired about the song and the singer of Lil Marlene. While in Germany in 1981, I wrote the attached review, which I hope will be of interest. Review of Fassbinder's "Lili Marleen" Richard C. Figge HEIDELBERG, WEST GERMANY One of the lesser paradoxes of World War II was the fact that the Germans' favorite war song was also the favorite song of the Allies. Recorded at the beginning of the war by Lale Andersen, "Lili Marleen" made absolutely no impression until by chance a disc jockey with Germany's Radio Belgrade started using it as a signoff number at three minutes to ten in the evening-the record ends with a bugle blowing taps. The piece became so popular, among Germans and Allies alike, that for three minutes every night the firing on the front lines stopped as the men on both sides listened to the sentimental song about the soldier whom the war has separated from his sweetheart. Lale Andersen was rocketed to fame on the basis of this one song. Her highly romanticized memoirs tell of her career-the rise to stardom, her love for a Jewish resistance worker and musician, her own involvement with the resistance, and her nearly fatal fall from grace with the Nazis. These memoirs provide the basis for "Lili Marleen," the new film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany's most prominent director. In this picture Fassbinder has abandoned the coldness and austerity of his earlier films and concentrated on mass market appeal. The marketability of the film abroad is also enhanced by the fact that it was shot in English and features international stars Mel Ferrer and Giancarlo Giannini in addition to the Fassbinder regulars. "Lili Marleen" is bright and glossy, so striking in its technical craftsmanship, so smooth in its evocation of the war years, that viewers here are speaking of Fassbinder's having entered a Hollywood phase in his career. Fassbinder has intentionally chosen a film style to reflect a kind of consciousness. The lush visual effects recall not Hollywood so much as they do the films produced by the big German UFA studio of the thirties and forties. The Nazis exploited the media, especially film, more effectively than any other totalitarian regime, and they made it easy for people to close their eyes to real events in favor of the appealing version of reality provided by the Ministry of Propaganda. The young singer Wilkie (played by Hanna Schygulla) is an opportunist and political innocent. When confronted by her Jewish lover (Giannini) with her cooperation with the Nazis, she protests, "But I'm only singing a song-there can't be anything wrong with that!" Like so many others, she is interested in surviving and prevailing in difficult times, and she is intoxicated by celebrity and the glamorous trappings of Nazi pageantry. In a recent interview Fassbinder said, "In 'Lili Marleen' I have tried to make clear that certain aesthetic possibilities of Nazism can be fascinating. And Wilkie is captivated by everything that gives her a chance of a career. People closed their eyes to what was going on and were left with only an aesthetic reality. Even when Wilkie was involved with the resistance movement, it was only out of love for her friend, not out of political conviction. Her consciousness changes only when she see things that make it impossible for her to close her eyes and ears any longer." Unfortunately, Fassbinder's intention to show a false consciousness through all these appealing images is a risky one that may be lost on many audiences. The expert handling of soft focus, star filters, and studio lighting, the slick camera work and editing, the lavish sets and costumes will make the film seem for many viewers like a nostalgic re-creation of the war years in Germany. In the end, Fassbinder's entertaining film glosses over the problems it claims to deal with. The tactics of the Gestapo are trivialized, and Nazi atrocities are kept at a distance. Hitler's presence is suggested, however ironically, by a flood of pure light. Even the scenes of "real" battlefield horrors have a distinct aura of the studio set. "Lili Marleen" comes as part of a wave of books, films, and stage productions about the Hitler years. The Third Reich was the most photogenic of all dictatorships. That fact presents special problems, and too many of these works are caught up in the trappings of fascinating fascism. Critical judgment of these efforts should depend in large measure on how well they manage to go beyond the deceptive surfaces of the Nazi state. Richard Figge The College of Wooster