Colonel Redl

An actor often waits a lifetime for a part as colorful and flamboyant as the leading role in the Oscar-winning 1981 Hungarian film Mephisto. In that role, Klaus Maria Brandauer played a rampaging actor wrestling with ethical questions in the Europe of World War II.

In a performance that made audiences all over the world stand up and take notice, Brandauer shouted, pranced, whimpered, and snarled through the role with awesome agility. Robert Duvall was reported as saying that, for the first time in his life, he was actually frightened by another actor’s talent.

Brandauer, short and balding, doesn’t have conventional leading man looks. But he’s landed a couple of plum supporting roles in big-budget movies since Mephisto: a James Bond villain in Never Say Never Again, and Meryl Streep’s philandering husband in the current Out of Africa, for which he’s already won a few year-end awards.

Now, Brandauer has joined forces with the Mephisto team again, including director Istvan Szabo and screenwriter Peter Dobai, for another historical drama. It’s another major part for Brandauer, but the role – and the film itself – is quite different from Mephisto in a couple of important ways.

Colonel Redl tells the life story of Alfred Redl, from his boyhood days writing poems in praise of the emperor, through his patriotic military career in service to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the years prior to World War I, to his death following an espionage scandal.

There was a real Colonel Redl, who committed suicide under mysterious circumstances in 1913. But the film admits in a prologue that his life as seen in the movie has been largely invented for dramatic purposes, and influenced by a previous fictionalization of Redl, John Osborne’s play A Patriot For Me. Szabo is out to drape his own morality play around the bones of Redl’s life.

It is the portrait of an opportunist surviving in an oppressive society. The young Redl quickly learns the rules of the game while at military school: He has a chance to save himself and his best friend Kubinyi, if he rats on a classmate. This he does, and afterword he calls himself a Judas;  but the pattern of his life has been set.

He rises through the mllitary ranks with similar shrewdness and earns a reputation as a fierce leader. But something torments him, and as the film progresses, it becomes clear that Redl harbors a secret homosexual longing for Kubinyi (Jan Niklas) – a longing that is not sidetracked by sleeping with Kubinyi’s sister (Gudrun Landgrebe).

Redl becomes a confidant of the Crown Prince (Armin Mueller­-Stahl), and is appointed head of a secret security force. But his own secret, once exposed, brings his career crasing down around him. 

It’s an involving story. But there’s a basic problem that keeps Colonel Redl from catching fire more often: unlike Mephisto, its subject matter is low-key. Mephisto was full of pyrotechnics, possibly because it was set in a theatrical milieu; Colonel Redl is more military drab.

Brandauer has fewer opportunities to shine, since he spends much of his time smoldering. But he has at least one unforgettable scene: Redl’s preparation for suicide, which strikes to the heart of despair and torture. Robert Duvall was right about Brandauer: In a scene such as this, he can genuinely frighten you.

First published in the Herald, January 2, 1986

As I write this during the pandemic, theaters are closed. But some distributors are teaming up with arthouse theaters to stream films so that the theaters can share in the take. It goes for new films, but, in the case of Kino Lorber’s re-release of three films directed by Istvan Szabo, it also applies to re-releases. So this movie is currently available again, with Mephisto and Confidence (wonder where Hanussen went?). Anyway, I’m sure that despite the letdown I obviously felt over Brandauer’s less spectacular work here, nobody could watch the actor’s work as Redl and not be wowed. (The local link to this series is via SIFF: https://kinonow.com/szabo-siff)