Hanussen

Hanussen marks the completion of a film trilogy, the creation of Hungarian writer-director Istvan Szabo and Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer. Their efforts have been uncommonly successful: The first installment, Mephisto, won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1981; Colonel Redl was nominated in the same category in 1985. Hanussen also picked up a nomination in this year’s category.

Hanussen, like its predecessors, concerns itself with the collapse of democracy in Europe in the early part of this century. It is also taken loosely from fact, basing its central character on an actual clairvoyant who enjoyed a vogue in Berlin during the 1920s and early 1930s.

Brandauer plays this character, who develops his mental powers after suffering a head wound in battle in World War I. Under the care of a psychoanalyst (Erland Josephson), he learns about hypnosis and eventually about his ability to predict the future.

His name’s Schneider, but he changes it to Erik Jan Hanussen, which becomes his stage name. Hanussen displays his powers through Central Europe, then settles in Berlin, the capital of decadence. While he insists on his lack of political interest, Hanussen is showing that people can be manipulated into almost anything – a trick also being practiced by another rising star in Germany, Adolf Hitler.

When Hanussen reluctantly but correctly predicts that Hitler will win the German chancellorship, he thrusts himself into the political scene. Despite his avowed neutrality, he cannot seem to escape Hitler’s shadow, a fate he shares with the rest of Europe.

Hanussen is an interesting movie, though it struck me as a bit dramatically undernourished. Once you get the idea of the parallels between Hanussen and Hitler, there’s not quite enough to carry this unusual character along (an exception is Hanussen’s interlude with a beauty-obsessed filmmaker, a character obviously based on Triumph of the Will director Leni Riefenstahl).

Brandauer, the virtuoso whose best-known English-language role has been as Meryl Streep’s husband in Out of Africa, gives another superb performance. Hanussen’s wolf eyes gleam as he uses his gifts to rise in the world, but Brandauer always bring out the more pathetic elements of his character. Brandauer’s fire keeps the film burning.

First published in The Herald, June 20, 1989

It sounds like a great idea for a movie, and Hanussen’s life story is a strange one. It seems odd that after this film, Brandauer’s career did not continue on its upward trajectory – but who can know about these things. I remember Robert Duvall declaring, after seeing Mephisto, that Brandauer was the only other actor alive who scared him, in the sense of having as much talent as Duvall had. They did The Lightship, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, together, a big disappointment. My review of Colonel Redl is posted, too.