Much of what we have experienced in classic Hollywood movies had its roots in Eastern Europe. That fact is ever more clear after a viewing of AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY: The hurried escape from repression, the separation of beloveds, success in The New Land, more conflict, reunion. The pattern is found, to a greater or lesser extent, in the careers and films of a Sam Goldwyn, an Ernst Lubitsch, a Fritz Lang, an Andre DeToth, a Billy Wilder, and dozens more. They fled pogroms, or the Wars, to find a home in America, but conveyed, even when some did their best to belie it, a restless feeling of, if not loss, at least of what might have been: A sense of "things not to be spoken of."

Eva Gardos carries on those feelings through the time of the Cold War in AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY. (Not to be confused with American Rhapsody, I note, a recent book by soft-porn screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who wrote BASIC INSTINCT and SHOWGIRLS.) Gardos was separated from her parents in Hungary as a child following World War II. Years later, she reunited with her them, but had an unsettled adolescence. Despite an adventurous entry into movie-making as a casting director for Francis Ford Coppola on APOCALYPSE NOW, and success as a film editor (VALLEY GIRL, Coolidge,1983; MASK, Bogdanovich, 1985; BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA, Huston, 1996), memories of bitter-sweet possibilities from her Hungarian childhood remained with her.

Gardos poured these feelings into the autobiographical screenplay she wrote for AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY, her first directoral gambit, and a spiritual labor of a lifetime.

Her movie begins with title cards over ancient-looking newsreel footage of trains and people in World War II and after. Sepia turns to monochrome, as a well-off young couple, Peter and Margit Szander (Tony Goldwyn, Natassia Kinski), prepare to flee with their two children from Budapest. Peter, a publisher, is in ideological trouble with the Communist Hungarian State, what kind we are not sure, but through Margit's aristocratic mother, Helen (Agi Banfali), they hire a "guide" to lead them to the West. Unfortunately, the terms -- no children -- are not made clear to the Szanders. On meeting the guide, they are forced to leave Baby Suzanne behind with Grandmother Helen.

Grandmother, having made one mistake, decides shortly not to turn her grand daughter over to a sinister, frowzy woman sent back by the guide. Instead, she gives Suzanne to a good, simple peasant couple, Jeno and Teri (Balzs Galko, Zsuza Czinkoczi). They raise the child, among ducks and goats, in the rustic Hungarian countryside. She rides on the tractor with her stepfather. She marches happily in parades, wearing dirndl skirt and sash, waving a little flag and singing the songs of the Young (Communist) Pioneers. She is a normal well-adjusted little girl.

Helen, on the other hand, goes to prison for not telling authorities what she knows about her family's crimes against the State.

[Gardos seems to realize instinctively that presenting the specific Fascist, Communist, and American politics involved in little Suzanne's story will only stir up old Cold War issues, will detract from the story of personal growth she wishes to tell. She manages to avoid those cards until near the end of the film.]

Meanwhile, Peter and Margit, after a harrowing journey, themselves disguised as peasants, arrive in America as refugees with their older daughter, Maria. Unable to find work in publishing, Peter does various jobs, such as selling vacuum cleaners, until he is hired on in California by an aircraft manufacturer. Here, in blazing color, they engage in the early Age of American Post-War Consumerism. They have the ranch-style home, the fancy appliances, the backyard barbecue. However, Peter's work takes him away from home a lot, leaving Margit to pine for her lost baby.

Eventually, Helen is released from prison, and helped by Peter's brother George (Zoltan Seress), she more-or-less tricks little Suzanne (Kelly Endresz-Banlaki), now six, away from childless Jeno and Teri (who have come to love her as their own child). Suzanne is flown, without much more explanation, to the United States to be with her family in California.

But from the first, Suzanne finds life among the hamburgers, cokes, and welcome-wagon ladies of America more than a bit unsettling; and the strange couple, Mom and Dad, hugging her almost distasteful. She speaks no English, and when she slips outside for a walk the morning after her arrival, she becomes confused, lost and panicked by the fact that all the streets and tract houses look alike. What's more, she is saddled with her pre-teen sister, Maria (Mae Whitman), who abuses her and teaches the art of chewing bubble gum, along with some filthy English words.

By a natural progression, Suzanne becomes a rebellious, smart-mouthed teenager, now played by Scarlett Johansson (of the current GHOST WORLD). Unable to forget quite the life she left in Hungary; not satisfied with her sterile American material life, imprisoned (at times literally) by her apprehensive mother, she begins to find love and relief wherever she can with booze and horny teenage boys. Desperate, Peter her father redeems an early pledge he made to her, and sends Suzanne on a sentimental journey back to Budapest, to clear her head and restore her young life.

Despite a rather creaky development, I thought AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY was a rather successful film up to this point. But in Budapest, Writer/Director Gardos had to deliver; she had to resolve Suzanne's conflict in a dramatic and satisfying way.

In my opinion, she does not.

While the scenes of Budapest are gorgeous, and Suzanne walking across the Danube between Buda and Pest is an apt emotional metaphor, AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY grows slack at its climax. We realize time has passed, and things are not as they were, but Gardos has to pull together a realization in Suzanne's mind that not only her parents, and her foster parents, but several people she can hardly remember made sacrifices on her behalf. Gardos understandably respects Suzanne's lack of desire to meet her immediate saviour, Uncle George. He, after all, innocently sent her to in what she feels in her soul was Hell (America). She (and Gardos) instead count on a gestalt with Grandmother Helen, but the effort leans on a heavy-handed flashback to accomplish Suzanne's spiritual reconciliation her well-meaning Samaritans.

Despite keen observations and the work of delightful little Miss Endrez-Banlaki, Nastassia Kinski, Tony Goldwyn (Grandson of Old Sam), and Scarlett Johansson, the film doesn't work. AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY fields a muted Hollywood "happy ending," but it does not leave us with the necessary satisfaction I mention above in how that ending came about.

[But I must note, women may like this throwback to the legendary "women's picture" rather well. "A fabulous two handkerchief movie, all the way," one woman at the screening said. "I loved it!"]

I like the idea of AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY, that even in the midst of political strife and carnage, children often find their way. They may remember and love people who actually took care of them more than the people who were supposed to do so. And a "backward Third World country" may be a marvelous promised land to a young woman drowning in middle class riches.

My people came from the far land of Scotland, and although I was not left behind there as a child, I grew up, unlike many Americans, on stories of hamely comfort and courage. When I finally went to Isle of Skye and Petty (south of Inverness), and experienced the coldly beautiful countryside and the quiet down-to-earth people, I would have given anything to live there the rest of my life. But of course, I knew I could not. I had grown up in the American Midwest. My course was set. Indeed, I shall always remember with some amusement and equal rue my reaction when my Aunt Margaret was determined to have a local tailor outfit me in full Highland regalia to wear back home in Ohio!

Some years later, when I took my family on travels, we happened into Greece under the Regime of The Colonels, we tarried entranced in Yugoslavia, we even wandered into rural Romania. I was struck that, people we met in these countries did not seem to feel themselves, at a given moment, victims of Fascist or Communist dictatorships. Their political misgivings were expressed in much the same resigned fashion as Americans complain about our bureaucracy and police. Bosses there had the same single-minded need to "get the product out." Otherwise, they got on in their lives with considerable gusto, much more so than the average American when pried away from his/her TV or automobile.

Writer/Director Eva Gardos attempted to express this concept of universal life, which we all share, but in the end, unresolved issues in her psyche and the old Hollywood solutions evidently defeated her.

Perhaps, a more experienced director will take up the theme because it is one Americans, in the next few years, should ponder a good deal.



Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older