''Music Box'' is a 1989 American
crime drama film
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...
that tells the story of a
Hungarian-American
Hungarian Americans ( Hungarian: ''amerikai magyarok'') are Americans of Hungarian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau has estimated that there are approximately 1.396 million Americans of Hungarian descent as of 2018. The total number of people wit ...
immigrant who is accused of having been a
war criminal. The plot revolves around his daughter, an
attorney, who defends him, and her struggle to uncover the truth.
The film was written by
Joe Eszterhas
József A. Eszterhás ( born November 23, 1944) is a Hungarian-American writer. He attended Ohio University. He wrote the screenplays for the films ''Flashdance'', '' Jagged Edge'', ''Basic Instinct'' and ''Showgirls''. His books include ''Americ ...
and directed by
Costa-Gavras
Costa-Gavras (short for Konstantinos Gavras; el, Κωνσταντίνος Γαβράς; born 12 February 1933) is a Greek-French film director, screenwriter, and producer who lives and works in France. He is known for films with political and s ...
. It stars
Jessica Lange
Jessica Phyllis Lange (; born April 20, 1949) is an American actress. She is the 13th actress to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having won two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, along with a Screen Actors ...
,
Armin Mueller-Stahl
Armin Mueller-Stahl (born 17 December 1930) is a retired German film actor, painter and author, who also appeared in numerous English-language films since the 1980s. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role i ...
,
Frederic Forrest
Frederic Fenimore Forrest Jr. (born December 23, 1936) is an American actor. Forrest came to public attention for his performance in ''When the Legends Die'' (1972), which earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising N ...
,
Donald Moffat
Donald Moffat (26 December 1930 – 20 December 2018) was a British–American actor with a decades-long career in film and stage in the United States. He began his acting career on- and off-Broadway, which included appearances in ''The Wild D ...
and
Lukas Haas
Lukas Daniel Haas (born April 16, 1976) is an American actor and musician. His acting career has spanned four decades, during which he has appeared in more than 50 feature films and a number of television shows and stage productions.
Early life
...
. The film won the
Golden Bear
The Golden Bear (german: Goldener Bär) is the highest prize awarded for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival. The bear is the heraldic animal of Berlin, featured on both the coat of arms and flag of Berlin.
History
The win ...
at the
40th Berlin International Film Festival.
It is loosely based on the real life case of
John Demjanjuk
John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; uk, Іван Миколайович Дем'янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, ...
and also on
Joe Eszterhas
József A. Eszterhás ( born November 23, 1944) is a Hungarian-American writer. He attended Ohio University. He wrote the screenplays for the films ''Flashdance'', '' Jagged Edge'', ''Basic Instinct'' and ''Showgirls''. His books include ''Americ ...
' own life. Eszterhas learned at age 45 that his father, Count István Esterházy, had concealed his wartime involvement in Hungary's
Fascist and militantly
racist Arrow Cross Party
The Arrow Cross Party ( hu, Nyilaskeresztes Párt – Hungarista Mozgalom, , abbreviated NYKP) was a far-right Hungarian ultranationalist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which formed a government in Hungary they named the Government of National ...
. According to Eszterhas, his father "organized
book burning
Book burning is the deliberate destruction by fire of books or other written materials, usually carried out in a public context. The burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or politi ...
s and had cranked out the vilest
anti-Semitic propaganda imaginable."
After this discovery, he severed all contact with his father, never reconciling before István's death.
According to Joe Eszterhas's book, "Hollywood Animal", he wrote the screenplay for the Music Box almost ten years before finding out the truth about his father. He even gave his father a copy of the script to read before the movie was made, never thinking that his life would soon reflect his art.
Plot
Hungarian immigrant Michael J. Laszlo faces having his
US citizenship revoked after being accused of
war crimes during
WWII
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Laszlo insists it is mistaken identity. His daughter, Ann Talbot, a
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, subdivision_name ...
defence attorney, resolves to defend her father in court.
Prosecuting attorney Jack Burke of the
Office of Special Investigations claims that the supposedly upstanding and affable family man, Laszlo, is "Mishka," the former commander of an Arrow Cross
death squad. During the
Siege of Budapest
The Siege of Budapest or Battle of Budapest was the 50-day-long encirclement by Soviet and Romanian forces of the Hungarian capital of Budapest, near the end of World War II. Part of the broader Budapest Offensive, the siege began when Budape ...
, Mishka's unit sadistically tortured, raped, and murdered scores of
Hungarian Jews,
Roma, and their Gentile protectors. Meanwhile, Laszlo's bank accounts reveal large payments to Tibor Zoldan, a fellow Hungarian immigrant. Laszlo claims these were unpaid loans to a destitute friend who had been recently killed in a hit-and-run car accident.
At the hearing the few survivors give grisly testimony describing the crimes committed by Mishka's unit. All identify Laszlo as their torturer. Equally damning is an authenticated Arrow Cross identification card bearing Laszlo's photograph and the name, "Laszlo Miklos." Laszlo claims it is a frame-up by
Hungary's then Communist government and its
secret police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of ...
, the
ÁVO. He further claims it is retaliation for his protest against the US tour of a Hungarian dance troupe several years earlier.
Ann locates a
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
defector who testifies about the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
's program of flawlessly forging documents to frame anti-Communists in the West. The defector further explains that this technique was shared with every
secret police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of ...
service in the
Soviet Bloc. He says that the Hungarian ÁVO was interested in this tactic. This revelation, combined with Ann's questioning the reliability of witnesses still living under a
police state
A police state describes a state where its government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the ...
, throws Burke's case into serious doubt.
Burke announces a witness will testify that Michael Laszlo is "Mishka." The infirm witness is unable to leave
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
, so Ann, Burke, and Judge Irwin Silver travel to Hungary. Laszlo refuses to go, claiming Communists will assassinate him if he returns. Before Ann's departure her legal assistant provides more details about Tibor Zoldan and believes he was
blackmailing Laszlo.
In Budapest a mysterious man claiming to be Laszlo's friend visits Ann at her hotel and leaves her a folder of documents. The next day, after hearing the witnesses' damning testimony, Ann produces the documents — signed past affidavits in which witnesses identified three different men as "Mishka."
Judge Silver then dismisses the prosecution's case. A dejected Burke says that, while it is too late to save the victims, it is important to remember what happened to them, and claims Ann is denying the truth. He urges her to visit the bridge where Mishka threw his victims into the
Danube River
The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...
. During that time, the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
was
storming Berlin and the war was effectively over, yet Hungarians were still massacring Jews. Ann reacts angrily to his suggestion.
As Ann is driven back to her hotel, the taxi crosses the
Széchenyi Lánchíd bridge where Mishka's executions took place. Ann asks the driver to stop, then gets out to view the site. Later, she visits Magda Zoldan, Tibor's sister, who lives in Budapest. Magda mentions that the
Chicago Police Department sent her Tibor's wallet. She produces a
pawn shop
A pawnbroker is an individual or business (pawnshop or pawn shop) that offers secured loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral. The items having been ''pawned'' to the broker are themselves called ''pledges'' or ...
ticket taken from it and implores Ann to retrieve whatever Tibor pawned and send it to her. Before leaving, Ann notices a photo of young Tibor with a characteristic scar on his left face; she realises he was Mischka's Arrow Cross partner in the atrocities that the witnesses described.
Back in Chicago, Ann goes to the pawn shop to redeem Tibor's music box. Ann switches it on and, as it plays, old black-and-white photographs slowly emerge from the mechanism. The photos depict a youthful Michael Laszlo in an Arrow Cross uniform—sadistically torturing and murdering Jews. Ann, visibly sickened by her father's guilt, accuses him of being Mishka and killing Tibor Zoldan. Laszlo claims the Communists have poisoned Ann against him.
In the film's climax, Ann tells her father that she never wants herself or her son, Mikey, to see him again. Laszlo says Mikey will never believe her, then goes outside to play with his grandson. Ann composes a letter to Jack Burke and encloses Tibor Zoldan's photographs and the negatives in the envelope. When the news of Laszlo's suspected war crimes is reported in the news, Ann talks to Mikey about his beloved grandfather.
Cast
Production
This film marked the second collaboration between director Costa-Gavras and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas after 1988's ''
Betrayed''. Both
Walter Matthau and
Kirk Douglas were in talks with Costa-Gavras to play the part of Mike Laszlo. Ultimately Gavras selected Armin Mueller-Stahl, who had wanted to work with Gavras since being impressed by his craft after seeing ''
Missing''. Mueller-Stahl, an East-German defector, had difficulty obtaining a U.S. visa, as he was suspected of ties to the
Stasi.
Jessica Lange, who is usually a devotée of
method acting
Method acting, informally known as The Method, is a range of training and rehearsal techniques, as formulated by a number of different theatre practitioners, that seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, u ...
, whereby you live as the character you're playing, chose to approach her character in ''Music Box'' differently because "there was nothing in my own experiences of betrayal, disappointment and heartbreak that could compare to the character's." Instead she "tried to approach it as a child approaches a game of make-believe. I did do some research into the character's Hungarian background and I read a lot of books about the Holocaust but ultimately I relied on my own imagination. There was an ease to working this way, an effortlessness."
Principal photography for the film started on location in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, then moved to
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
, Hungary, as Gavras wanted authenticity in some of the key Hungarian scenes.
The final moments of the film feature a song by
Márta Sebestyén, ''Mária altatója''.
Critical reception
Roger Ebert of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago ...
'' gave the film a lukewarm two star review. Among his complaints were that the film was "not about guilt or innocence; it is a courtroom thriller, with all of the usual automatic devices like last-minute evidence and surprise witnesses" and that "Nazism is used only as a plot device, as a convenient way to make a man into a monster without having to spend much time convincing us of it." Foremost was his frustration that little attempt was made to understand Mike Laszlo, and that "the old man, who should be the central character if this movie took itself seriously, is only a pawn."
Peter Travers
Peter Joseph Travers (born ) is an American film critic, journalist, and television presenter. He reviews films for ABC News and previously served as a movie critic for ''People'' and ''Rolling Stone''. Travers also hosts the film interview prog ...
of ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...
'' was even more critical of the film, doubting it existed for any purpose other than to get Jessica Lange an Oscar nomination, bluntly stating "real-life tragedy has been used to hype cheap melodrama. It's more than offensive; it's vile."
Caryn James of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' applauded Jessica Lange's performance, but had to admit that "Ms. Lange comes as close to inventing a character out of thin air as any screen actor can. Nothing in Joe Eszterhas's overblown script or in Costa-Gavras's simplistic direction begins to support it. In the end, not even Ms. Lange's profuse energy and intelligence can redeem the film's unremitting shallowness and mediocrity." James felt that ''Music Box'' "finally tells us nothing about wronged innocence or monstrous evil."
Holocaust survivor and
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolog ...
winner
Elie Wiesel was complimentary of the film; according to the ''New York Times'' he "found it very moving...a welcome addition to the cinematic literature of the Holocaust." Wiesel stated that "The television series '
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
' was kitsch; this is not. This is a good work of art, a good work of sensitizing viewers."
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds a rating of 76% from 21 reviews.
Awards and nominations
*
Golden Bear
The Golden Bear (german: Goldener Bär) is the highest prize awarded for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival. The bear is the heraldic animal of Berlin, featured on both the coat of arms and flag of Berlin.
History
The win ...
winner at the
40th Berlin International Film Festival
*
Academy Award for Best Actress
The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year ...
– Jessica Lange (nominee)
*
Golden Globe for Best Actress – Jessica Lange (nominee)
*
Young Artist Award
The Young Artist Award (originally known as the Youth in Film Award) is an accolade presented by the Young Artist Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 1978 to honor excellence of youth performers, and to provide scholarships for young ...
for Best Young Actor Supporting Role in a Motion Picture – Lukas Haas (nominee)
See also
*
List of Holocaust films
These films deal with the Holocaust in Europe, comprising both documentaries and narratives. They began to be produced in the early 1940s before the extent of the Holocaust at that time was widely recognized.
The films span a range of genres, wit ...
*
Laszlo Csatary
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Music Box
1989 films
1990 films
Carolco Pictures films
Films shot in Chicago
Films set in Chicago
Films set in Hungary
Films shot in Budapest
Hungarian-American history
Hungarian-language films
Films directed by Costa Gavras
Golden Bear winners
Films about Nazi fugitives
The Holocaust in Hungary
American courtroom films
Films with screenplays by Joe Eszterhas
Films produced by Irwin Winkler
Films scored by Philippe Sarde
1990s English-language films
1980s English-language films
1980s American films
1990s American films