Moylan C, Mills, The Three Faces of Mephisto: Film, Novel, and Reality, Literature/Film

Quarterly, Volume 18, Issue 4, 1990.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Hungarian director Istvan Szabo's 1981 international
film success Mephisto is the way in which the film commingles three manifestations of the
same persona/character: (1) the cinematic protagonist Hendrik Hfgen; (2) the central
character, also called Hendrik Hfgen, in Klaus Mann's 1936 novel on which the film is
based; and (3) Mann's real life brother-in-law, Gustaf Grndgens, the most celebrated actor of
the Nazi period, on whom both the film and the literary Hendrik Hfgens are modelled. (One
must, of course, take into consideration that the historical record is reported by individuals
who may be expressing their own individual biases.)

Szabo, who fashioned the filmscript with the help of Hungarian writer Peter Dobai, has
created from Mann's novel a rich, complex, and ultimately very powerful film that is at one
and the same time a fierce political analysis, a provocative character study, and a thoughtful
meditation on the acting profession.

Klaus Mann, the son of the celebrated German author and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann,
wrote his novel during the mid-1930s, several years after he had left Germany with the other
members of the Mann family following the ascension to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
party. Mephisto, the novel, has had a long and convoluted publishing history. The book was
first printed in the exile newspaper Pariser Tagezeitung and then published in Amsterdam in
1936. Because of its intense criticism of the Nazi regime, Mephisto was immediately banned
in Germany. It was, however, subsequently published in nineteen countries, including the
United States in 1977. Mann hoped that after World War II the book would be published in the
German Federal Republic; unfortunately, he was told by his West German publishers on May
5, 1949, that because of the continuing popularity in Bavaria of Gustaf Grndgens, then still
alive, Mephisto could not be distributed in the Federal Republic. Mann noted in a despondent
letter written to his publishers on May 12, 1949, that he was appalled that the political
situation in Germany had changed so very little since the collapse of the Hitler dictatorship.1
Nine days later Mann committed suicide in Cannes.

Even after Griindgens's death, ironically also by suicide in 1963, Mann's book has sparked
controversy. Mephisto was finally published in West Germany shortly after the actor's demise,
but following a lawsuit brought by Griindgens's adopted son, the German Supreme Court
banned the novel by a three-to-three decision.2 The ban still exists today, although an
unauthorized paperback edition has been available in West Germany for several years and has
been a notorious bestseller.

Mephisto was quite obviously inspired by the life of theatrical personage Gustaf Grndgens,
the most popular and critically acclaimed stage and screen actor of the Nazi era and perhaps
of the early and mid-twentieth century. After the war, Grndgens was imprisoned, but was
released by the Allies because it was claimed that he had kept German culture from dying
during a chaotic time. He was also said to have saved the lives of a number of Polish and
Jewish co-workers during the Hitler regime. Thus, "de-nazified," Grndgens soon regained
his former popularity as a film actor and theatre personality and remained in the public eye
until his death while on vacation in Manila.3

Both the novel and the film are faithful to the various events that made up the life and career
of Grndgens, who first met Klaus Mann when they were struggling young artists in Hamburg
in the mid-1920s. Grndgens, along with Pamela Wedekind, daughter of the expressionist
writer Frank Wedekind, and Erika Mann, Klaus's sister, starred in Klaus Mann's first play,
Anja and Esther, presented in 1926 at the Hamburg Kammerspiele. Later, at the beginning of
the Nazi takover of the German nation, Grndgens achieved a sensational success as
Mephistofeles in a Berlin production of Goethe's Faust. This celebrated event becomes one of
the central sequences in the novel and an even more salient episode in the film, for it is during
a performance as Mephistofeles that Grndgens/Hfgen first meets Nazi leader Hermann
Goering and that each realizes the other can be utilized for his own ends.

Shelley L. Frisch, in the introduction to Mann's autobiographical work, The Turning Point,
describes the affinity of Klaus Mann and Gustaf Griindgens. Frisch notes that "As young
artists, Mann and Grndgens shared much that brought them together: an all-encompassing
desire to attain fame in the world of the arts, a fascination with the interplay of art and power,
a bond of friendship, and even a familial attachment. . . .4 This last comment denotes the fact
that for a brief time Grndgens had been married to Mann's sister Erika, thus, becoming not
only Mann's friend, but also for a few years his brother-in-law.

It is also thought by some critics that Mann and Grndgens had been homosexual lovers,
although neither the novel nor the film is specific on this point. Klaus Maria Brandauer, the
Austrian actor who plays Grndgens/Hfgen on screen, and director Szabo apparently think
the admittedly homosexual Mann and his one-time brother-in-law did have an affair.
Brandauer sees Mann's roman clef having been at least partially motivated by the
"vengeance of a jilted lover."5 However, Brandauer and Szabo are quoted in a New York
Times article as deliberately avoiding the homosexual issue in order to create
Grndgens/Hfgen as more of an every man.6

In spite of these protestations, there is some initimation in the film that the protagonist has
homosexual feelings, especially in a rehearsal sequence for Faust during which
Grndgens/Hfgen as Mephistofeles caresses at length the actor playing Faust. In addition,
another scene in the film suggests a lesbian attraction between two of the central female
characters.

In The Turning Point, Mann explains his reason for using Grndgens's character as the basis
for his protagonist in Mephisto. Mann writes:

I visualize my ex-brother-in-law as the traitor par excellence, the macabre embodiment of

corruption and cynicism. So intense was the fascination of his shameful glory that I decided to
portray Mephisto-Grndgens in a satirical novel. I thought it pertinent, indeed, necessary to
expose and analyze the abject type of the treacherous intellectual who prostitutes his talent for
the sake of some tawdry fame and transitory wealth.7

On first meeting Griindgens, Mann describes him thusly:

He [Grndgens] was haunted by his vanity and persecution mania, and a frantic desire to
please. There was something very grand and very pathetic about him. He was mangled by
inferiority complexes. His face, without the mask of make-up, was strangely wan, as if
covered by ashes. He glittered and suffered and seduced. He wanted to be loved, but no one
loved him. His eyes were icy and soft like the eyes of a rare and royal fish who had jewels in
place of eyes.8

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Mann goes on to say that Grndgens "served me as a focus around which I could make gyrate
the pathetic and nauseous crowd of petty climbers and crooks."9

In the novel, Mann presents Grndgens/Hfgen's climb to fame from a provincial actor and
Communist supporter during the Weimar Republic to legendary stage and film star during the
Nazi era, the protege of Hermann Goering and his wife, actress Emmy Sonneman. At the
height of his fame, Grndgens/Hfgen is named director of the Prussian State Theatre in
Berlin, a position that leads to his becoming the unofficial cultural czar of the German nation.
These facts are true to Grndgens/Hfgen's actual experiences. As Mann notes in The Turning
Point, Grndgens became "the Fuhrer of theatrical life in the Third Reich."10

Despite Mann's vigorous denials that the novel is a roman clef-Mann claimed that "the novel
transcend[ed] facile portraiture and achieve[d] a literary depiction of the decay of society"-he,
nevertheless, based his novel's characters on real personages." Thus, in the novel, for
example, Grndgens becomes Hendrik Hfgen; Erika Mann becomes Barbara Bruckner; a
combination of Pamela Wedekind and stage star Marianne Hoppe, Grndgens's second wife,
becomes Nicoletta von Niebuhr; and Emmy Sonneman, the provincial actress who married
Hermann Goering and became entranced with Grndgens, becomes Lotte Lindenthal. Mann
mixes his quasi-fictional characters with historical personages: Nazi figures, such as Goering,
Goebbels, even Hitler, make appearances in the book. For the film, Szabo keeps the same
large cast of major characters, although quite naturally many of the secondary ones are
excised because he has condensed the 262-page novel into a two-hour film.

The novel traces Grndgens/Hfgen's ascent to Nazi glory in a stylistic blend of realism and
Kafkaesque satire that sometimes leads to an awkward combining of these artistic
conventions. By downplaying the satirical element, although not entirely eliminating it, Szabo
in his film adaptation creates a more credible stylistic mode.

Szabo uses all of the various techniques of modern cinema to explore his Mephisto. He
utilizes jump and shock cuts to push the pace at breakneck speed during certain sequences,
but he also employs long-in-duration shots to examine Grndgens/Hfgen in relation to the
mise-en-scene, especially the gigantic neo-classical edifices which the Nazis so admired and
the richly appointed offices that seem as large as football stadia, dwarfing their human
occupants, making them seem insignificant in comparison to the Nazi apparatus.

In addition, the director often uses a subjective camera to force his audience to experience
what Grndgens/Hfgen is experiencing, most notably during the grand birthday ball for
Goering at which both Goering and Grndgens/Hfgen are lionized in almost the same exact
way. Too, Szabo utilizes constant close-ups of Klaus Maria Brandauer-who so superbly enacts
Grndgens/Hfgen in all his preening, pandering paranoia-in order to bring the viewers as
near as possible to him, compelling the audience to react with repulsion as the enormous
monstrosity of the man emerges, and enabling the audience to respond with empathy as the
frightened animal writhes in his trap, ensnared by his lust for fame and power.

Too, Szabo's cinematographer, Lajos Koltai, has provided for the film a highly theatrical look.
Since a major theme of Mephisto focuses on the shadow and substance of an actor's response
to private and public events, Koltai has utilized, for the most part, a style of strong lighting
contrasts to explore the lurid theatrical ism of the Third Reich. The closing shots in the
Olympic Stadium are a consummate example of what critic Stanley Kauffmann in his review
has called "lighting and composition and movement ... as theatrical as realism can bear."12

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One of the most striking illustrations of the Szabo/Koltai creative collaboration is the way in
which the excruciatingly white light on Grndgens/Hfgen's face in close-up at the film's
climax is a close replica of the deadly white make-up that the actor wears for his role as
Mephistofeles.

Szabo is also fortunate in his choice of actors. For the lead role he used a young stage
performer with very little film experience-Klaus Maria Brandauer. Brandauer conveys with
great conviction the mesmerizing actor who is consumed by fear, confusion, and the need to
serve his own ego at all costs. Brandauer, under Szabo's direction, structures a rather more
sympathetic character than does Mann in his novel. The film audience, because of Brandauer's
open-faced physiognomy-alternately wide-eyed and ingenuous or shifty-eyed and calculating-
is confronted with the proposition that Grndgens/Hfgen may be as much a victim as a
victimizer.

The other performers are also excellent. Rolf Hoppe presents a worldly Goering whose jollity
and good spirits mask the diabolical genius that makes him a perfect evil mentor for the
vulnerable actor. Karin Boyd as Juliette is a suitably erotic but understanding playmate for
Grndgens/Hfgen, and Krystyna Janda, a leading Polish actress, is confident and understated
as the actor's wife Barbara.

The most striking attribute of the film is the way in which Szabo has transformed-through his
sophisticated utilization of film language and through his uncanny understanding of the Mann
novel and the history of the twentieth century-Mann's controversial and politically important,
though, in my opinion, less than compelling, work of fiction, into a rich, powerful, and
immensely evocative cinematic experience. Szabo's has achieved this transformation by
creating a script that, though based on Mann's novel and incorporating its themes, becomes an
independent work of art and provides a strong underpinning for his powerful filmization.
What Szabo has effectively done is to take Mann's descriptive passages and references to
events and actions and has turned these moments into dramatic confrontations that explore
with scapel-like incisiveness the world of Grndgens/Hfgen and his attempts to use whatever
means and whomever he can to achieve success.

Szabo's screenplay restructures the novel. Mann's book opens with the great Nazi birthday
party for Goering, which actually took place in 1936 and which serves as the climax of the
narrative. Thus, the novel unfolds in flashback. Szabo, however, uses the birthday ball as the
film's final sequence-its rightful place in the chronology of Grndgens/Hfgen's rise to power-
and opens the film instead with an operetta performance at the Hamburg Kammerspiele,
featuring the well-known guest artist Dora Martin, while off-stage in his dressing room
Grndgens/Hfgen rages and cries with envy and self-loathing because of Dora's marvelous
success. Thus, the film opens and closes in a theatre: at the beginning, a comfortable
provincial music hall; at the conclusion, the vast Olympic stadium constructed for Hitler's
Aryan athletes.

It is to this gigantic empty stage that Goering takes Grndgens/Hfgen after the birthday ball.
In a dialogue exchange that has been created by Szabo for the film, Goering says, as he
gestures to the vast arena:

Well, Mephisto, what force is looking at you here? Can you feel this force? This is theatre.
Have a look at this arena. Isn't it wonderful . . . Here I will direct a performance. Don't

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blink .... look history in the eye. . . . We'll rule over the whole of Europe, the whole world.
We'll found an empire of a thousand years.

Goering then orders Grndgens/Hfgen to the center of the huge deserted stadium. Suddenly,
a platinum spotlight picks out the bewildered actor. Goering shouts from the stand at the tiny
figure, "How do you like this spotlight? This is the real light, isn't it?" Grndgens/Hfgen
does not know how to respond. He is blinded by the spotlight's glare. He tries to escape the
piercing white rays, but cannot. He mumbles to himself "What do they want of me? What do
they want? I'm only an actor!" And on this enigmatic note, the film closes, with
Grndgens/Hfgen still riddled, as he was at the start of his career, by doubts and anxieties,
still seeing himself, for all his preening pomposity, as merely a performer, never the whole
man.

The concluding dialogue of the novel, on the other hand, takes place between
Griindgens/Hofgen and his mother. Mann's closing lines, however, which no doubt influenced
Szabo, are similar, to wit: "What do men want from me? Why do they pursue me? Why are
they so hard? All I am is a perfectly ordinary actor."'3

The ending of the film is stronger, not only because, as in the novel, Grndgens/ Hfgen is
bewailing his fate, but also because the actor has been thrust onto the ultimate stage of the
Nazi Reich, a goal that he has fervently desired. Szabo makes very clear that the Nazis will
use the actor as they see fit, or, in a reversal of the Faust legend, Grndgens/Hfgen-the
Mephisto in question-has sold his soul to a greater devil, the Nazi ringleaders.

Indeed, one might characterize Grdgens/Hfgen's entire adult life as a search for the ideal
role, whether it be as a Communist, a Nazi, a bureaucrat, or an acclaimed artist. He can switch
from one role to the other, as the situation demands, and add or drop lovers, friends, and/or
colleagues as he continues his search, until finally he realizes with horror where the search
has led him-to the filling of the void behind the actor's mask with someone else's evil persona.

In addition to reshaping its narrative structure, Szabo has, in a sense, rewritten the last half of
the novel. For instance, he has constructed new sequences, such as the interrogation of
Grndgens/Hfgen by Nazi authorities after the actor has returned to Germany from an
appearance in Budapest, a scene which engenders a great deal of viewer suspense and works
to keep the cinematic audience very much involved in Grdgens/Hofgen's fate. Szabo also
adds a brief scene in which Grdgens/Hofgen sees several Nazi thugs attacking a group of
Jews, an encounter that shocks Grndgens/ Hfgen immeasurably because the Nazis then turn
on him, believing him a Jew also. This scene, only ten or fifteen seconds on the screen,
vividly indicates for the audience the source of Grndgens/Hfgen's fear and, thus, his
willingness to cooperate with the Nazis and, by extension, the fear of many non-Jewish
Germans; that is, if it can happen to them, it can happen to us.

Szabo has also elaborated on sequences in the novel which were described in a half-page or so
by Mann, but were not fleshed out, not given dramatic heft. For instance, when
Grndgens/Hfgen is directing a socialist theatre piece in Hamburg, Szabo gives him a strong,
emotional scene at a rehearsal wherein the film audience is made indelibly aware of
Grndgens/Hfgen's passion for the theatre, his acute understanding of his dramatic craft, and
his commitment, at least for the moment, to leftist principles. Szabo brings the character
excitingly alive in all his complexity in this revealing sequence.

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As previously noted, in one of the most provocative scenes in the film, Grndgens/ Hfgen
meets Goering, the Nazi prime minister and second in command, for the first time at a
performance of Faust. This pivotal meeting is, of course, in the novel, but it is not so fully
realized as it is on the screen, for Szabo-through added dialogue, through extended closeups,
through a series of low angle shots from the theatre audience's point of view-creates a signal
confrontation between the Nazi "devil," Goering, and the stage "devil," Grndgens/Hfgen.
There is a profound sense of recognition that these two fates will be inextricably linked, with
Goering bestowing on Grndgens/Hfgen the fame and the success that the actor craves and
with Grndgens/Hfgen allowing Goering to use him for whatever purposes he wishes in
order to further the Nazi cause. Szabo makes this scene a truly memorable one as he has
Goering point out that Grndgens/Hfgen's white Mephisto mask is "evil itself, perfect evil,"
and that the secret of dramatic art is "to display strength and wit when in reality one is weak."

Szabo follows this scene with a party sequence. Grndgens/Hfgen has been invited to
socialize with the inner circle of Nazi demi-gods at a fashionable soiree. In this scene, Szabo
includes a key dialogue exchange transposed from a different spot in the novel. Goering has
taken Grndgens/Hfgen aside to reveal how the Mephisto character has always fascinated
him. The prime minister remarks that he finds Mephisto to be a splendid manifestation of a
certain part of the German character. Goering amplifies his viewpoint by explaining: "... isn't
there a little bit of him in us all? I mean, hidden in every real German isn't there a bit of
Mephistofeles, a bit of the rascal and the ruffian? If we had nothing but the soul of Faust,
what would become of us? . . . Mephisto ... is a German national hero."

By Szabo's placement of this dialogue immediately following the recognition sequence, the
exchange has greater impact, for it is clear that Mann in the novel and Szabo in the film are
underscoring the historic German fascination with the Faust legend, the mortal who longs for
immortal powers and sells his soul to the devil in order to achieve this goal. Both the novel
and film of Mephisto are meditations on the folly of this seductive and destructive desire.

And, too, the novel and the film resonate with the German worship of the superhero out of
Wagner by way of Nietzsche right down to Hitler's demonic gloss on this cult of national
madness. It is interesting to note that Klaus Mann's famous father had written a novel entitled
Doctor Faust us soon after the end of World War II in which he used the Faust legend as a
framework for his personal struggle to understand what had befallen the German people and
nation during the Nazi era.

Another Szabo addition to the Mann material is a confrontation scene between

Grndgens/Hfgen and Barbara, the Erika Mann character, in Paris where Barbara has fled
from the Nazis. Barbara tries to persuade Grndgens/Hfgen to abandon the evil that has
engulfed Germany, not to accommodate the Nazis. Barbara implores Grndgens/Hfgen to
take a stand for freedom. Grndgens/Hfgen tells her that he will stay in Berlin and continue
with his successful career in order "to help people who are now in trouble" and "to safeguard
our values for a better world" to come. Barbara realizes that this attitude is one of self-
deception. She asks Grndgens/Hfgen if he needs success and adulation more than he needs
freedom. Szabo then provides the striking image that tells the film audience all it needs to
know about Grdgens/ Hfgen's choice. He stands in front of a Parisian Metro entrance, looks
longingly at a Paris that is still free, and then goes down the steps into the darkness, a perfect
cinematic metaphor for his Mephistofelean descent into the Underworld.

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As Andre Bazin in his discussion of cinematic adaptation has so perceptively pointed out, a
literary source is like a glittering, many-faceted chandelier, while the film version is more
akin to the strong focused beam of a movie usher's flashlight. Thus, according to Bazin, a film
adaptation not only provides a condensation, but also creates a narrowing and sharpening of
the focus.l4 I would suggest that Szabo has effectively sharp-focused the Mann material by
means of his restructuring of the narrative, while at the same time has not sacrificed the
various layers of meaning inherent in the novel.

In both the novel and the film, Grndgens/Hfgen has a mulatto mistress, Juliette, with whom
he has a sado-masochistic relationship; in fact this relationship is the only one in both the
novel and film that seems to provide Grndgens/Hfgen with a certain amount of emotional
sustenance. However, in the film, Szabo not only has made Juliette a more central character,
but also has made the relationshp softer, less depraved, giving Grndgens/Hfgen someone in
whom he can confide and creating even more horror when Grndgens/Hfgen sacrifices
Juliette at the behest of his Nazi masters. It is to Juliette that Grndgens/Hfgen in the film
explains that he is an actor and that an actor is nothing more than a mask whose sole intention
is to prevent sincere expression. Juliette notes that Grndgens/Hfgen has cold, dead eyes and
that he loves only himself, echoing Mann's description of Grngdens in The Turning Point.

In fact, this colossal narcissism on the part of Grndgens/Hfgen, both Mann and Szabo
indicate, has infected twentieth-century German society and has led to the self-deception that
allowed the likes of Hitler and Goering and their cohorts to reign supreme in the land. Implicit
in the novel and much more sharply delineated in the film is the larger theme that
Grndgens/Hfgen is but one example of the self-deceived, self-absorbed German who is
willing to close his or her eyes to the rapacious Nazi overlords and their crimes against
humanity. Szabo underscores this point in the stadium scene which closes the film when, as
already noted, Grndgens/Hfgen professes not to understand what the Nazis really want of
him and protests anxiously that he is "only an actor," just a mask, certainly not a responsible
human being who can withstand the insinuating pressure of the Nazis to do their bidding.

Interestingly enough, Grndgens/Hfgen's other great classical triumph has been in Hamlet,
that study of a neurotic vacillator who must avenge his father's death. The actor, at the behest
of Goering, decides to turn Hamlet into a man of action, for Goering sees Hamlet as energetic
and tough, a man whose major problem, like that of many Germans, is to conquer his
brooding and inaction, qualities so much akin to the German nature. Grndgens/Hfgen
agrees with Goering that the German people, like Hamlet, must wrestle with and finally defeat
their gloomy, passive natures by forcing themselves to take action against their oppressors.
Hitler did just that-taking action against Germany's oppressors-by abrogating the World War I
treaties and by building up his war machine to support his dream of territorial conquest.

Mephisto, which won the 1981 Academy Award for best foreign film, is the first entry in
Szabo's cinematic trilogy that explores the Central European experience during the Nazi era.
If Mephisto examines the German character through an exploration of the responses of a
talented, ambitious, and egocentric artist to the growing horror of the Hitler years, then
Szabo's Colonel Redl ( 1985) tells the story of an equally ambitious Austro-Hungarian
intelligence officer who betrays his class and country because of his obsessive attachment to
the ideals of the Hapsburg monarchy.

The final film in the trio, Hanussen, registered strongly at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and,
like Colonel Redl, was nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign film. Hanussen, like

7
Mephisto, explores the contradictions of the German character, this time focusing on the life
of a nightclub and stage clairvoyant who actually performed in Berlin during the early years
of the Nazi regime. Hanussen uncannily predicts certain key events in the Nazi iconography,
such as the burning of the Reichstag, and, thus becomes a favorite of Hitler and his cronies.
Once again, Szabo uses Hanussen's professional successes and personal relationships to
underscore the thrill and torment experienced by the German psyche in the years before World
War II. These three films not only are linked thematically, but also are tied together by Szabo's
choice of Klaus Maria Brandauer to portray all three of the protagonists.

In a recent wide-ranging interview, Szabo has said that "... when I tell a story with German
heroes, I also tell something about the history of all of us." He goes on to say that "I think
these three films, one after the other, are different faces of a similar problem, and the problem
is the challenge of history and the response of the human character." Szabo claims that "He
wants to know what is the legitimate [human] response to an all-consuming evil."15

In all three films, Szabo provides answers that are mostly negative. Certainly in Mephisto,
Grndgens/Hfgen in the final moments comes face to face with the realization that he has
compromised whatever principles he has left once too often and that he will now have to pay
an even greater devil his excruciatingly exacting due.

Istvan Szabo's striking achievement with the film Mephisto is to have taken a novel whose
chief claims to fame are its historical and psychological insights and its personal revelations
and to have created a complex, multi-dimensional, emotionally satisfying, and thematically
meaningful cinematic experience. Through his skillful use of film language and through his
salient restructing of the narrative, Szabo has imbued his work with a sense of the excitement
of the rush of historic forces, as well as with scenes of sweeping grandeur and moments of
poignant intimacy. Szabo has taken command of Klaus Mann's material as final arbiter in a
fascinating progression from actual events to roman a clef to powerful cinematic
dramatization. Indeed, Szabo has claimed the Grndgens/Hfgen/Mephisto story in all of its
several dimensionspersonal, national, universal-for his own.

Notes

1 Shelly L. Frisch, Introduction, The Turning Point, by Klaus Mann (New York: Markus
Weiner Publishing, Inc., 1984), p. [5].

2 Publisher's Note in Klaus Mann, Mephisto (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), no page
number.

3 Stanley Kauffmann, "One Man in His Time," The New Republic, 186 (7 April 1982), p. 24.

4 Frisch, p. [5].

5 Lawrence Van Gelder, "Mephisto Tracks the Dark Ascent of Nazi Collaborator," The New
York Times, 21 March 1982, p. 17, Section 2.

6 Van Gelder, p. 32.

7 Mann, The Turning Point, p. 282.

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8 Mann, The Turning Point, p. 116.

9 Mann, The Turning Point, p. 282.

10 Mann, The Turning Point, p. 281.

11 Frisch, p. [5].

12 Kauffmann, p. 25

13 Mann, Mephisto, p. 263.

14 Andre Bazin, What Is Cinema? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 107.

15 Richard Bernstein, "Hanussen: Foreseeing the Hitler Nightmare," The New York Times, 12
March 1989, pp. 13, 24, Section 2.