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Odd, how affecting this imperfect film becomes. It s a broad romantic melodrama set in Budapest before and during the Holocaust, and that is not, you will agree, an ideal time to set a love story. And if it is true that the title song drove hundreds to commit suicide, some of them may have merely been very tired of hearing it.
And yet Gloomy Sunday held my attention, and there were times when I was surprisingly involved. It s an old-fashioned romantic triangle, told with schmaltzy music on the sound track and a heroine with a smoky singing voice, and then the Nazis turn up and it gets very complicated and heartbreaking.
QUADFLIX
Debuting on April 12, 2001, Gloomy Sunday screened every day in one Christchurch cinema for almost a decade.
LeAnn Rimes’
Can’t Fight the Moonlight topped the charts, Peter Jackson was shooting the first of his Lord of the Rings movies and New York s twin towers were still standing when Gloomy Sunday made its debut on Christchurch cinema screens on April 12, 2001. A less-than-appealing title (its subtitle,
A Song of Love and Death, was even worse), poor returns in its native Germany (it lasted only two weeks) and a plot that includes Nazi brutality, beef roulade and bitter revenge, did not bode well.