FEATURE FILM

Taking Sides - it takes a lot of small ideas to make one good film

	Harvey Keitel (Major Steve Arnold) in a scene from Taking Sides.

Taking Sides puts the audience in the middle of a moral dilemma. The story is set in Germany immediately following the end of World War II. The drama is staged over a number of days in one room where a United States Army prosecutor, Major Steve Arnold (played by Harvey Keitel), is interrogating Dr. Wilhelm Furtwängler (Stellan Skarsgård) and some of his former associates.

Dr. Furtwängler was the conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra during Hitler's reign. He was favored by the Nazi dictator and willingly accepted the privileges that he provided. Major Arnold is trying to determine whether the maestro's association with Hitler marks him as a candidate for indictment in a war crimes trial.

Left to right: Nils Clausen (Boat coordinator), István Szabó (Director), Heike Jörke (Key Grip), Gero Neumann (Clapper Loader), Karl Dillitzer (Gaffer), Christian Almesberger (Focus Puller) and Lajos Koltai (DP).

The independent feature is adapted from a stage play based on actual events. The production company is Little Big Bear Filmproduktion GmbH with investors in England, Germany and France. Robert Harwood wrote the script, and the film was produced in the former East Berlin at a refurbished studio that once housed Ufa, the famed German film studio.

Wilhelm Furtwängler (Stellan Skarsgård) conducting the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.

Cinematographer Lajos Koltai, ASC, HSC, describes Taking Sides as an exercise in minimalist filmmaking. There were 43 days of principal photography, mainly on the set where the maestro was questioned. There is also an opening scene of a concert staged in a church, some background footage of the city that establishes a sense of place and time, and cut-aways to a lake. Transition shots were filmed on an elegant staircase in a 60-foot long corridor and in a waiting room. Both led to the main set.

"We want to transport the audience to Germany in 1946, so they get inside the characters' minds and decide whether Furtwängler is a war criminal," says Koltai.

This is the eleventh time Koltai has worked on a film with Istvan Szabó at the helm. Their collaboration began some 25 years ago when Koltai photographed Bizalom (Confidence), which was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category. Their mutual body of work includes Mephisto, which earned the 1982 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. They also collaborated on Colonel Redl (1986) and Hanussen (1989), both of which were nominated for Best Foreign Film Oscars. They also recently worked together on critically acclaimed Sunshine.

There are usually four characters in the interrogation room, the Major, U.S. Army Lieutenant David Wills (Moritz Bleibtreau), who is an aide to the major, a stenographer (Birgit Minichmayr) and the maestro. In some scenes, Dr. Furtwängler is kept waiting in the reception area while the major questions members of his orchestra.

"During pre-production, we looked at black and white newsreels and an Alfred Hitchcock film from the period to get a feeling for the place and time," says Koltai. "Germany was in ruins and even rich people were selling everything for food. It's winter and the city is cold and colorless."

The story opens in an ancient church where a large and quiet crowd is listening to an orchestra play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The music is beautiful, but suddenly the church goes dark. Koltai had placed some lights on a big Condor crane that he used to create beams of searchlights seen through windows. The bombing begins and the explosions mar the calm blackness in the church with flashes of brilliant white light.

Koltai and Szabó agreed that Taking Sides should be composed in Academy aperture 1.85:1 (aspect ratio) format, because it suggests a more compressed, claustrophobic feeling that supports the story.

The cinematographer also conferred with production designer Ken Adam on the design of the settings. There is a hint of texture in the stones framing a large fireplace, in wooden doors and a big bookcase, but the overall setting feels desaturated and sparse.

There is a large window that looks out on an enlarged black and white photo background of the city, and a smaller window on a side of the room. Since the interrogations always occur during the day, reflected and direct sunbeams coming through the windows are the dominant sources of motivated light.

However, the time of day and weather allowed Koltai to control the angle, intensity and even color of light. Usually, it was cold and grayish, but dawn was warmer, and sometimes an ambient light seemed to bounce off a pinkish wall or white floor.

He worked with a single ARRI 435B camera, which was almost always moving with and around the characters on a crab dolly. Koltai had an 18 to 100 mm zoom lens on the camera that he personally controlled remotely, moving above and below the eye line and often straight on. He chose angles and moved fluidly from master shots into doubles and close-ups, sometimes until parts of a face filled the frame.

Szabó wanted the actors to have total freedom to follow their instincts, so the film looks and feels natural. There were no marks for them to hit. If an actor felt his character would get up and walk to a window or another part of the room, Koltai decided whether to follow with the camera or lens or show them receding in the frame.

"The composition is part of the story just like the words and our use of light," Koltai says. "Every decision you make can affect the flow of the story. Should we be behind Dr. Furtwängler showing the audience the room as he sees it, or in front of him, showing his discomfort because the woman is behind him and he can't see her?

"The dialogue is important, so we have to keep the audience focused on listening to the words and watching body language and expressions, particularly the eyes. We were always deciding whether to reveal or conceal what's behind someone's eyes. We were shooting with the Kodak Vision 500T film, which has a very wide range of latitude. If we wanted to conceal something, we created a shadow or if the idea was to draw the audience into someone's eyes, maybe we used a little bounce light."

After the final interrogation, Furtwängler leaves the room and walks down the elegant staircase that he used when he arrived on the first day. He leaves a free man, but you can sense his loneliness. Was he innocent? It's for the audience to decide.

"This is just a small movie that tells a story," Koltai concludes, "but you can't just put a camera on your shoulder and hope the light will fall in the right place. The actors respond to light and darkness. It takes a lot of small ideas to make one good film."