The Aryan Couple

Plot synopsis:
(Warning Spoilers)
Joseph Krauzenberg (Martin Landau) is a very wealthy Hungarian Jewish industrial tycoon whose fortune is mirrored in the great palaces he owns. However, by 1944 his important businesses are needed by the Nazis and Hitler's 'Final Solution' is sweeping through Europe.
The Nazis are greedy to accumulate wealth as easily as possible, and under the terms of the Third Reich's "Europa Plan", Krauzenberg arranges with Nazi leaders to exchange his fortune, his business holdings (textile plants, steel mills, ownership of several banks) and a collection of rare art for safe passage to Switzerland for himself, his wife Rachel (Judy Parfitt), and their family. As the night of transaction approaches, Krauzenberg visits his large family being held by the Gestapo, and reassures them that all will be safe.
Such is Krauzenberg's wealth and power that when he agrees to sign over his property, it is two of the most powerful men in the Nazi regime who announce they will be coming to his house to handle the paperwork – Adolf Eichmann (Steven Mackintosh) and Heinrich Himmler (Danny Webb).
However, as the Nazi leaders are ushered into Krauzenberg's home, they are struck by something unusual – his two most trusted servants, Hans Vassmann (Kenny Doughty) and his wife Ingrid (Caroline Carver) are a married Aryan couple who, despite the law, are still working for Jews.
As it happens, Eichmann and Himmler's suspicions are well-founded – despite appearing to be the perfect Aryan couple, Hans and Ingrid are actually Jews working deep undercover with the underground Resistance. Young, married, in love and expecting their first child, they work as valet and maid for the elderly Jewish couple. They have everything to look forward to or so they would have believed.
In a sub-plot one of the officers, Edelhein (Christopher Fulford), the most repulsive of the group, pursues Ingrid Vassman – despite her pregnancy – as a perfect foil for implanting his precious seed in the 'Aryan beauty' to populate the new Germany.
As they serve the Nazis in their secret mission, Hans and Ingrid toy with the idea that they should kill Eichmann and Himmler for the greater good, even if it would mean certain death for the Krauzenbergs and themselves. Instead, the Vassmans, place their fate in the hands of the Krauzenbergs, to whom they express their admiration for and they end up ultimately confessing that they are Jewish and wish to escape with them, Nothing can be done immediately – "if we had known we could have placed you on the list of people to come with us".
On his way to the plane that is to take him and his family to the safety of Switzerland, Josef Krauzenberg makes a unknown deal with a German Captain, called Dressler. Dressler then deceives Eichmann, thus giving the Vassmans the means to escape.
In the final climactic scene, the Vassmans are confronted at the last checkpoint before Switzerland by Edelhein, who has discovered Dressler's treachery and has pursued them for the so-called murder of a German soldier, and of course for being Jews. However, the Reichsfuhrer himself, hearing of the events, and wanting to avoid any bloodshed that could reveal his plot concerning the Krauzenbergs to a wider audience, has sent word that they should be allowed to pass freely and safely. Angered that he has lost his chance to 'plant his seed' in Ingrid, Edelhein, regardless of the Reichsfuhrer's orders, attempts to stop them passing. This results in his demise at the hands of the commanding Major, who shoots him dead before he manages to harm them.
The film ends with the couple being reunited safely in Switzerland with the Krauzenbergs.

Tags: murder

Review:
In 1944, in Hungary, the wealthy Jewish industrialist Joseph Krauzenberg (Martin Landau) is forced by the Reichführer Heinrich Himmler (Danny Webb) to deliver his 3,000 employee factory; his palace with his collection of antiques and arts; a large amount in gold; and his house to the Reich.
Himmler schedules a dinner with Krauzenberg and his wife Rachel Krauzenberg (Judy Parfitt) to sign the contract and orders the butcher Eichmann (Steven Mackintosh) to not do harm to the imprisoned Jews relatives of Krauzenberg.
Himmer also send the SS Edelhein (Christopher Fulford) to check the security of the palace and the two German house servants of Krauzenberg, Hans Vassman (Kenny Doughty) and his beautiful pregnant wife Ingrid Vassman (Caroline Carver).
Martin Landau is fantastic as usual and Ms. Judy Parfitt has the best lines confronting Himmler.
The realistic negotiation of Joseph Krauzenberg with the Germans to save his family and the corruption of Dresler are unusual themes in this type of war movie that is unfortunately underrated in IMDb. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Contrato Arriscado" ("Risky Contract").
The Aryan Couple is a film that covers a story and general subject matter without the respect nor attention they both deserve.
Directed by now deceased John Daly, he of mostly producing credit fame; the film adopts a somewhat flimsy, 'point and shoot' aesthetic running on what appears to be a film stock more akin to the whatever format they used in the 1980s for shooting specifically made-for TV, usually police orientated, serial dramas.The film sees elderly, wealthy Jewish Hungarian Joseph Krauzenberg (Landau), and his family of various generations, come up against the Nazi war machine whom observe this successful Jewish businessman and naturally, want in.
As it happens, there're some incidences in which this is used to get across a scrap of dramatic weight; but the real story going on here is that which relates to the title: an Aryan couple whom work for the Krauzenberg family and are secretly working for the resistance; so secretly in fact, that their employers know nothing of it.
Where, maybe a series of text might have been more efficient informing us of necessary statistics and actions that were going in at the time, in the area; Daly throws a series of scenes at us in which dramatic shots of death camps and cattle trains accompanied by the necessary music are the order of the day; on one particular occasion, a tracking shot towards an oven as the looming, brooding sound effects crank it up a level.
From the off, the film lays out its hand; telling us to feel the pain and the emotion which comes with this sort of subject material rather than allowing us to naturally arrive at this point in our own time as the film tragically progresses.Following the premature bombardment of some of this content, the film will cut to a train station and use a second manipulation cue, in that it provides us with a Nazi guard on the platform tossing a child's toy onto the coal carriage located just behind the engine – obviously lost or dropped following the ensuing chaos of herding those 'guilty' of Judaism onto a cattle train.
It's this somewhat sickly identification the film makes with the fact there are children involved, which again, begs us to fast-track emotion and feel the pain and emotional anxiety which almost certainly comes when better films are executing similar subject matter in a more efficient manner.
The Aryan couple of the title are Hans Vassmann (Doughty) and his wife Ingrid (Carver), two people whom it is established are 'doing their bit' in smuggling in the necessary items required to run a resistance outlet at the Krauzenberg's huge home.
It would seem the film-makers were worrying a little too much about audience accessibility to the piece than giving a more authentic experience for the rest of us.The film maintains a pretty desperate sense that it wants to tug at those heart strings more often than not, thus encompassing some pretty melodramatic acting accompanied by some daftly executed scenes; best highlighted in the instance when some family heirlooms are handed over to the Aryan couple in a 'thank you' gesture.
Some Nazi officers carry scars on their faces to emphasise evilness; most of the lines at the more tense of times are representative of peculiar screen writing and are delivered in the worst of fashions: "We will never be forgotten" a character states at one point around a dinner table, over a rousing musical score, but we're not involved enough to feel anything; while a moral predicament two people question each other over seems half-baked and lacking in any sort of real dramatic effect.
The Aryan Couple is quite the little cinematic misfire; a floundering mess of an adaptation of what is a supposedly true story of something which deserved better..
Despite the fact that there have been many good films about the Holocaust, the Nazi manipulated genocide of the Jews in World War II, there is enough room for a new perspective to that hideous period in history to make THE COUPLE a welcome addition to the repertoire.
Written by Director John Daly based on a story by Kendrew Lascelles this film reveals a little known bit of history that shows that the Nazis allowed the wealthy Jews to 'buy their freedom and lives' at enormous losses.
And the key Nazi, at least in this story, is none other than Himmler.Joseph Krauzenberg (Martin Landau) is a very wealthy German Jewish industrial tycoon whose fortune is mirrored in his palaces that are more like museums of great art.
But in the year 1944 his important steel mills and other major industries are needed by the Nazis and so a plan is hatched to offer Krauzenberg, his wife Rachel (Judy Parfitt) and his considerable family the opportunity to escape death by allowing them to leave Germany for Switzerland and ultimately for Palestine.
The only servants the Krauzenbergs maintain are the Vassmans - Ingrid (Caroline Carver) and Hans (Kenny Doughty) - an Aryan couple who in reality work for the Underground and are actually Jews under strong cover.Eichmann (Steven Mackintosh) and Himmler (Danny Webb) are perpetrating the plan to gain all of the wealth and lands and homes and art of the Krauzenbergs and they attend a dinner party at the Krauzenberg palace to sign the final papers.
In a fast paced finale the trials and tribulations of the final plan are worked through in a somewhat surprising way.THE COUPLE is beautifully photographed (the film was shot in Poland despite the fact that the Krauzenberg estates were in Hungary) and the mood of evil is always present in the night scenes with the requisite searchlights penetrating the darkness.
But the overall impact of the film is the focus of the evil that drove the Nazi machine, even with this slight bit of human kindness that was bestowed on the Krauzenberg family at such an awful cost.
None of the film's creators seemingly bothered to check on WHICH side of Jews' (under the Nazi Germans) clothing the Star of David was demanded!
John Daly second film as a director is a gem , outstanding performances by a talented cast led by Martin Landau & a sharp tongued Judy Parafit the story has interesting sub plots that leave the audience twisting and turning to the final conclusion .
I highly recommend this film based on real events of the Europa project during WWII in which a rich Jewish industrialist played by Landau seeks a way out of Nazi infested Hungary by trading his fortune for freedom of his entire family and a plane to Palistine .
There are few films that involve an audience so much that one feels the pressure, tension, anxiety, and utter fear the characters portray in the story.
Kenny Doughty and Caroline Carver play the title role of a pair of gentile house servants to a wealthy Jewish couple, Martin Landau and Judy Parfitt.
Landau is some concern to the Third Reich which is now both at war with the world and just getting into the business of exterminating Jews.
The Nazi dilemma is to get them to hand over control and maybe let them live, emigrate to Palestine as part of the bargain.Danny Webb plays Heinrich Himmler and he'd love to get control of the industrial concern for the S.S. and get to be number two in the regime maybe displace rivals, Borrman, Goebbels, Speer, and Goering.
The Aryan Couple of the title really contributes nothing to the essential part of the story..
This type of film, English actors speaking with Southern English accents dressed up in Nazi uniforms, acting beastly, together with extras who have been told to act glum have been artfully brought together in one film - the director shoots the sequences as if he's following the pages of a cartoon book.
The true story deserves to be produced on film by people who respect the trauma that real people endured and their heroic efforts to survive those times.
There are films that convincingly portray the period, notably the Russian film 'Come and See'the German film 'Europa Europa' the Hungarian film 'Zelary.' Even films in which English displaces the language used in the original story can be credible, because the Director and Actors are talented, for example, 'The Pianist' and 'Schindler's List.'What would be the motives of the people who brought this story to the screen?
Another in the string of "Holocaust" movies released in recent years, "The Aryan Couple" is a fictionalized account of a wealthy Jewish couple buying their way out of Germany in 1944 in return for handing over all of their wealth to the Nazis, represented in this film by Himmler and Eichmann along with a number of subordinates - some repulsive and some more sympathetic.
Martin Landau had the lead role as Jewish industrialist Joseph Krauzenberg - desperate to get his family out of Germany before they end up being sent to Auschwitz or Treblinka.
Added into the mix are the Krauzenberg's "Aryan" servants Hans and Ingrid, who are really a Jewish couple working for the resistance who also need to be spirited out of Germany before their real identities are discovered.The movie attempts to reveal part of the somewhat shadowy plan to exchange Jews for cash (the so-called "Europa Plan.") In that it sheds a bit of light on a piece of the Holocaust that hasn't really received very much attention over the years.
It tends to plod along for the most part, until moments of extremely high tension suddenly appear (such as the dinner at the Krauzenberg home attended by Eichmann and Himmler which included a wonderful performance by Judith Parfitt, who played Rachel Krauzenberg, as she displayed her completely undisguised contempt for her Nazi guests), the revelation of Hans and Ingrid's true identities and their eventual escape into Switzerland.
Sometimes, though, it seemed to me as if director John Daly was trying too hard to raise the tension in those dramatic scenes, almost as if to compensate for the relative lack of drama in the rest of the movie.This is certainly worth watching because it does deal with a little known aspect of the Holocaust, but in no other way could it really be considered a great movie.
They struggled valiantly throughout, but even with the obviously good skills of both, ( Kenny Doughty, Caroline Carver) this old fashioned dinosaur of a film struggled to get going.
The actors playing the NAZI soldiers did a good job showing the cold disregard and hatred that Nazis had for anyone but their own.Martin Landau did a very good job playing Krauzenberg.
The music is typical for this type of movie.The actor that played Himmler did a very good job with this role.
It did help that he bore a striking resemblance to Himmler.Overall this is good period piece that reminds us of the events of the Nazis and JEWS during WWII..
People that have absolutely no idea what a good story, or good acting is, trying to make a movie.
It is a real shame when so many people, particularly the director, (who produced the classic Oscar winning "Platoon" among others) think they know how to make a film, but don't bother with a STORY!
The script was incredible.The story was extremely engaging.The actors did wonderful, in-depth jobs.The editing ruined it all.
I'd just give several pieces of historical information to keep in mind before watching the film:During World War II, it wasn't an option to shut up and look German.
If you happened to find an escape option, it wouldn't include a Nazi escort with fanfare.Hitler's ideology makes him highly unsuitable to sit and have a sophisticated dinner with a Jewish family.
Please, remember this during the second half of the movie.Escaping as a Jew from Germany or any occupied territory was close to impossible.
The person who wrote the script and directed the movie wanted a dramatic effect, but - it seems to me - was less interested in a historic research.I watched dozens of Holocaust movies and documentaries.
I even watched a movie in which a girl opened the door of her home and was suddenly transported into the past of World War II.
but the good acting - Martin Landau is the first example - and the science to explore the Nazi system in different manner.
and that does it a decent film, against the too polite image of Nazi leaders, against the too optimistic perspective about the manner to escape .
I find it very hard to trow my self in to the movie knowing that a bunch of English actors with there Scottish accents are playing the part of a Fürher etc.But despite the fact the are English it was a very realistic movie with a flow of drama action and occasionally a bit of dark humor (not that I am a Nazi lover ore something).it's just a great family movie where you can think and talk about afterward and it stays in your head for a couple of days and you will probably have something like...
This movie was entertaining, I think some people may have been confused between who Reich Furor Himmler and the Furor, Adolf Hitler were.
I don't think you really need to be concerned with the accuracy of the historical accuracy, rather the story is what is well done and the fact that the Nazi's just took what they wanted from even the most powerful Jews - it's like the US Govt telling Bill Gates to sign over everything to them and they'll let him leave - it's messed up.
I was entertained, but if you're looking for a Schindler's list type movie, this is probably not it.
The acting and the scene making reminds me on a cheap Rosamunde Pilcher filming in German TV, just with the difference that it is about the Holocaust.
The Holocaust deserves proper movies like Schindlers List or The Pianist.
Perhaps this won't make it past the review board at IMDb.com.There are far too many brilliant and beautifully executed films based on the German persecution of the Jew and unfortunately this one misses the mark completely.
If you want 100 accuracy you need to watch a documentary not a fictional movie..
"The Aryan Couple" is one of that stories.Seductive and childish, beautiful and strange, about price of freedom and food for emotions, romance and thriller, with a spectacular cast, it is precise definition of good and evil and gift for any form of hope.
The events are only shadows and the Nazis - cartoons.Not a great movie but a delicious trip to a lost age.
'Martin Landau (qv)' giving his usual all as Jewish-Hungarian industrialist Joseph Krauzenberg can't make up for the patchy character development elsewhere - what there is of it.
'Judy Parfitt (qv)' as his wife Rachel throws out token lines of accusation and irony one would expect from an adolescent when a stony silence from such a part would send cheap gangster Heinrich Himmler ('Danny Webb (qv)') to the corner, hanging his head in shame.And these heavyweight characters are just the background for the title characters, who work as the Krauzenberg's butler and maid.
'Kenny Doughty (qv)' doesn't overcome his title character's limits; virtually anyone else in the cast could have played the part.For that matter, Daly's casting veteran British and Irish stage actors to play Nazi Germans and Jewish Holocaust victims is old hat, and a classic mark of a limited budget.
Movies are about the audience not seeing through it.All in all, it's sadly obvious Daly's real project wasn't this story; it was his curiosity at trying his hand at directing.
This film could have been great, if only someone had made the effort to pay attention to details, and make the dialogue a little more realistic.First of all, the existence and purpose of Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Treblinka were top secret, and even the average German was unaware of them.Absolutely no one knew anything about any gas chambers or crematoriums, not at that time.So, how could the Krautzenbergs boldly discuss such matters with Heinrich Himmler and Adolph Eichmann?
This movie steered clear of the depressing realities of the holocaust, which were more than ably depicted in Schindler's List and Life is Beautiful, and focused on the greed of the Nazis and the ability of some Jews to use this greed to their advantage.
If you're a Nazi film buff, this movie is unmissable..
As a history buff I was amazed by the evolving plot where Himmler saves the rich Jewish Krauzenberg family, in order to take over their fast fortune.
Playing with the horrible holocaust story in this particular us distasteful, IMHO.So, th eplt was, after all, imlausible.Martin Landau did an excellent job as Josef Krauzenberg, and so did his "wife" Judy Parfitt.
Kenny Daughty and Caroline Carver looked far too British when they tried to portray the young Jewish couple masquerading as German Aryans in Hungary