Taking Sides (film)
Taking Sides (film)
Taking Sides is a 2001 German-French-Austrian-British biographical drama film directed by István Szabó and starring Harvey Keitel and Stellan Skarsgård. The story is set during the period of denazification investigations conducted in post-war Germany after the Second World War, and it is based on the real interrogations that took place between a U.S. Army investigator and the musical conductor Wil
"A MANS VOICE: Look at them. Men, women, kids. Boy, did they love him. You see, Steve, Adolf Hitler touched something deep, real deep and savage and barbaric, and it wont just go away overnight. Its got to be rooted out. You know what I think? I think they were all Nazis. And lets face it, their leaders, those bastards now on trial in Nuremberg, couldnt have done it alone...."
"STEVE: Jeez, and I never heard of him...."
"WALLACE (U.S. Army four star general): Hes as big as Toscanini, maybe even bigger. In this neck of the woods, hes probably Bob Hope and Betty Grable rolled into one."
"WALLACE: Stay put, Steve. There is some other stuff that Id like for you to see here. Background."
"WALLACE: Well, they say here that when you went on a case, you stayed on it. (looks up at Steve.) Now we cant take every Nazi in this country to trial, although I would like to; its an impossibility. So were going for the big boys in industry, education, law, culture."
"AMERICAN RADIO VOICE: Remember, men, no fraternisation. In a German town, if you bow to a pretty girl or pat a blond child, you bow to all that Hitler stood for. You bow to his reign of blood. You caress the ideology that meant death and destruction. You never know who was a member of the Nazi Party..."
"ARCHIVE FILM: Sanitary conditions were so appalling that heavy equipment had to be brought in to speed the work of cleaning up [thousands of corpses]..."
"INT. MAJOR STEVE ARNOLDS BEDROOM (I945) - NIGHT Steve having a nightmare, twisting, turning, moaning. He wakes with a cry. He is sweating. He turns on the light, looks at a clock, reaches for a cigarette, lights it. He smokes. He stares at the ceiling."
"ON THE SCREEN: SHOTS of camp survivors. Then SHOTS of emaciated corpses being bulldozed into mass graves."
"DYMSHITZ [Russian Colonel]: Let Furtwängler go. Please."
"STEVE[American Colonel]: I have a duty."
"DYMSHITZ: (flaring) Duty? I am sorry, duty? Duty f***ing duty. Trouble is, you Americans want everybody to live like you. We liberated Berlin, Major Steve, not you. Our duty also is to bring back the best of German culture."
