Mother Night (film)

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Mother Night
Directed by	Keith Gordon
Written by	Kurt Vonnegut Robert B. Weide Screenplay
Starring	Nick Nolte Sheryl Lee Alan Arkin
Runtime	114 min.
Language	English
IMDb Page

Mother Night is a 1996 film based on the 1961 book by Kurt Vonnegut of the same name.

Nick Nolte plays the fictional Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American, who moved with his family to Germany directly after World War I and then later became alternately a well-known German language playwright and a Nazi propagandist. Before the start of World War II he meets a man claiming to be a member of the U.S. War Department and is recruited to be a spy for the U.S.

The film is narrated by Campbell as he sits in a jail cell in Israel, writing his memoirs and waiting to stand trial for war crimes.

Contents 1 Plot 1.1 Germany, Pre-WWII 1.2 Germany, WWII and afterwards 1.3 New York City 1.4 Israel 2 External links

[edit] Plot

[edit] Germany, Pre-WWII

During the Nazi build-up after the seizure of power in 1933, Campbell decided to stay on in Germany despite his parents having left. He continued to write plays, his only associations with members of the ruling Nazi party were social contacts. Being of sufficiently acceptable parentage, Campbell became a member of the Nazi party in order to keep up appearances. The truth of the matter was that he was politically apathetic—he only really cared about two things, his art, and his wife Helga (played by Sheryl Lee), who was also the starring actress in all of his plays.

During the pre-World War II period Campbell has an encounter on a park bench in the Berlin zoo. While sitting on the bench he is approached by a man calling himself Frank Wirtanen. He doesn't introduce himself right away, but Campbell eventually finds out that he is an agent of the U.S. War Department. Wirtanen appeals to Campbell's sense of adventure. He wants Campbell to spy for the U.S. in the upcoming war. Campbell immediately rejects the offer, but Wirtanen quickly adds that he wants Campbell to think about it. He tells him that Campbell's answer will come in the form of how he acts and what positions he assumes once the U.S. and Germany declare war on each other.

[edit] Germany, WWII and afterwards

Once World War II starts, he begins to make his way up through Joseph Goebbels' propaganda organization, eventually becoming the "voice" of broadcasts aimed at propagandizing people in the United States. The spy part of the job comes in when he is transmitting his vitriolic messages. Unbeknownst to the Nazis, all of the idiosyncrasies of his speech, the deliberate pauses, the coughs, etc. are all part of the code that he is sending out. Campbell never discovers, nor is he ever told (except in one notable instance) what the information is that he is sending.

About halfway through the war his wife goes to the Eastern Front to entertain the German troops. Campbell is extremely distraught when he hears that the camp where she had been entertaining had been overrun and she was presumed dead. (In a much later exchange, Wirtanen reveals that Campbell had passed the fact that his wife probably died in a coded message about a week before Campbell himself had found out.) Right before the Soviet Army invades Berlin Campbell visits his in-laws one last time. Helga's father had been chief of police in Berlin and tells Campbell that he never liked him. He even comes right out and says that he always thought that Campbell had been a spy. He amends the statement to say though that even if he had been a spy, he had been so good at the propaganda business that he never could have served the other side better than he had served the Germans. Also, while at his in-laws house he has an exchange with Helga's younger sister Resi that will resonate with him years later.

Eventually he is captured by U.S. forces who recognize him for what he was, or rather what he had been pretending to be, a convinced Nazi, and a clear perpetrator of heinous war crimes. Wirtanen works a deal though where Campbell is set free and then given passage to New York City, whence the majority of the action of the film takes place.

[edit] New York City

In New York City, Campbell lives an ordinary existence, but he chooses to stay secretive. The only friend that he makes is George Kraft (played by Alan Arkin) who lives in his building, and who through an extraordinary coincidence also happens to be a Soviet intelligence agent. Through his friendship with Campbell, Kraft tries to get back into the good graces of his Soviet handlers (he had fallen out of favor during the previous years) by tricking Campbell into fleeing to Moscow by publicizing the fact that Campbell had been living in NYC since the end of the war. Wirtanen again makes an appearance to warn Campbell of the plot, but this time Campbell decides to go along with it. As before though, Wirtanen uses his influence to get Campbell set free after the FBI raids Kraft's hiding place. But once Campbell gets back to his apartment, he decides to turn himself in to the Israelis to stand trial.

[edit] Israel

The film ends as it began—with Campbell sitting in his Israeli jail cell awaiting his trial. At the very end of the film Campbell receives a letter from "Frank Wirtanen." The corroborating evidence that he was indeed an American spy during World War II had finally arrived. The last image is of Campbell getting ready to hang himself not, as he says, for crimes against humanity, but rather for "crimes against himself."

[edit] External links

• Weide's website on the film
• A transcript of an AOL online interview from November 22, 1996, done by Weide and Jesse Kornbluth