Amsterdam Dispatch. 1.

The IDFA is celebrating its 20th anniversary. I began my stay in Amsterdam by watching a film that was more than 35 years old, a relic of the anti-war movement from the early 1970s.

FTA, directed by Francine Parker, is a film of the tour of the Fuck The Army show, a theater revue put on by Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Holly Near (remember her?) and the singer Len Chandler in 1972. The troupe's goal was to broaden protest against the Vietnam War by performing at army bases in the US and in Asia - right outside the gates of bases in Okinawa, the Philippines and Japan. Local activists were happy to join in the fun.

The message was one of solidarity with the troops. Skits about the idiocy, brutality and petty tyranny of military life (with Fonda singing and dancing) are intercut with tour footage and often poignant interviews with soldiers about their opposition to the war. "FTA" also stands for "Free The Army." Crew members of the USS Coral Sea   aircraft carrier present a petition condemning the bombing of the mainland by planes from their ship. Len Chandler, a singer with an easy and friendly stage presence shares the duties of MC with a young Sutherland, fresh from the Robert Altman film, M.A.S.H.

Calling the film FTA must have seemed like just the right marketing approach. Using the abbreviation for the title meant that you could use the word "fuck" while not using it, satisfying your audience's predilection for shocking and being shocked, saying something provocative and unsayable (on screen) about the war and American politics, but not doing anything that would keep the film out of theaters.

What did keep the film out of theaters, until now, was Jane Fonda's trip to Hanoi in 1972, which she made without telling anyone else involved in the movie, according to Len Chandler, who spoke briefly after the film was shown last night. Fonda went to Hanoi in July of 1972. Her photographs there, notably a beauty shot of her sitting at the controls of an anti-aircraft gun, were just the high-octane that the Nixon administration needed to fuel its campaign to discredit the anti-war movement among the huge mass of mute patriots that Nixon liked to call the "Silent Majority." Once the photos were all over television and on the front pages of every newspaper, and the reaction from Middle America seemed fiercely negative - the Nixon dirty tricks crowd made sure of that, in a rehearsal for its slime strategy in the 1972 presidential campaign - the film was pulled from theaters by its distributor at the time, American International Pictures. Bear in mind that AIP was the distributor of no-budget classics like I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Wasp Woman, A Bucket of Blood, and the youth revolution saga, Wild in the Streets. You might have thought that mini-mogul Sam Arkoff of AIP would have had some sympathy for guerrillas, but not if it mobilized the folks in Nebraska against his films. You can also bet that Nixon had his friends in Hollywood apply the thumbscrews.

In the film, with her fist in the air much of the time, Fonda describes the show's improvisational theater as "political vaudeville." Its parodies of officious officers and dance numbers skewering male chauvinism in the military tend toward the earnest, yet you won't hear anyone (but soldiers) saying "fuck the army" these days. "Support our troops" is the mantra you get throughout most of the media - and certainly from all the presidential candidates. If there were a military draft, you'd be hearing "fuck the army" a lot more. But if we had a draft, there never would have been an invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration. Remember that it was the end of the draft in 1973 that brought most of the demonstrations against the war to an end.

Some of the music is poignant, especially "Soldier, We Love You," sung by its author, Rita Martinson - so poignant that it's haunting to see this revue at a time when the war in Iraq drags on, amid the completion of the largest US embassy ever, costing more than half a billion dollars in Baghdad, a long-term commitment if there ever were one - not to mention talk of a possible invasion of Iran. If you're wondering where Jane Fonda is now, she is a self-described "liberal feminist Christian." According to film web sites, FTA was not on the bill in the tribute to her earlier this year at Lincoln Center. It's a shame, but no surprise. These days, Fonda's battles seem to be with Botox.

Word on the Internet is that Fonda is the obstacle to releasing FTA again. No mention of her opposition to releasing the film was made last night by a heavier and greyer Len Chandler, who is in Amsterdam to show the film. Chandler, who noted the recent death of director Francine Parker, spoke optimistically about bringing FTA back to theaters, but said no deal had been made. Releasing the film is enough of a challenge, but don't expect much of an audience in the event that a miracle takes place and the film gets a theatrical distributor. When Rialto Pictures re-released Peter Davis's classic Hearts and Minds a few years ago, there was a chorus of approval from the press, yet barely anyone showed up.

Chandler told the audience last night that the film was in the hands of David Zeiger, director of the 2005 doc, Sir! No, Sir!, about the anti-war movement among the military during the Vietnam War.

Another war story is explored in The Champagne Spy, by Nadav Schirman, which tells one of the many adventure tales of Mossad agents in the early days of Israel who took on the most improbably identities as spies. This documentary is the story of Ze'ev Gur Arie, a German-born Jew who was set up in 1960 as Wolfgang Lotz, a German ex-SS officer who became a horse breeder in Egypt, where German atomic scientists after the war were at work on developing a nuclear bomb program.

The film is, in part, an adaptation of Lotz's autobiography, also called The Champagne Spy, which gives more details about the nature of his espionage than you'll get in the film. Here's a 1970 report from Time.

The Champagne Spy tells the spy's story from the perspective of his son Oded (Udi), who must be 50 now, living in the US with his family. Udi recalls living in Paris in the 1960s, with his father "away on business" most of the time. It didn't take long for the boy to figure out his father was a spy, although the details weren't all spelled out. We hear about the operation from a series of ex-Mossad officers who tell of how the charming Lotz found his way into the tiny German scientific circle, and into Egyptian society. Lotz loved the good life, and it was his new identity that enabled him to live it. His weakness was that he became addicted to that life of champagne and women, and to the character that enabled him to live a masquerade. Eventually he fell in love with a German woman in Egypt, and married her, a move which made his ruse even more credible, until a servant discovered a transmitter in a bathroom scale and told the authorities. What else made the servant turn in his master?

When Lotz, his wife Waltraud, and other Germans are arrested, Lotz maintains his German identity. He claims that he's been blackmailed, that he worked for the Israelis because they were threatening to reveal his Nazi past. It worked. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, not hanged, as he would have been if the Egyptians had learned that he was an Israeli. Once a prisoner exchange happens after the Six Day War, Lotz is hailed as a hero in Israel.

This documentary sees him as something different - a man who betrays his wife, even if it is in the service of spying for Israel. His son can forgive him for going to live in Germany, which Lotz does, but he never forgives him for abandoning his mother. Mossad commanders and agents confess regretfully that they knew about it all, and allowed Lotz to do as he wanted. There certainly seems to be a feature film here. If one has already been made, please correct me. Let's hope this one is better than Munich.

There's no denying that the personal story of The Champagne Spy is heartbreaking, which is what most dramatic feature producers are after. Missing from Schirman's documentary is a picture of the people whom Lotz was observing. Why did the Germans work for the Egyptians? Schirman suggests it was mere money, that there weren't too many jobs for Nazi nuclear scientists (although we now know that most of them did find employment, thanks to the US). I imagine that's partly true, although somehow I think there was probably more to it. How did the Germans feel about developing a bomb that must have been intended for use against Israel? Also, the action taken by Israel against the Germans in the film is limited to a few letter bombs, which indeed do plenty of damage. What information did Lotz get? What happened to the German community in Cairo after his arrest, and after his identity was revealed once the prisoner exchange was completed? Perhaps the Israeli audience that grew up with the Wolfgang Lotz myth knows these details all too well. The rest of us don't.

Posted by dwhudson at November 23, 2007 5:16 AM