suicide anthem

Music is ever soothing. It releases all mental tensions and is capable of even curing illness. But can a music composition provoke suicide? Not one or, but hundreds of them? Around seven decades ago, Rezso Seress composed gloomy Sunday-which urged the listeners to commit suicide-hence known as suicide anthem.
The impact it created in Europe was lethal that many people were said to have committed suicide after listening to them. Some left the lyrics with the suicide note. It was banned in Hungary by BBC, and on the American Airwaves. To this day BBC HAS NOT LIFTED THIN BAN!!

Curious to know what this film is all about- the film maker ROLF SCHUBEL weaves together a furious parable of guilt, innocence love and hatred, based on the novel by Nick Barkow. The story is centered round Herr Szabo and his lover Ilona-a waitress at Szaboo’s restaurant. They engage Andres a pianist to play at the restaurant. An unusual love triangle develops. He gives her a song the Gloomy Sunday, on her birthday. The charm of it runs as a leitmotif throughout the film. It was reported that the composer was bewildered as the rest of the world with the results that followed. In 1968 Seress took his life by jumping out of the window! Rolf Schubel has used the historical fact and built his characters and plot around it. The tune has a strange effect of encouraging would be suicides to embark on the deed.
(I SAW this film four years back at the IFFK 2002 HELD in Thiruvananthapuram. This write up was published in the Deccan Herald)