Magnus Gertten's 2022 documentary 'Nelly & Nadine', the classic love story of 2 survivors of the Nazi concentration camps of WWII, is also a film about film-making. Gertten patiently constructs a fragmented narrative to reflect his main subject's trepidation. Sylvie Bianchi is the granddaughter of Nelly Mousset-Vos, a Belgian opera singer who fell in love with a mysterious Chinese national Nadine Hwang when they met over a rendition of Puccini's 'Madame Butterfly' on Christmas Eve 1944 at Ravensbrück. In 'Nelly & Nadine', this farmer's wife in idyllic Northern France embarks on a personal journey in relation to this remarkable couple.
It reminds me of another recent film, 2022's 'Three Minutes: A Lengthening'. Bianca Stigter's forensic examination of old cine film of a Polish village immediately before the Holocaust (based on the book 'Three Minutes In Poland' by musician Glenn Kurtz published in 2014) uses the moving images of people and place as a research tool for examining bite-sized pieces of erased history. 'Nadine & Nelly' starts with the archive of women refugees liberated by the Red Cross disembarking at Malmö, Sweden, on 28th April 1945, Gertten (who has made two other films about women shown in these pictures, 'Harbour of Hope' (2021) and 'Every Face Has a Name' (2015)) lets the camera hover over Nadine Hwang's intriguingly long gaze. What is she thinking? How did she get here? And we're off ...
It's fair to say there are bumps in the road. Sylvie's grandmother left behind a mysterious Pandora's box of documents. By presenting 'pieces' of a story , the film raises as many questions as it answers. Gradually, a little frustratingly at times, it sets out to answer them, so I did eventually find out what I wanted to know. Probably history will take care of the rest, but for the purposes of this film 'Nelly & Nadine' is a beautiful story that affected me very deeply.
A couple of noteworthy things. Reels of Super 8 film are very illuminating, mostly shot by Nadine during the couple's life in Caracas after the war, adding 'colour' and intimacy which a still photo would struggle to convey. There is also powerful prose and poetic verse, entries from Nelly's diary manuscripts which the couple worked on together after the war with a view to publishing (rejected, strangely, possibly because of the nature of their relationship and social taboos of the time). Pure horror is Nelly's account of the couple's first separation "At the top, crowning the mountain, lies the camp, Mauthausen, the antechamber of hell", the 5 days and nights of the train journey described in harrowing detail along with the still image of the infamous 186-step 'Staircase Of Death' carved out of stone up which quarry workers were forced to carry huge slabs of stone until they dropped dead.
The film contains many other aspects, not least highlighting the journey of discovery Sylvie goes on, but 'Nelly & Nadine' comes good by the end, so it's well worth watching Gertten & Co.'s account of this remarkable couple's life. British viewers can watch on BBC iPlayer as part of the 'Storyville' collection of award-winning documentaries.
