Swing Kids(1993)

Submitted by Julio M

The friendship between Thomas (Christian Bale) and Peter (Robert Sean Leonard) sours up when the former finds himself attracted to the pervasive indoctrination mandated by the Reich through the “Hitlerjugend” -Hitlerian Youth- to which both him and Peter have been forced to join; moreover, he has his father arrested by the Gestapo by accusing him of insulting the Führer and is seen shaken by it. All the while, Peter struggles to rebuke the general state of paranoia growing around him, but to very little success, as he is forcefully commissioned to carry out tasks for the Nazis -one of them being delivering closed boxes to certain people; but, one day, while doing it, he hears a receiver of one of the boxes scream in agony and, when, out of curiosity, he sits aside and opens one of the boxes, discovers, to his horror, that he had been delivering the ashes of men deemed as traitors (VERRÄTER) to the Nazi cause-.

Their other friend, jazz and swing enthusiast Arvid (Frank Whaley) -who had been recently assaulted on the street by a group led by their former friend, now Nazi sympathizer Emil (Noah Wyle)-, although he recovers from his injuries and goes back to trying to be a musician, finds himself eventually blacklisted from most clubs after an altercation with a club owner who wanted to force him to play a pro-Nazi song; to his further despondence, although Peter is sympathetic, the fact that Thomas admonishes him in rabid defense of the Nazi cause and he sees them both as “Hitlerjugend” makes him feel there will be no life for him under such circumstances. He commits suicide by slitting his wrists in his bathtub.

Peter and Thomas end their friendship after Thomas, visibly identified with the Reich, almost threatens to report Peter -he starts the threat but stops, halfway-. After this, not feeling himself at all part of that repression, Peter reneges on being a “Hitlerjugend” and, instead, dresses up again as a Swing Kid and goes to a club; his younger brother, Willi (David Tom) shows concern over the increasing raids conducted on swing clubs by the Nazis. As it turns out, that club is raided by a “Hitlerjugend” contingent, led by Thomas. Everyone is violently beaten and hauled off the joint, to be arrested. Then, Thomas spots Peter and they engage in a brawl. However, Peter manages to reason with Thomas, who stops and warns him that, if he doesn’t flee, he will be arrested and likely sent to a labour camp, but Peter doesn’t care.

Towards the end, a large group of clubgoers, Peter included, are arrested and rounded up into trucks to be taken away. Mayor Knopp (Kenneth Branagh), a Nazi mentor to the boys, witnesses Peter’s arrest, with disappointment. Willi arrives in time to see this hopelessly happen. As Peter is driven off to an unknown fate, both him and Thomas -who overcomes his zealotry- proudly yell “SWING HEIL!!”, and Willi follows suit, repeatedly. Title cards inform that many supporters of the Swing Youth movement were imprisoned, sent to labour camps or forcefully conscripted into the Army and were killed in the war, but the movement would not die easily and the next generation would live to see the fall of the Reich.