Their fans seem to think Goldschlag and her [almost entirely Jewish] swing band were hot stuff, but legit jazz listeners will be underwhelmed by her rendition of “Sing Sing Sing.” They will also be put off by her lack of compassion for fellow bandmates concerned about their imprisoned family members. Obviously, Goldschlag naively believes her blonde Aryan looks and her father’s WWI veteran status will protect her from the worst, but viewers know it won’t work that way.
The closing credits rightly assert Goldlschlag was both a victim and a collaborating perpetrator. It is easy to lose sight of that first part during Stella: A Life. Over the course of the early 1940s, she starts in denial, pivots to an exploitative role abetting her black marketeer lover, Rolf Isaakson, but then agrees to become the worst kind a collaborator when captured by the Gestapo.
In fact, Goldschlag herself volunteers to become a “catcher,” as they call the snitches they employ to ensnare other Jews. Initially, Goldschlag struggles to meet her quota, but she and the formerly reluctant Isaakson soon become quite good at it. Clearly, it helped sooth Goldschlag’s conscience thinking her betrayals would protect her parents. Yet, those promises turned out to mean absolutely nothing.
Riedhof’s film is very dark and in many ways quite demoralizing. Nonetheless, Goldschlag is an acutely human character and Paula Beer’s performance is truly fearless, because she never compromises or waters down the singer’s ruthless, manipulative, and self-centered persona. The way Beer shows Goldschlag clinging to her supposed victim status, despite all the pain she causes for her friends and neighbors really rings uncomfortably true. Indeed, had Goldschlag lived long enough, it is easy to envision her as one of the “as a Jew” “Anti-Zionists,” deliberately self-tokenizing herself, to curry favor with “Free Palestine” extremists (and in fact, Goldschlag later converted to Christianity and regularly expressed a virulent brand of anti-Semitism).
