O Solo Mio??


Can somebody tell me what the signifigance of 'O Solo Mio' was in part 5?? Thats one of the first parts I've watched, and I'm a little lost.

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O Solo Mio is Italian, I think, and the Gestapo was bullying a Portugese Fado Singer to sing something he didn't want to. That provokes Byron to confront the Nazis who are making their ambassador uncomfortable, at the bistro.

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It is actually O Sole Mio, which translates, My Sunshine, and is an Italian love song.

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The whole point of the scene is that the singer in the restaurant is renowned as a great interpreter of Fado, a wonderful Portuguese song style (I would urge you to hear Amalia Rodriguez or Maritza). Everyone is enjoying the performance, but then the German demands "O Sole Mio" because he is basically uncouth and wants something he knows and can't be bothered to explore new horizons musically. He also knows that he is in a powerful position and so becomes, to put it bluntly, a bully. This doesn't really realistically reflec the German character at the time. Someone in his position would certainly have been a bully, but a very sophisticated bully, having been brought up on Gothe, Schiller, Heiner, Wagner etc etc.

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Pardon me, but Hitler's ghouls were infiltrating the Weimar government, and State, Regional, and Municipal Gov'ts., as early as the early 1920's. In addition the NSDAP also infiltrated the media, industries and corporations, education, the sciences, the trade unions, and organized religion (Lutheranism, mainly). As many facets of German society and culture they could get their hands on, even if they were a minority party for quite some time, in The Reichstag.

In addition, the Foreign Ministry, along with the SS/RSHA/SD/Gestapo helped organize overseas NSDAP auxilliaries as soon as Hitler assumed partial power under von Hindenburg (perhaps as early as 1929)--most notably, the German-American Bund. The Reich severed bonds, however, with the German-American Bund, when they had evidence that the GAB was becoming a loose cannon, blundering along, and J. Edgar Hoover's/Clyde Tolson's dogged pre-war pursuit of Nazis--also, as Adolf shifted his priorities to choreographing his impending war.

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This is very interesting, and factually quite correct, but what is your point? I fail to see what it has to do with this thread.

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I think everyone failed to see that... :)

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Not everyone. The point was that the Nazi's invading the higher levels of German society were somewhat thuggish and not as refined as the elite of German society at the time. I am not sure that was completely true. I understand the Brownshirts, the S. A. were considered thuggish but the Gestapo was part of the SS which was considered the elite of the Nazi party and most probably would not have behaved that way at that time because they had not consolidated their power in a neutral country like Portugal.

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Everyone is enjoying the performance, but then the German demands "O Sole Mio" because he is basically uncouth and wants something he knows and can't be bothered to explore new horizons musically.


I would go one step further and say that the German official is also showing his ignorance of the Portuguese and Italian cultures, imo, based on the fact that they both speak Romance languages. In his limited world view, he probably thinks those cultures are identical and can't be arsed to make a distinction between being Portuguese and Italian, rather like Archie Bunker, or some other 1970's-1980's bigoted tv archetype, who assumes that Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cambodian, etc. cultures are all the same.

It's akin to assuming a native Korean or Japanese would know how to prepare Chow Mein.

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An interesting sidenote about this scene is that the actor who played the role of the Nazi who kept yelling "O Solo Mio" was also in War and Remembrance, as the second-in-command of the Theresienstadt (sp?) ghetto. Clearly, it's the same actor, but it's never made clear if he was playing the same role, or if it was a different role entirely.

He was also in Kelly's Heroes, as a German tank commander.

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Several actors have been cast for different roles in WOW and WAR, for instance Barry Morse who played at first the banker Stoller played in WAR he played Col. Gen. Franz Halder.
Sky Dumont played in WOW Mussolini's son-in-law who was pro Hitler, in WAR he played Count Stauffenberg who tried to kill Hitler and got executed.
I also am convinced that Michael McGuire who played Freddie Fearing in WOW and insulted Rhoda whereas he told Pug that he likes him, showed up again in WAR, but he is not listed in the cast.

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Yes, he is listed in WAR as Capt. Miles Browning. (He wears a wig in WoW. He is himself in WAR :) )


*No matter the movie, there will always be a moron starting the thread: "Worst movie ever"*

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You seem to know a lot about WAW.
We recently watched two older WW II movies from the 1960's on TCM on Memorial Day weekend and believe that we have recognized that awful grey-haired (?) Nazi in the Portuguese tavern who tries to prevent the singer from singing his Portuguese song and instead suggests that he plays "O sole mio".
He has quite a chin :).
But I couldn't find him in the cast list, I don't even think his movie name is ever mentioned in the episode (so I wouldn't even know for which actor to search).
Do you know the actor's name by any chance, too? He might be German.

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Thank you, now I might have a chance to find out the actor's name. We recently watched Kelly's Heroes and another WW II movie from the early 1960's and thought it's the Gestapo man from WAW. But as he was 20+ years younger, we were not 100% sure. At least he had the same pronounced chin :)!

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The actor's name is Karl-Otto Alberty.

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Thank you :)!
We finally found out his name on Memorial Day weekend when TCM had a WW II movies marathon and we discovered the big chin in two WW II movies from the 1960's and managed to memorize his role name. Later we looked it up in the imdb.

He sure was one of the freakiest characters in WOW, wasn't he?

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