At the very end when the conductor shakes hands with someone in the audience (and it wasn't Hitler) what was the significance of the handkerchief in his hands. It was obviously supposed to mean something because the camera really focused on this.
shareHe was wiping his hand clean of Hitler's handshake.
shareIt's actually Joseph Goebbels who gets up from his front row seat to shake Furtwangler's hand.
I think Szabo zoomed in on the handkerchief hand-wiping in the clip to deliberately introduce ambiguity in its interpretation. But it's much more likely that Furtwangler habitually wiped his hands on his handkerchief - conducting can be sweaty, draining work - but his manner of doing it suggests it was also a personal tic. And in reality Furtwangler would certainly not have sent a signal to Goebbels that he might have been wiping his hands clean from the handshake.
Fanaticita:
Almost toward the end of the film, after being interrogated by the major, the conductor gets out of the chair. As he was getting up and heading toward the door, he falls to the floor.
The major's secretary politely helps the conductor get up. As he gets up and walks out, he is seen holding his handkerchief for a few seconds.
At the very end of the film, when it's shown in black and white, we see the REAL conductor holding his handkerchief again. This allows the viewer to go back and compare the real conductor, shown in black and white, to the actor playing the conductor.