Swing Kids
Your Comments About This Movie!
May 28, 1998
I have seen "Swing Kids" several times now, and I still love the movie. The movie had also given me interest in swing music and dance. I think saying that the movie was shallow was an incorrect viewpoint. That's your viewpoint, and this is mine, though. No teenager, or anyone for that matter, wants to be told what they can or can not listen to and do. To Swing Kids dancing was their way of saying that they weren't going to let themselves be told they could not listen to swing and dance it too if they wanted.
From the soundtrack booklet Gunther Hoppe explains that he was one of the swing kids who got arrested and sent to a concentration camp, exactly like the movie. He says that listening to jazz/swing was part of how they stood up against everything the Third Reich stood for. This also was presented in the movie.
They were not "disloyal, opportunistic, skin-deep, and suicidal happy-go-lucky swing kids". They stood up for what they believed in at all costs, and they weren't going to be whipped into submission, at least not most of them. Of course it is true, they could have chosen to join the Nazi party, but that was against their beliefs. The Nazis persecuted millions of people, but not just Jews.
Personally, I think this movie was very well done, considering the type of issue they had to confront, which was standing up for what you believe, even if it is against the strongest people.
It was not a Disney picture, it was a Hollywood Picutures release.
R. Sugar
[Editor's Note: Hollywood Pictures is a division of Disney.]
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May 14, 1998
My family and I saw this film years ago; my youngest son still says this is one of his favorite films and has had it in his collection of videos for about a year now. He is now 16 years old. This film piqued his interest in swing music and the big band sound which he still has a love for today, and started him on playing the trumpet to become involved in the style of music in the future. His knowledge of W.W.II and its consequences was increased with a better understanding at such a young age of something that to many of his generation seems like eons ago and therefore is of no concern to them, unfortunately. If this film only serves as a history lesson to its "cult"-like following amongst the young people it is now having, then is that bad? I don't think so, any lesson learned or interest piqued no matter how insignificant is good.
D. Ceja###
April 2, 1998
I have just read Ms. Sullivan's review of "Swing Kids", which was released in 1993. I sincerely feel that her review is unfair. All age groups and religious affiliations can relate to this film. I've watched it hundreds of times with people of all ages and there's never a dry eye. The performances, both acting and dancing, are superb (Kenneth Branaugh is always great). What a unique
and captivating way to portray the horrors of Nazi control. True, any angst-ridden teen can sob at a movie and claim to understand what the characters are going through. But this film moved me as much as Sophie's Choice or Schindler's List, in a different way. The movie is wonderful, period. It was a work of art.
-- S. Gutnik