Gloomy Sunday and the Power of Music?

And it was gloomy outside
 of my home on Sunday:-)

'Gloomy Sunday' (AKA The Hungarian Suicide Song) has a reputation for being one of the most cursed songs in modern history -
Cursed Songs?

The Deadliest Song Ever Made?

I was surprised to read in the novel 'Schindler's Ark' that an SS officer continually requested the Rosner's to play 'Gloomy Sunday' at a do at Goeth's residence one night, and after turning the request down a number of times Henry Rosner wanted to see if he could use the fabled cursed song's power to push this depressed man over the edge by giving the song everything he could imagine to persuade the man that suicide was a good idea ... and apparently it had an immediate effect on the man, as he went outside to have a smoke on the balcony and then shot himself in the head with his pistol.

The gloomy Sunday outside my
 backdoor on the weekend

Ironically, I had spent last weekend watching 'Schindler's List' on DVD and then reading 'Schindler's Ark', and it was a gloomy rainy Sunday when I read about the musicians using 'Gloomy Sunday' to try and get a man to kill himself.

It wasn't until last week when hearing Anthony Peake talking on a podcast about the movie and how the only colour image in the movie was the girl in a red dress, that I decided it was time I watched the whole movie I had owned for years on DVD, but never watched right through to the end.
Anthony was wrong about the only colour image in the movie being the girl in the red dress, because the movie starts off in colour and then as the candle flame turns to the smoke of the train the film goes to black and white, kind of like a reverse of 'The Wizard of Oz' does when it to uses black and white and colour.

The candle flame also retains an orange/yellow colour when seen in the black and white scenes.

I could never bring myself to watch 'Schindler's List' at the cinema when it came out, and while I had bought a copy of the movie on DVD years ago, I had never watched it right the way through until last weekend.
Which was probably a good thing with Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes being one of my favourite actors, with my favourite movie of his being the movie 'Oscar and Lucinda' made from Peter Carey's novel of the same name.

Ironically Ralph's face as Oscar has been staring out at me from my bookcase for years, as you can see in the above photo.
If I had have seen Ralph playing Amon Goeth when the movie came out, maybe I wouldn't have liked Ralph that much when I saw him play Oscar in 'Oscar and Lucinda' ... who knows?
"When survivor Mila Pfefferberg was introduced to Ralph Fiennes on the set, she began shaking uncontrollably, as he reminded her too much of the real Amon Goeth."

I was surprised to find out that Amon Goeth was hung 70 years before, to the day, that my own father would die on ... September 13th.

Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List (1993)

And this year it looks like September 13th, 2020 will be a gloomy one, too:-(

"Rezső Seress most famous composition is Szomorú Vasárnap ("Gloomy Sunday"), written in 1933, which gained infamy as it became associated with a spate of suicides.

Seress committed suicide in Budapest in January 1968; he survived jumping out of a window, but later in the hospital choked himself to death with a wire.

His obituary in the New York Times mentions the notorious reputation of "Gloomy Sunday""

"During production of 'Schindler's List', the atmosphere was so grim and depressing that Steven Spielberg asked his friend Robin Williams if he could tell some jokes and do comedy sketches while Spielberg would watch episodes of Seinfeld (1989).

Some of Williams' sketches, while played through the speaker phone to the cast and crew, ended up being part of dialogue material for his character in Aladdin (1992), the Genie."

Whitley Strieber, The Grays, The Afterlife, & Messages From Anne ... and Robin Williams?

RaINBOw

Bizarrely Robin Williams killed himself on August 11th, 2014, which also happened to be Embeth Davidtz' birthday that day.
Embeth played Helen Hirsch in 'Schindler's List' and Little Miss Amanda Martin/Portia Charney in 'Bicentennial Man', alongside Robin Williams.

Ralph Fiennes and Embeth Davidtz in
  Schindler's List (1993)

Liam Neeson in Schindler's List (1993)

'Gloomy Sunday' can be heard playing on the radio while Oscar is putting on his cufflinks and Nazi badge at the start of the movie.

It was so gloomy that the solar light stayed on all day last Sunday

'Gloomy Sunday' is a tune I'm finding hard to get out of my head now, but it's not driving me to suicide ... yet:-)