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JUMP is a psychological drama
revealing for the first time the extraordinary circumstances behind the unjust
murder trial of the young Jew, Philippe Halsman, who would later become the most
sought after celebrity portrait photographer of his generation. Set in 1928
Austria during the rise of fascism, the story documents the corrupt relationship
between Philippe and his father, the events leading to his father’s death, and
focuses a sharp but delicate eye upon the anti-Semitic atmosphere that quickly
led to Philippe’s conviction. On a September afternoon in the heart of the
picturesque Alps, two Latvian tourists, 22-yr old Philippe Halsman, a
soft-spoken, compassionate engineering student and his overbearing father
Morduch undertook a hiking tour. Though he loved his father deeply, the seething
dynamic between them never allowed this affection to surface. By the end of the
day, Morduch Halsman, a stubborn, aggressive, well-to-do dentist, determined to
“make a man” of his son by the brute force of physical labor, was dead. Philippe
maintained that his father had fallen and was still alive when he ran for help,
but when he returned, his father’s body lay face down, his head split open with
an ax, his blood and belongings strewn about the area. With vague circumstantial
evidence pointing to Philippe, he was immediately arrested and charged with
patricide. No one wanted to defend an outsider, let alone a Jew, and the local
community hoped for a speedy trial that would wash their hands of the monstrous
act. Deliberately uninformed of his rights, Philippe was left in the dark of his
cold cell until his mother and sister, alerted to the crisis, managed to procure
a lawyer from the Jewish quarter in Vienna. With no time to prepare his case,
Philippe and his passionate lawyer were left scrambling as the trial began.
While witnesses steered their testimony towards a guilty verdict, and while the
courtroom saw such gruesome evidence as Morduch’s head, severed from his body by
local autopsists, Philippe found himself so alienated he could not even bring
himself to help his own cause. Enraged that the trial was conducted with such
hostility towards him, he sat brooding with anger, given to frequent outbursts
of frustration. In a mere four days, the highly-charged, emotional trial came to
a close. Though no evidence or any clear motive had been established, the
deliberation was over as soon as it began. Philippe Halsman was convicted of
patricide and sentenced to ten years in prison thus becoming the first Jewish
victim of the incipient anti-Semitism of National Socialism. Not until
well-known international figures such as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and
Thomas Mann rallied to his cause, demanding a fair trial, was Philippe freed.
Under the condition that he never return to Austria, he made his way out of the
country harboring the darkest of wounds. Not only was he never allowed to
properly grieve his father’s death, but he would forever be haunted by visions
of his falling father, of the severed head, and the black hole of his own
memory, filled with doubt, guilt and grief. Though he never spoke publicly about
that fateful summer, its influence was sharply felt in the photography that
would soon make Philippe famous. Commissioned by the likes of Marilyn Monroe,
Brando, Picasso, Nixon and the Kennedys, Halsman turned formal fashion shots
into serious investigations of character. Engaging his subjects in disarming
chatter, he would often ask them to jump, which he believed would free them of
their postures and defenses. “When you ask a person to jump, his attention is
mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real
person appears.” From surrealist flourishes such as headless bodies or bodiless
heads, to “jumpology”, which would become his trademark, Philippe pursued his
quest to uncover the hidden truths behind the masks of his subjects. But only in
private would he turn this investigation upon himself. It seems that Philippe
was able to witness his father’s true character in that horrible moment so many
years ago, and perhaps, in doing so, was able to love him in absolute. But as to
the question of murder, obscured by the trauma of the moment and the whirlwind
of prejudice in its aftermath, Philippe himself was rendered impotent to answer. |
