As Abe Gold in the latest season of “Babylon Berlin,” Israeli actor Mark Ivanir speaks English, German, Yiddish and Hebrew But his best moment requires no words as he beats up some Nazis who attacked his uncle. Gold hits them with a cane and despite being outnumbered, scares the hell out of them. Then he takes out a gun and hits one of them.
The scene struck an emotional chord with Ivanir, who ad-libbed a line: “Anybody else want to get beat up by a Jew?” Prior to shooting, he spoke with his cousin, Danny, whose grandfather had been beaten up on the streets of Berlin in that time period for being Jewish.
“I didn’t even know that part,” Ivanir said. “So, for me, it had this extra family connection when I was doing it, which was very emotional.
“Babylon Berlin” tells the story of homicide investigator Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch). He’s helped by Charlotte Ritter, played by the beautiful and lively Liv Lisa Fries. or its first three seasons, “Babylon Berlin” was available on Netflix, but the fourth season is streaming on MHz Choice. It’s one of the best TV shows you will see this year.
Based on the “Gereon Rath” series of crime novels by series by Volker Kutscher, the new season — based on “Goldstein,” the third novel in the series), the season opens with Rath joining the SA (the Nazi paramilitary group known as the “Brownshirts”) and donning the swastika armband, much the chagrin of Charlotte. The organized crime syndicates have gone wild and Rath is trying to fix the problem, knowing one of the key players is Jewish mobster Walter Weintraub, played with some panache by Ronald Zehrfeld. It’s a sexy show with great music and some violence that gets its energy from the great chemistry of Bruch and Fries, but Ivanir helps make this season, with ten episodes, the best one yet.
Abe (the Goldstein now shortened to Gold) returns to Germany to recover a diamond known as the Blue Rothschild. He threatens Alfred Nyssen (an exquisitely bizarre Lars Eidinger) who claims that the jewel is missing. Though not religious, Abe is asked by relatives to join them for a Shabbat dinner and he reluctantly agrees. Not wanting to tell them he is involved in crime; he makes up a story about chewing gum and finds some connection to his roots.
“In the book he had this notion of shame of the shtetl Jew,” Ivanir said. “Now, he’s a gangster. His whole connection to the family in Germany and his origins were there but he tried to keep himself away from that.”
Ivanir also speaks Ukrainian, Arabic, French, and Arabic. He turned down the possibility of being in the Mossad and said his grandfather Meshulem impacted him.
“It was like a cultural salon in my house always,” Ivanir said. “The house was always full with poets and painters and writers and actors and there was all of that and I guess there’s something in my genes. I always wanted to do that. My grandfather at the time set me up with this Yiddish theater for kids that I attended in Israel. I admired him.”
“The house was always full with poets and painters and writers and actors and there was all of that and I guess there’s something in my genes. I always wanted to do that. My grandfather at the time set me up with this Yiddish theater for kids that I attended in Israel. I admired him.”
Ivanir is a gifted and versatile character actor. Some found his appearance too Ashkenazi to pass for Israeli, he got several roles as tough Russians. Including a memorable turn as a chainsaw-weilding Chechen in the Max comedy, “Barry.”
One intriguing role was in Showtime’s “Homeland.” He played Ivan Krupin, a high-ranking Russian secret service agent who battles withs with Saul Berenson, a senior CIA agent played by Mandy Patinkin.
American audiences will likely first remember Ivanir from his role as Marcel Goldberg, a Jew with access to black market goods in “Schindler’s List.”
Working with such a famous director in a blockbuster Holocaust film could make anyone nervous. But Ivanir said the director’s excellence helped.
“Of course, there was pressure, it’s Spielberg and a big production,” he said. “There were moments where I was stressed but I can’t say I had three-and-a-half months of stress. Steven was amazing. I did three movies with him and it’s always the same deal. He’s so open to improv and suggestions.”
Many might also know Ivanir from his strikingly good performance as Zvika, an agent for gorgeous actress Noah Hollander (Rotem Sela) in “The Baker and The Beauty” (“Lehiyot Ita) available for rent on Amazon. It tells the story of a Sephardi son of a baker, Amos (Avraham Aviv Alush) who has an unexpected romantic relationship with Noa, Ivanir plays a gay agent, he said he spoke with several gay friends to see how he should approach the role.
One told him that some gay couples don’t have kids, or when they do, it’s at a later stage, after they first focus on work.
“People from work could be the equivalent for kids,” Ivanir said. “That’s what I took from it for Zvika. His client was his work, and his daughter, and everything. That kind of focus lead me to create that role.”
The Los Angeles resident has appeared in many films and shows, and notably got to riff in Hebrew to Robert DeNiro in “What Just Happened?” and he showed his funny bone with a great joke as a cab driver picking up Tom Hanks in “The Terminal.”
He said he recently saw DeNiro, as they will appear in the new series, “Zero Day.”
“I said ‘Mazel Tov’ on his new baby we had a nice conversation,” Ivanir said. “I’m very lucky to work with both amazing people.”
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