Follow the 'Yellow' Paved Road

They are curious, "Yellow": From left, stars William Hurt, Kristen Stewart and Eddie Redmayne in the film that opens on March 12. (Photo by Eric Lee/Samuel Goldwyn Films)

"The Yellow Handkerchief," says its colorful producer, is all about not waving the white flag.

"It's all about not giving up, or in," notes Arthur Cohn, who's adhered to that credo for some 50 years. "There is always a second chance."

Chancing across this movie, opening on March 12, is akin to prospecting for gold and finding goals alongside it.

Based on a Pete Hamill short story, the long and the short of the film is a road trip with dangerous detours and wild two-wheel spins involving a disparate trio of tripped-up likable losers -- a young guy and girl and the alone ranger who kinda counsels them from their off-course ways.

But as Cohn comments, the road need not end in a pothole, even if the film is set in post-Katrina cajun territory.

Life as jambalaya: The kids are running away and toward each other as the adult -- a winged William Hurt -- takes a stab at repaving a personal road that would have stymied Cormac McCarthy.

Give it up for Cohn, whose successes stem from one major fact and factor: "I never gave up because I don't listen to other people's advice."

In that sense, he could be a giver rather than a taker: The Swiss knife-sharp six-time Oscar winner is keen and committed about what he wants and needs. Seasoned in a Basel Jewish upbringing -- his grandfather was the Swiss city's chief rabbi; his father a Jewish law scholar associated with Israel's chief rabbi at the time, Abraham Isaac Kook -- Cohn connotes old school while thriving on contemporary challenges.

Indeed, here is a man whose watershed and wonderful film "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" continues to this day to be a landmark in Holocaust cinema. But the Vittorio De Sica classic was released amid mass rejection, Cohn notes, "after 31 distributors turned it down in America."

Never forget? It's Cohn's moviedom motif: As a producer, he has been particularly mindful of the Holocaust, garnering awards and acclaim for such works as the documentary, "The Final Solution," focusing as it did on Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal; and "The Yellow Stars: The Persecution of the Jews in Europe, 1933-45."

But it was the Israeli Stars of David at Munich that captured his ken "One Day in September," which took home the Oscar gold, even as the Munich massacre stanched the Israeli teams' efforts at Olympic gold in soaked pools of blood in '72.

As the fires of Vancouver are ashes of history now, Cohn's "September" remains a coolly executed calendar reminder that terrorism takes no holidays, especially as it takes hostages.

Cohn is a captive, too -- but of a mesmerizing not demoralizing past. Here is a man at age 82 who tools around in his early years for lessons to learn.

"My father was a very respected lawyer in Switzerland," says Cohn.

A role model refusing to roll with the punches, Cohn's dad deeded his life to standing up, not standing down.

"He was known to serve clients without means, without charge," allows Cohn, getting a special charge out of this story. "One day, a very rich man from Berlin asked my father to represent him, and at the end of their meeting, my father said, 'I am sorry, I will not represent you. You are utterly wrong in this case.' "

Case closed? Not quite. "The man ran up and embraced him. 'You are my man,' he said of my father's honesty. 'I wanted a true verdict.' "

The verdict was in, too, for Cohen's zayda, after whom he was named. "When Theodor Herzl came from Vienna to organize the first Zionist Congress in Basel, he was looking for a rabbi to support him; so many of the famous rabbis refused," objecting to giving Herzl their hechsher for his Zionist dream, one, they argued, that could only be achieved "when the Messiah comes." "Only one rabbi accepted his invitation -- my grandfather."

And, in a way, what Cohn commits himself to now is pay back as a paean to his family's rich Jewish life. "What I have done on Jewish terms is due to my father," he says of the screen savers he has made of his heritage. "I want to establish something to be remembered for a long time in his honor."

The much-honored movie man -- known worldwide for his jaunty yellow ties -- is doing no less now, as "The Yellow Handkerchief" is a swath of movie color worth savoring with its imagery of people "learning to understand each other," serving as guardians of the hearts and minds, according to the man who himself was awarded Bar-Ilan University's Guardian of Zion Award.