Harlan Ellison's Watching (10 page)

Burt Lancaster as Captain Marvel.

When I was a child, and read the Capt. Marvel comics, I never
really
thought any harm would come to that great red cheese. He could always pull off something, after all, he was superhuman, wasn't he? My feeling was paralleled with Lancaster as I watched this film. He can act, certainly, but on what level above that of swashbuckling, I cannot conceive. The usual Lancasterite mannerisms—the clenched teeth, the balled fist swung across the body, the spread-legged stance and the furiously shaken arm, the tossed curls, all so damnably typical and cliche, so useless and needless here, in a setting of purest gold—the same mannerisms of Elmer Gantry, once again, for the millionth time restated.

The intrusive personality of Lancaster the acrobat, doing his special parlor tricks down ladders, over garden walls, superbly muscled and annoying as hell when they tell us over and over, "I'm not really Labiche, I'm Lancaster."

It is to Frankenheimer's credit that he has been able to direct around this more-than-minuscule handicap. His direction (blessedly done in black and white, precisely what the production demanded) is massive, great blocks of shadow and light, a study in chiaroscuro; dark, jagged, dense, swung with great authority, like the railroad crane needed to lift the wrecked locomotive off the tracks. Purposely ponderous at times, quicksilver here and gone at other times. He has filmed it with what might be termed "affectionate realism," a sense of proportion and piety that transcends mere naturalism, that lingers on the proper things for the proper amount of time.

Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, the Falstaffian Michel Simon as Papa Boule, Wolfgang Preiss adding another memorable characterization to his already-illustrious career with his portrayal of the Nazi railroad specialist Major Herren, muffin-shaped Albert Remy as the fellow-saboteur of Labiche, striking to the heart of the film's meaning with his gentle, skillful rendering of a simple peasant patriot . . . all of them lend tone and dignity and artistry to a film of notable proportions.

The Train
is a success. It succeeds not only on its own terms, but on the greater, more stringent, terms of strictest art criticism. It is a film of purity, it is even a loftier breed of "entertainment," and it deserves all the praise and attention we can give it.

Simply, it is a film not to be missed.

It is the whale, and not the flea.

Cinema
/ July–August 1965

There is a grand tradition of the adventure film. In many ways it is a dichotomy: some of the worst films of all time have been the most memorable adventures; conversely, some of the best-made adventure films die hideous box-office deaths, and live even shorter lives in memory.
King Kong
, Korda's
Four Feathers
and
The Thief of Bagdad
leap instantly to mind, and in more recent times
The Magnificent Seven, Lawrence of Arabia
and even as flawed an epic as
The Vikings—
all prove the latter point, while we may take as example of the former almost anything Samuel Bronston has released in the past ten years.

Because of this body of history to the larger-than-life film of derring-do, comparison intrudes itself. And in the case of 20th's
Von Ryan's Express
the comparison must inevitably be with
The Great Escape
, an adventure film of undeniable stature. The comparison is not altogether unwarranted, nor unrewarding. For if
Von Ryan's Express
comes out short in some areas, it makes the points up in others.

Late 1943, an Italian prison camp, run about as slipshodly as the entire Italian war. A camp filled with almost a thousand English troops, into whose midst comes a downed American Air Force Colonel, Ryan. The English officer-in-command has died the night before, so Ryan automatically becomes the ranking officer in the compound. He immediately raises the ire of the limeys by exposing their tunnels and escape procedures in exchange for medicine, clothing, showers, razors, all the basics kept from them by the Commandant as retaliation for their continued escape attempts. Inevitably, Italy surrenders, the prisoners take to the land before the Nazis move in, and are recaptured due to a humanitarian blunder on the part of Ryan. To make amends, he promptly steals the entire prison train, and runs it through Pauline peril after Pauline peril till they make it free to Switzerland. Ryan is killed in the process. But he does die a hero.

For the first third of the film, tedium is the keynote. About midway, the pace accelerates, due largely to the splendid performances of Edward Mulhare as the vicar impersonating a German officer, and Sergio Fantoni as the one-eyed Italian captain who helps the Ryan Express. As the denouement fast approaches, conjurings of
The Bridge on the River Kwai
and
The Guns of Navarone
swell, and never seem to be quite washed away, no matter
how
long the triggers of those German machine-pistols are held.

If the film is not a total success, blame lies, it seems to me, with director Mark Robson, who has once again demonstrated a pedestrian pace most clearly seen in his
Nine Hours to Rama
. The direction seems uninspired, matter-of-fact, strictly pronunciatory, without verve or dash or any of the bravura techniques such bravura plotting would seem to demand. It is, in many ways, a tale of danger and excitement, told by a man with the soul of a ribbon clerk. It has the same teeth-gnashing effect of a good joke, badly told.

And yet, the film manages to hold the attention, at least during the last two-thirds. It is to be hoped that the producers will see fit to trim the opening to embolden the pace.

The values of
Von Ryan's Express
, however, are serendipitous. The first is a conclusion about current war films, the second about the nature of the "star" system.

There seems to be a heartening—and totally inexplicable—trend toward films that point a shaft of rationality at the concept of "heroism" during wartime. Heartening, if one is to read the daily papers, and inexplicable in a time of Birching, pocket wars, and the concept of cleaning out Vietnamese foliage with low-yield atomics. We had
Dr. Strangelove
with its outright denunciation of the madness of overkill,
The Americanization of Emily
that boldly stated there is no nobility in combat, only loftiness in cowardice, and, in recent memory,
Paths of Glory
, which showed the base drives of those who make our wars. Now, here, we have another, somewhat more enigmatic view of the problem. Trevor Howard's (occasionally overplayed) Major Fincham would rather sacrifice his wounded men to the grim reaper than sacrifice the medicine secreted as "escape rations" by his breakout-happy POWs. Sinatra, as the downed Yankee airman, sees this as madness. "Even if one escapes, it's a victory," Fincham tells him, but Ryan proclaims it lunacy. Break them
all
out, he maintains, all eight hundred of them.

For in his acceptance of another way to skin the Nazi cat, Sinatra/Ryan says, in effect: "War must be made, under any circumstances, with sanity." Even when he dies, and Fincham's words echo back to his fading spirit, we see the morality of what Ryan believed:

There is no nobility in war. While he does not quite go so far as to suggest that the most ignominious life is better than the best kind of death, still, he does not veer too far from this ethic.

As for point two, one of the more serious and blatant drawbacks of the "star" system asserts itself here, as regards Sinatra. So typed has he become, so much a caricature of himself with the snap brim tilted over one eye, the trench coat slung over the shoulder, the fingers popping, Mr. Ring-a-ding alla way down the pike, that the character of Ryan, boldly assertive in David Westheimer's novel, from which the motion picture has been adapted, never really seems to take hold. At any moment we expect Frankie to wink and pop a pinkie at us. We are constantly intruded upon by the
Doppelganger
, the Shade of Sinatra Past, and it is a shame: he acts, for the first time in many films, possibly for the first time since Angelo Maggio. He acts, and with elegant clarity of movement, conservation of style; he underplays, he strives for highs and lows, and in one well-turned moment—when he is compelled to shoot the Italian paramour of the train commandant—he captures us completely. It is too bad we must constantly be reminded this "star" is playing the part. To hell with "star" images, let the bankers and backers give us acting; acting is the seldom fire that lights up the CinemaScope screen.

Cinema
/ July–August 1965

Make no mistake, this is a praise review. But if you detect a piercing note of bewilderment, a sense of the reviewer spinning about gyroscopically demanding to know which way they went, it all lies in the nature and thrust of a delightful, current trend in adventure films.

That Man from Rio
and the Ian Fleming—James Bond operas typify the movement, with
Topkapi
and
Charade
as minor entries in the sweep-stakes. Lineally descended from Huston's
Beat the Devil
and several of the Hitchcockian posturings (notably
The 39 Steps
and
North by Northwest
), the keynote is handsomely-mounted spy or suspense thrillers, with just a touch of Professor Dodgson's Alice and the sort of flair style the French call
panache
.

You start with an intricate "threat" (no mere Maltese Falcon will suffice in these times of seeded bubonic plague and Doomsday Machines that will turn us all into a smelly specie of cosmic pizza) and you select the right sort of secret agent to thwart it. Be he suave and cool
à la
James Bond or rugged and realistic like Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm (as he is in the novels, not—I'm sure—as Dean Martin will portray him in the upcoming series from Columbia), he has to be ready to go anywhere, perform any task, and lay his life on the line from Beirut to Baton Rouge. He also has to be a little out of his gourd to sign up for cockamamie work like that.

The villain has to be larger than life, snarl a whole lot (if possible, in one of the lesser dialects of Bantu) and have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of super-weapons and super-schemes. He has to, the poor debbil, he's gonna lose in the last three minutes, anyhow.

It is a phylum of cinema nonsense we heartily endorse. After years of Odetsstyle social outrage, more years of Hollywood twin-bed unreality, and most recently a miasma of depravity films that set the adenoids to jangling and the teeth to scrape, a wave of movie madness is most welcome.

Add to the huzzahs an item called
Masquerade
, with Cliff Robertson as the world's biggest patsy, standing around with a Mickey Mouse expression on his matinee idol's face, as a conglomerate circus of super-and-lesser spies uses him for everything but the village basketball.

Is there a plot? Who the hell knows! Very possible, but don't expect any certainties. There's a kidnapped thirteen-year-old who will shortly become the ruling rajah of a mythical Oil Monarchy, a wily Grand Vizier, some foofaraw about leased oil rights, a retired but hardly recalcitrant English Colonel (
brilliantly
pavane'd by Jack Hawkins, who only improves with each year and wrinkle), a group of smugglers who aren't smugglers, a beautiful girl who keeps sucking on a bottle of Coke as though she were determined to stay out of The Pepsi Generation . . . a midget, a knife-thrower, a private detective, a ramrodstiff British major-domo, and a cast of lesser estimables who pop in and out like the figurines on a cuckoo clock. The similarity does not end there.

Robertson is a delight, Hawkins runs close to amuck, the photography ranges from sharp and perceptive to pedestrian and drab, the script bears the unmistakable stamp of William (
The Temple of Gold
) Goldman's special demented Muse, and director Basil Dearden should be awarded the W. C. Fields Annual Juggling Award for keeping all those cigar boxes and top hats and brass balls skimming through the air. If we detect the crash of an implement or two in the b.g., there really isn't time to worry about it because Robertson still has to get that bamboo pole away from the white-crested vulture, so he can escape from the animal cage with that guy's wife, whom he has been balling throughout the picture, and catch up with the guy who records the Flamenco singers for BBC before he tries to steal the kid back from the double-crossing Home Office official with the donkey, attempting to cross that uncompleted dam in Spain . . . uh . . . try it: painless.

It might help if
Cinema
had a type font called Shrill Gothic.

Cinema
/ July–August 1965

It takes a peculiarly slantwise mind to understand Kafka the first time out. It will take a similarly oriented mind to understand
Mickey One
the first time it is seen. For the similarities between Kafka's writing and Arthur Penn's personal vision of what film should be, and do, are greater than the dichotomies between the two forms.

It is this reviewer's contention that
Mickey One
is the finest American film of the year, and possibly of many years. Despite the impending tragedy.

For the very obtuseness and existential disorientation of Penn's approach, the very qualities that hoist this film onto a plateau of brilliance and directorial bravura, are the qualities that will most alienate unqualified audiences, and condemn
Mickey One
to box-office shakiness. Already the tragedy is taking form: the night I saw it, in preview, at the Writers Guild screening, ninety percent of the audience—men intimately knowledgeable with the film form, allegedly—wandered out of the theater as if they had been stunned by the hammer. When they could not fathom what was going on, they turned to ridicule. In New York, the film has already opened, and as a telephone conversation with a friend in Manhattan informs me, "The reviews are bombing it." The name of the game is tragedy.