Rating: C
Dir: J. Lee Thompson
Star: Anthony Quinn, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Patricia Neal
I’m perhaps more impressed when there’s a memorable performance in a mediocre movie, than when it’s in a good film. Maybe it’s just that it stands out more. But you have to respect someone putting in the effort, because I’m sure they are aware the overall product isn’t up to much. Though you have to wonder whether or not that is the case. McDowell here is a fascinating case-study, not least because the actor’s perception of his portrayal of Gestapo officer Capt. Von Berkow seems to have changed over time. Me, I loved it. It feels like somebody took Alex from A Clockwork Orange, dropped him into a Nazi uniform, and told him, “Have fun, and all the ultraviolence and in-out you can!”
A couple of years later – probably while doing press for Cat People, at a guess – McDowell called it “Utter rubbish. I took it only because I needed money to pay my taxes. Making it depressed me terribly.” However, in the July 1983 edition of Starlog, he said it contained “some of the best work I’ve ever done.” By 1995, he might have gone full circle, telling the same magazine, “My attitude was that if I was going to play a Nazi, I was going to take it totally over the top and do it right. I ended up playing the character like a pantomime queen.” Might explain his swastika-bedecked underwear – a detail with which supporting actor Christopher Lee, a World War II veteran, was reportedly unamused.
All of which is considerably more interesting than the film which, for want of a better description, plays like The Sound of Music without the songs. For we have Prof. John Bergson (Mason) and his family trying to escape Nazi-occupied territory by crossing the mountains into a neutral neighbour, with the Germans in increasingly hot pursuit. In this case it’s getting out of France, the mountains being the Pyrenees, and the hunter being von Berkow. They have a guide, a taciturn and nameless local known only as The Basque (Quinn), who was bribed to take Bergson, and is not happy to discover there’s a wife and kids involved. It’s mostly bland and predictable, save a finale where it looks like they shot three endings – and used them all.
The cast just about salvage it. In addition to the main members, Lee shows up as a Gypsy – sorry, “Person in a willing state of domicilelessness” – captured by the villain (in the right background, above). Michael Lonsdale goes from Bond villain to a resistance leader, and his interrogation by von Berkow is a true highlight, though I kept expecting ze Nazi to burst into Singing in the Rain. I pity anyone who had to try and act opposite McDowell, whose character is charming, charismatic and absolutely barking mad. When he’s not on-screen, it’s a typical seventies war movie, and largely forgettable as such. Which is rather disappointing considering Thompson previously gave us an all-time classic in that genre, The Guns of Navarone.