THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND (US - 1983) Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Written by Alan Sharp and Ian Masters. Cast: Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Burt Lancaster, Chris Sarandon, Meg Foster, Helen Shaver, Cassie Yates, Sandy McPeak, Christopher Starr, Jan Triska, Merete Van Kamp, Tim Thomerson, Buddy Joe Hooker. (R, 103 mins)
The legendary Sam Peckinpah's final film was a typically troubled production that saw him clashing with producers and having the film recut without his involvement. A very loose adaptation of Robert Ludlum's 1972 novel, THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND stars John Hurt as Lawrence Fassett, an embittered CIA agent whose obsessive investigation into his wife's murder leads him to uncover evidence that three men--TV writer Bernard Osterman (Craig T. Nelson), plastic surgeon Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper), and hotheaded stockbroker Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon)--are really Soviet agents who have been operating in the US since their college days. Fassett convinces their old college buddy John Tanner (Rutger Hauer), now a successful liberal pundit in the political talk show arena, to host a weekend reunion with the guys and their wives. With Tanner's home filled with hidden surveillance cameras and Fassett in regular communication, it's the perfect set-up to expose the alleged KGB agents and in exchange for helping out the US government, Tanner gets an exclusive, one-on-one interview with controversial CIA chief Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster), infamous for his extensive authorization of all manner of high-tech surveillance.
Given its prescient subject matter--cable news pundits, high-tech spy games, government overreach, etc--THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND was a bit ahead of its time and seems ripe for an updated remake today. This version is entertaining, often for the wrong reasons. It's incredibly convoluted, crossing over into the incoherent on occasion, and it's often very sloppily edited, with a few repeated shots and no one watching the continuity when it comes to Nelson's epic fake mustache, which almost never looks the same in two consecutive shots. Peckinpah reportedly tried to make this into an espionage satire, similar to his initial cut of 1975's THE KILLER ELITE which, by the time the producers finished recutting it, was left with only a visibly drunk and unsteady Gig Young slurring his words and struggling to stand and James Caan and Burt Young battling ninjas to keep it interesting. As with that film, the producers removed all the comedy, so maybe OSTERMAN's inconsistent editing and the varying mustache lengths were all part of unsung satirist Peckinpah's master plan. There's some effective bits, especially once Peckinpah lets the film fly off the rails in the last third. Peckinpah uses a peculiar technique in his action scenes here, with a lot of slow-motion and drawn-out, quick-cut editing that, in context, works well, especially in the late-going with the exploding RV, plus he gets a genuinely terrific performance out of Hurt. There's a lot to like here--irate Lancaster at his most assholish (is there any way a guy named "Maxwell Danforth" won't be a complete prick?); gratuitous nudity; Meg Foster decking Helen Shaver; and a hilarious bit involving a dog's head in the fridge--but at the same time, it feels like a missed opportunity. There's a pronounced lack of focus and the disconnect between the director and his producers is apparent. It's a mess, but a consistently intriguing one.
Speaking of messes, Anchor Bay's Blu-ray, released last year, is a splotchy, ugly disaster. And unlike their special edition DVD from 2004, it doesn't include the 116-minute Peckinpah rough cut that led to his dismissal from the project. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND was Peckinpah's first film since 1978's CONVOY, much of which was directed without credit by his friend James Coburn. Coburn was interested in stepping behind the camera for some future projects and was serving as second unit director to get his DGA card. The veteran actor ended up directing significant portions of the movie while Peckinpah was holed up in his trailer on an extended coke binge. After doing uncredited second unit work without incident for old friend Don Siegel on the 1982 Bette Midler bomb JINXED!, Peckinpah was given THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND as a comeback project and while things initially ran smoothly, disagreements took over and by the end of shooting, there was no communication between him and the producers. When Peckinpah refused to make the changes demanded after a disastrous test screening in May 1983, he was handed his walking papers and the producers re-edited the film themselves. After directing a pair of Julian Lennon music videos, including one for his breakout hit "Too Late for Goodbyes." Peckinpah died of heart failure at just 59 in December 1984, a little over a year after THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND's November 1983 release.
Directed by Liliana Cavani. Written by Robert Katz and Liliana Cavani. Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Ken Marshall, Alexandra King, Jacques Sernas, Carlo Giuffre, Yann Babilee, Jeanne Valerie, Liliana Tari, Giuseppe Barra, Cristina Donadio, Maria Rosario Della Fammina. (Unrated, 134 mins) Described as "distastefully bitter" and "a disaster" in the Maltin Movie Guide, Liliana Cavani's 1981 WWII drama THE SKIN, aka LA PELLE, is a film that's fallen through the cracks over the years, at least with American audiences. A Palme d'Or contender at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival (Andrzej Wajda's MAN OF IRON won), THE SKIN caused some controversy with its fervently anti-American sentiments, prompting Warner Bros. to back out of its US distribution deal. The Italian-French co-production's only US exposure at the time came at the 1982 Chicago International Film Festival, and even with the presence of Hollywood legend Burt Lancaster, in the midst of a brief late-career renaissance thanks to his ATLANTIC CITY Oscar nomination, it found no takers. It was never commercially released in American cinemas, and it would be another 33 years before anyone got around to releasing it on US home video.
Cohen Media Group recently issued THE SKIN in deluxe Blu-ray and DVD editions as part of their "Classics of Italian Cinema" line, with a new transfer culled from a 2014 restoration that screened at the Seattle International Film Festival last summer. It's garnered a reputation among Cavani's US-based fans as a lost film of sorts, difficult to see outside of going the region-free or bootleg route, though battered, truncated, and barely watchable prints have occasionally surfaced on YouTube, usually without subtitles. Cohen's transfer is pristine (don't be put off by the terrible cover art), framed at the old-school aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (Cavani shot it that way to maximize the crowding and the claustrophobia, according to the commentary track by film critics Wade Major and Andy Klein), but the only language option is Italian with English subtitles, and in a situation like this, where many scenes involve Americans and Italians trying to communicate with one another through interpreters, it doesn't really play well when everyone is speaking Italian. This of course, is the result of the then-standard practice in Italian cinema of not shooting with direct sound and dubbing everything after the fact. Judging from how lip movements often match the subtitles, a good number of cast members are speaking English, as would be their American characters, it nevertheless takes a while to get over the distraction of seeing and hearing Lancaster and others playing American military personnel speaking in awkwardly-dubbed Italian. It's possible that an English track was either lost or never recorded in the first place, so Cohen was forced to make do with what they had. It's not a matter of being subtitle-phobic, but THE SKIN is a case where a mix of English and Italian would actually be beneficial in making the film work a little better, or at least as its story intended.
Set during the 1943 American liberation of Naples just after the German occupation, THE SKIN is based on the 1949 novel (more a loose collection of short stories and reportage) by Italian journalist Curzio Malaparte (played here by Marcello Mastroianni), a former fascist-turned-outspoken enemy of Mussolini, who had Malaparte imprisoned on more than one occasion. Malaparte served as a liaison between the Italian military and the Allied Forces in Naples, led by Gen. Mark Clark, represented in the film in the most unflattering manner possible by the rechristened Gen. Mark Cork (Lancaster). Much of the film is seen through Malaparte's eyes, but also through the vantage point of Capt. Jimmy Wren (Ken Marshall), an American communications official who spends almost all of his downtime frequenting the Neapolitan brothels with what looks like the entire US military, which is essentially painted as a mass gathering of Ugly Americans. The Americans are verbally and physically abusive. They address the Neapolitans using slurs like "wop" and "greaseball." They gang-rape Neapolitan women. Cork is presented as a self-aggrandizing egomaniac prone to referring to himself in third person, demonstrating little regard for the people of Naples or even his own allies. When the Moroccan army is felled by a major syphilis epidemic, Cork denies them treatment, instead hoarding all the venereal disease medication for the Americans. Cork has instituted a ban on fishing due to mines in the water, but angrily demands fresh fish for a posh, swanky dinner where he's forced over the phone by Eisenhower and then FDR himself to entertain Col. Deborah Wyatt (Alexandra King), a high-profile pilot and the wife of an important US senator.
It's this dinner scene that's one of THE SKIN's most notorious. Earlier in the film, there's repeated mention of the desperation of the Neapolitan people. They've lost everything, they have no money, and they're starving. Some parents sell their children into prostitution, and when Wren expresses his outrage, Malaparte shrugs "It's better than eating them." Later, Malaparte is shown finishing a meal, assembling the leftover bones into the shape of a human hand and only half-joking when he mentions the concept of cannibalism as a viable option. At Cork's dinner reception welcoming Col. Wyatt, the General brags about the quality of the fish, a rare type known as Sirena, only to have the entree be a boiled child, an unforgettably horrific, disturbing image that puts THE SKIN squarely into the realm of SALO and SALON KITTY transgression. Cavani and co-writer Robert Katz (with some uncredited contributions by future ROMANCE and FAT GIRL provocateur Catherine Breillat) don't stop there, as the bullheaded Cork dismisses Col. Wyatt's cries of "It's a baby!" with "Someone needs to assume command," as he declares it's a fish, and orders it to be served (Major and Klein suggest this was done by the presumably Neapolitan kitchen staff as "a gesture of utter contempt for the Americans"). Cavani shows some restraint and spares the audience the sight of the Americans consuming the "fish," but it hardly lessens the impact of one of the most stomach-turning sights in all of Italian cinema.
Cavani goes to extremes throughout THE SKIN. Malaparte takes Col. Wyatt to a wild, decadent party where she's appalled to see the guests crowd around a bed to watch and cheer as a gay man penetrates himself with a massive dildo. The guts of an American soldier who steps on a mine spill out of his belly. The film ends with the trucks and tanks of Cork's Fifth Battalion triumphantly entering Rome after alienating the populace of Naples and leaving a trail of resentment and ill will behind. The citizens of Rome celebrate their arrival, and in the film's most infamous scene, it takes just long enough for one poor Roman bastard to cheer "Hooray for the Americans!" before a tank is carelessly driven over him, flattening him like a pancake under the tread as blood, brains, skin, and organs explode out of him. Cork and his battalion blithely drive on by the pile of mangled human flesh on the pavement, with more destruction, degradation, and tragedy sure to follow. It's intentionally over-the-top and Cavani repeatedly cuts back to the aftermath as THE SKIN is often more about using shock value to hammer home a point. A recent revisit to Cavani's most famous film, 1974's THE NIGHT PORTER, where former Nazi officer Dirk Bogarde unexpectedly encounters his former concentration camp sexual plaything (Charlotte Rampling) and the two rekindle their S&M dysfunction in 1957 Vienna, showed it to be far more tame than memory and legend served. THE NIGHT PORTER has a reputation among groundbreaking taboo-shatterers of the early 1970s that's rivaled only by Bernardo Bertolucci's LAST TANGO IN PARIS, but it's really quite reserved. The ideas in THE NIGHT PORTER are certainly transgressive but the sexual imagery is sparse and not particularly explicit or boundary-pushing when held up against the publicity that butter got from the Bertolucci masterpiece.
The spectacularly misanthropic THE SKIN is a far more transgressive and disturbing film, one that gets under your own skin and almost certainly would've needed some cuts to avoid an X rating if anyone was serious about distributing it in America. In the world of THE SKIN, flesh is a commodity to be bought, sold, eaten, and fucked, sometimes all together. To Cavani, the people of Naples do it out of necessity and survival, while the Americans just indulge out of their arrogance and entitlement. The now-82-year-old Cavani is interviewed on the Blu-ray, and she claims to not understand where critics see the anti-American sentiment. America takes a beating here and Cavani is delusional or having a senior moment if she thinks that isn't the case, but really, nobody comes out of THE SKIN looking very good--not the Americans, not the people of Naples, and especially not the Moroccans, with their entire army stricken with various untreated venereal diseases but still so desperate for "something to stick it into" that they go about procuring the services of underage Neapolitan boys and girls, whored out to them by their strapped, widowed mothers. Nothing is off limits in the efforts of desperate people to scrape by. It's the feel-good movie of 1981.
One really can't fault Cavani for her relentlessly grim approach to the story and her crafting it as a nightmarish freakshow, but around the midway point, when you can't unsee Burt Lancaster ordering a bunch of gluttonous Americans to eat what's obviously a boiled child, you can't help but wonder if her points might've hit harder with a more even tone, if the satirical elements weren't played against the vile ugliness of rape and the complete disregard for human life. Lancaster's Gen. Mark Cork's delusions of self-grandeur and his stubborn arrogance put him in the same wing of military madmen as Sterling Hayden's Gen. Jack D. Ripper in DR. STRANGELOVE. Cavani's stone-faced seriousness and her decision to wallow in misery and degradation for over two hours has its place, but she has an obvious ax to grind, and doing so in a sardonic and satirical way would've had more of a lasting sting than the easy shock bits involving rape, bodily functions, and the over-the-top cannibalism metaphor. THE SKIN has observations that remain pertinent today, namely the festering resentment of a "liberated" country that's freed from the control of one only to remain occupied by another, one that doesn't understand them and only seems interested in imposing their will and rule.
Cavani and Mastroianni on the set of THE SKIN
Cavani and Lina Wertmuller were the trailblazers when it came to a woman's perspective in Italian cinema of the '70s and '80s, but it was always Wertmuller who received the bigger accolades and box office success. Cavani has her place in the movement and a staunch fan base, but commercially, she never topped or even equaled the fame and notoriety brought to her by the international success of THE NIGHT PORTER. Following THE SKIN, she directed the tawdry BEYOND OBSESSION (1982), which reunited her with Mastroianni, playing a diplomat in a Moroccan prison for murdering his wife, passing the time with conjugal visits from his sultry stepdaughter (Eleonora Giorgi), who's also involved with an American oil company engineer played by a young Tom Berenger. Cavani's next two films flopped. She had her obligatory Cannon experience with Golan & Globus on 1985's THE BERLIN AFFAIR. 1989's FRANCESCO, a biopic of Francis of Assisi starring an unlikely Mickey Rourke, was cut by nearly an hour before its straight-to-video US release by Hemdale. Cavani's credits become very sporadic after this, with 1993's unreleased-in-the-US WHERE ARE YOU? I'M HERE being her only film of that decade. Cavani has spent her recent years doing movies for Italian television, including yet another take on FRANCESCO, this time as a mini-series in 2014, starring Polish actor Mateusz Kosciukiewicz as Francis and Rutger Hauer as his father (she also made FRANCIS OF ASSISI for Italian TV in 1966, with Lou Castel in the title role). Cavani's last feature film to date has been the unfortunately doomed RIPLEY'S GAME, which was shelved for over a year by New Line before debuting on cable in 2003. Based on Patricia Highsmith's novel, previously filmed by Wim Wenders as THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1977), RIPLEY'S GAME, a semi-sequel of sorts to 1999's THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, is easily Cavani's most accessible, commercial film, a solid thriller anchored by one of John Malkovich's best performances as the sociopathic Tom Ripley. Malkovich's Ripley is an older and more flamboyant interpretation of the character than Matt Damon's in THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, goading a terminally ill picture-framer (Dougray Scott) into becoming a hit man in order to leave money behind for his family. Considering the popularity of THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY just a few years earlier, it's surprising that RIPLEY'S GAME was given such an unceremonious dumping in the US.
Lancaster and Mastroianni would continue working throughout the '80s and into the '90s, with Lancaster settling into character roles and TV-movies and Mastroianni getting his third and final Oscar nomination for 1987's DARK EYES. Both were cinematic legends by the time of their passing (Lancaster died in 1994 at 80; Mastroianni in 1996 at 72), and remain beloved, iconic figures to cineastes the world over. That kind of big-screen fame eluded THE SKIN's young American stars. Marshall, who left medical school to pursue acting at Juilliard, made his film debut two years earlier, co-starring with Brooke Shields in the 1979 pinball comedy TILT. After THE SKIN, Marshall had the title role in the epic 1982 NBC mini-series MARCO POLO (also featuring Lancaster) and made his biggest splash the next year, starring in the big-budget 1983 sci-fi fantasy KRULL. Supported by numerous product tie-ins (arcade game, Atari 2600 game, Parker Brothers board game), but opening the same weekend as NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION in a summer dominated by RETURN OF THE JEDI, KRULL was an expensive box-office dud, though it has a sizable cult following today. And with that, Marshall's career as a Hollywood leading man was over. It would be five years before he appeared in another film, with the instantly forgotten 1988 Rebecca DeMornay/Mary Gross buddy comedy FEDS (IMDb's page lists other credits, but they have him confused with a South African actor also named Ken Marshall). For the next decade and a half, Marshall's career was mostly limited to guest spots on TV shows like BAYWATCH, HUNTER, and QUANTUM LEAP, though he enjoyed a brief resurgence in the mid '90s, by that time balding and looking like his roles were going to Kurtwood Smith instead, with a stint as the treacherous Lt. Cmdr. Michael Eddington on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. One in a never-ending line of Next Big Things who just never happened (KRULL was a flop, but it was hardly career-killer caliber), the now-64-year-old Marshall has apparently retired from acting, with his last credit to date being a guest spot on a 2003 episode of the CBS series THE DISTRICT. THE SKIN was a one-and-done journey into acting for King, a model who would soon go on to marry 1970s tennis great Ilie Nastase. She devoted her time to raising their two children and her last time in the spotlight came when she was interviewed in People in 1996 when Nastase announced his intention to run for mayor of his native Bucharest, Romania (he lost). The couple divorced in the early 2000s and she's been out of the public eye in the years since. THE SKIN remains the sole entry on her IMDb page.
Cavani surrounded by producer Renzo Rossellini, and stars
Marcello Mastroianni, Ken Marshall, and Liliana Tari
at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival.
Directed by George Pan Cosmatos. Written by Tom Mankiewicz, Robert Katz and George Pan Cosmatos. Cast: Sophia Loren, Richard Harris, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Martin Sheen, O.J. Simpson, Ingrid Thulin, Lee Strasberg, Lionel Stander, Ann Turkel, Lou Castel, John Phillip Law, Ray Lovelock, Alida Valli, Tom Hunter, Stefano Patrizi, Carlo De Mejo, Fausta Avelli, Angela Goodwin, Renzo Palmer, John P. Dulaney. (R, 129 mins)
SPOILERS DISCUSSED THROUGHOUT
Disaster movies were one of the signature genres of 1970s cinema. Though the concept wasn't new and dated back to the early days of the movies to SAN FRANCISCO (1936) and 1950s hits like THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY (1954) and ZERO HOUR! (1957), and would continue later with the likes of ARMAGEDDON (1998), THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004) and 2012 (2008), the subgenre really exploded in the 1970s. Starting with box-office blockbusters like AIRPORT (1970), THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) and THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974) to less-popular but still entertaining later offerings like the sniper-in-a-football-stadium TWO-MINUTE WARNING (1976), the Goodyear Blimp-blowing-up-the-Super Bowl BLACK SUNDAY (1977), and the mad-bomber-terrorizing-amusement-parks ROLLERCOASTER (1977), disaster films showcased then-state-of-the-art special effects depicting catastrophes both natural and man-made, and a large cast of stars both current and from Hollywood's golden age. The incredible success of these films spawned countless imitations, from exclamatory made-for-TV disaster movies like HEAT WAVE! (1974), FLOOD! (1976), and FIRE! (1977) to drive-in exploitation like THE BEES (1978) and AVALANCHE (1978) to the inevitable foreign-made ripoffs with films like TIDAL WAVE (1975), which inserted new footage of Lorne Greene into a Japanese disaster movie; the Italian oil fire thriller OIL (1977); the Canadian city-on-fire thriller CITY ON FIRE (1979); and the Italian/Brazilian co-production KILLER FISH (1979), which involved an emerald heist, a laughable tornado, and a river filled with hungry piranha. It's unfortunate that most of these films lacked the hyperbolic punctuation that the TV movies used--think how much better KILLER FISH would be if it was called KILLER FISH!
In addition to the mandatory "faces in boxes" poster design, disaster movies frequently featured supporting roles for an off-season or retired sports star, usually from the NFL, such as Rosey Grier in SKYJACKED (1972), O.J. Simpson in THE TOWERING INFERNO, Alex Karras in WHEN TIME RAN OUT (1980), and then-Houston Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini in the aforementioned KILLER FISH, as well as college football star Mark Harmon in BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1979). Other such stunt casting included the likes of fake evangelist-turned-actor Marjoe Gortner in EARTHQUAKE (1974), singer Helen Reddy in AIRPORT 1975 (1974), and game-show host and frequent TONIGHT SHOW guest host John Davidson--the Ryan Seacrest of the 1970s--in THE CONCORDE: AIRPORT '79 (1979). Audiences grew tired of the increasingly silly and often shoddy spectacles (how can we forget 1978's THE SWARM or 1979's METEOR?) and the demand for these things vanished. Kinji Fukasaku's mega-budget Japanese epic VIRUS (1980), featuring such stars as Glenn Ford, George Kennedy, Henry Silva, Sonny Chiba, and Robert Vaughn, was perhaps the most ambitious disaster film of them all, but couldn't find a US distributor even with a sappy Janis Ian theme song, and was cut by nearly an hour and drastically re-edited before going straight-to-video in 1984 (Fukasaku's complete 155-minute version is a masterpiece). By the time so-called "Master of Disaster" Irwin Allen, the man behind THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, and THE SWARM, unveiled the volcano epic WHEN TIME RAN OUT, the title could've applied to the genre itself, especially when it was expertly parodied that same year by AIRPLANE!, from the gathering of stoical, serious actors known for their stern gravitas (Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack), right down to the casting of NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as himself, moonlighting as a pilot named "Roger Murdock." Disaster movies, at least in their 1970s incarnation, were done.
These films always had eclectic casts populated by actors you'd never expect to find working together (THE CONCORDE: AIRPORT '79 managed to get Alain Delon, Charo, Jimmie Walker, and Sylvia Kristel in the same movie), but the British/Italian/West German co-production THE CASSANDRA CROSSING provides a bizarre mix of international A-list, Hollywood old guard, Eurocult regulars, and one vacationing football star nearing the end of his playing days. It's not often you see people like O.J. Simpson and Martin Sheen mixing it up with the likes of THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE's Ray Lovelock and FISTS IN THE POCKET's Lou Castel. Like many of its genre brethren, THE CASSANDRA CROSSING offers multiple problems for its heroes to conquer and is actually two disaster movies in one: first a terrorist exposed to a deadly plague stows away on a Geneva-to-Stockholm train, then the US military tries to contain the disease by intentionally diverting the train to an unsafe bridge in the hopes that it will collapse, killing all the passengers and making for a nice, convenient cover-up. There's a level of cynicism in THE CASSANDRA CROSSING that doesn't exist in other disaster movies. The US government is the villain here, and it's interesting that it's represented by Burt Lancaster, who starred in the same year's TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING, a bile-soaked screed of a conspiracy thriller that depicted the US President's own cabinet members sending the newly-elected and earnestly naïve Commander-in-Chief (Charles Durning) to his own execution when he decides to go public with his predecessors' classified memos that will expose the truth about America's Vietnam policies. He's advised against it by those in his inner circle, old men who tell him "This is just how it's always been," and he pays the price for breaking tradition.
In CASSANDRA, Lancaster's Col. Mackenzie is dispatched to the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva after three Swedish terrorists (Castel, Stefano Patrizi, and Carlo De Mejo) infiltrate the building and the resulting shootout ends up exposing them to a strain of pneumonic plague that's been developed--illegally and in secret--by the US government and stored in a lab on the premises. De Mejo is killed by a guard, Patrizi is wounded and captured, and Castel escapes. Mackenzie, his aid Major Stack (John Phillip Law), and WHO-based Dr. Stradner (Ingrid Thulin) get no information out of Patrizi before he dies, and Mackenzie orders the body burned. Castel, the lead terrorist, makes his way to a nearby train station and sneaks aboard the express going to Stockholm. It's here where CASSANDRA, for a while at least plays out as your standard issue '70s disaster epic. The major players onboard are renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain (Richard Harris); his romance novelist ex-wife Jennifer (Sophia Loren); requisite elderly con man Herman Kaplan (Lee Strasberg); hippie lovebirds Tom (Lovelock) and Susan (Ann Turkel); a grandmother (Alida Valli) and her granddaughter Katerina (Fausta Avelli); wealthy Nicole Dressler (Ava Gardner, also in EARTHQUAKE and CITY ON FIRE), wife of a German arms magnate, along with her heroin-addicted, drug-dealing boy-toy Robby Navarro (Sheen); and Haley (Simpson), an incognito-as-a-priest Interpol agent tailing Navarro. The script by Tom Mankiewicz, Robert Katz, and director George P. Cosmatos (who would go on to Hollywood blockbusters like 1985's RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and 1993's TOMBSTONE) spends a little too much time on the soapier elements of Jonathan and Jennifer's inevitable rekindling of their romance (they've already been divorced twice), but once the terrorist makes his way through the train, quickly infecting many of the passengers, things pick up considerably.
Oddly, the plague part of the film is resolved rather quickly. Chamberlain, in conference with Dr. Stradner, concludes that in a highly-oxygenated environment like a train, the disease will eventually run its course and people will recover unless, like the terrorist, it was directly absorbed into the bloodstream. The terrorist eventually dies, but those onboard who are afflicted soon find themselves on the mend. That's not good enough for Mackenzie, who orders the train to be diverted to a quarantined area--a former concentration camp--that will require it to cross a condemned bridge that hasn't been used since WWII. Of course, his intention--his orders--are to bury this incident by any means necessary, as the US was illegally developing deadly germ warfare in Geneva and keeping it secret. Mackenzie has the train met in Nuremberg by a team of 40 Army officers in HazMat suits led by Col. Scott (Tom Hunter). Scott's job is to keep everyone onboard and kill anyone who tries to get off the train. So, about midway through the film, with the plague story wrapped up, the action now centers on Chamberlain leading a passenger revolt against Scott and his goons and stop the train before it reaches the Cassandra Crossing.
Make no mistake, the bulk of THE CASSANDRA CROSSING is, like most of its disaster contemporaries, silly and illogical. Many of the actors on the train don't seem to be on the same page as far as what kind of movie they're in: Harris, Sheen, and Simpson play it straight and serious (as seriously as O.J. dressed as a priest can be taken), while Gardner, perhaps still amused by being cast as Lorne Greene's daughter in EARTHQUAKE, is glib and snarky at all the wrong times. Loren doesn't really have much to do other than look glamorous in soft focus, which Cosmatos ensures since her husband Carlo Ponti was the producer (Loren's introduction, where she's given numerous close-ups from various angles, is a bit excessive and obviously done to please Ponti). Strasberg's con man character keeps trying to sell phony watches, while you could make a drinking game out of how many times Valli helplessly says "Katerina!" to no one in particular after she gets separated from the little girl. And my God, I haven't even gotten to the song.
Any self-respecting '70s disaster movie had the mandatory maudlin theme song, like "The Morning After" from THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and "We May Never Love Like This Again" from THE TOWERING INFERNO. Both of those songs were sung by Maureen McGovern and both won Oscars for Best Original Song. THE CASSANDRA CROSSING gives us a fine Ennio Morricone-esque score by Jerry Goldsmith, but also offered co-star Turkel--who was married to Harris at the time--singing something called "I'm Still on My Way," and she sings it early in the film, as she and Lovelock and some other hippie pals are jamming in one of the train cars. And just when you think it can't get any sillier, train conductor Max (Lionel Stander) takes a break from his duties to just hang out with them. It seems unnecessary to mention that their efforts were not rewarded with a Best Original Song Oscar. It's easily the worst scene in the film, and one that completely stops it cold and one that I never knew existed until I saw it on Turner Classic Movies some years back. For decades, I only knew the version that aired on NBC and in syndication, which mercifully cut that scene out entirely. Also absent from the television version are some gory bits from the finale, as the train indeed crashes and a good chunk of the passengers die horribly violent deaths: watch for the train rail cutting through a car and impaling a passenger right through his gut, yet another example of this film's unrepentant mean streak.
THE CASSANDRA CROSSING isn't the best of its type, but it's maintained a well-deserved cult-following over the decades, primarily for its unusual international cast and because it works very well as an entertaining thriller. But if you approach it from the angle of Lancaster's Mackenzie, there's some unexpected depth to the film. Of course, an old pro like Lancaster knows just how to play the various subtleties and nuances, and perhaps there wasn't anything in the script and he simply took it upon himself as an experienced actor to make something out of nothing. At the conclusion of the film, after telling Dr. Stradner "I know you see me as some kind of monster," and essentially saying he did what he had to do, you can see the sadness in Lancaster's eyes and it's the first moment in the film that Mackenzie seems remotely human. And in that moment, Lancaster makes us see that, like Stack and Scott and those under him, he's just a part of the machine. Lancaster nails it when he's about to leave the building. Stack offers to take him to a nearby bar and buy him a drink. Mackenzie says nothing, putting on his coat and unconsciously reaching for his uniform service cap, stopping himself, and going for his fedora instead. It's not that he isn't worthy of wearing it. No, he was a good soldier who followed orders. He's just too sickened by those orders to wear it, and by rejecting it, he retains some semblance of humanity. And as Mackenzie leaves the room without saying a word and heads down a long hallway to the exit, Stack can be heard on the phone with an unknown superior: "He's leaving right now. Yes, he and the doctor are both under surveillance." Mackenzie is as expendable as the people killed in the bridge collapse and he likely isn't making it to his next destination. In that closing scene, using no dialogue, Lancaster's aging face perfectly illustrates a career military man who served his country only to be made a fall guy who knows shit rolls downhill and it's coming straight for him. In that respect, THE CASSANDRA CROSSING--or, more accurately, Lancaster's sequences in it--makes for a fascinating companion piece to TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING, where he played another soldier who just followed orders issued down a corrupt chain of command until his conscience could no longer allow it.
Directed by Robert Aldrich. Written by Ronald M. Cohen and Edward Huebsch. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Charles Durning, Roscoe Lee Browne, Joseph Cotten, Melvyn Douglas, Richard Jaeckel, William Marshall, Gerald S. O'Loughlin, Paul Winfield, Burt Young, Charles McGraw, Leif Erickson, William Smith, Morgan Paull, Charles Aidman, Shane Rimmer, Simon Scott, William Hootkins, John Ratzenberger. (R, 144 mins).
SPOILERS discussed throughout
Robert Aldrich's intense post-Vietnam/Cold War/conspiracy nail-biter TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING was a box office flop in 1977 and was quickly shuffled off to a couple of heavily-edited prime-time airings on CBS then ventured into the netherworld of night-owl airings in syndication and a token VHS release in the '80s before largely disappearing altogether. But it's amassed a sizable cult following over the last 35 years and has just been released by Olive Films on Blu-ray and DVD in a new restoration supervised by Bavaria Film Studio, the film's German co-producer. Aldrich (1918-1983), the legendary director of KISS ME DEADLY (1955), WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962), HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964), THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967), and THE LONGEST YARD (1974) among many others, succeeds not just in making an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but also, amidst some occasionally blustery histrionics of a few cast members, one of the angriest and most cynical films of a decade full of angry and cynical films. And, it's worth mentioning, the strangely fascinating experience of witnessing a few Hollywood old-timers dropping F-bombs.
Set in "the future" of 1981 and filmed completely in Munich, the film opens to the tune of Billy Preston's 1971 version of "My Country Tis of Thee" and has disgraced General Lawrence Dell (Burt Lancaster) escaping from a Montana military prison with three convicts, Willis (Paul Winfield), Augie (Burt Young), and Hoxey (William Smith), and gaining control of Silo 3 at an ICBM facility. Despite Dell's orders to keep it under control, Hoxey starts shooting the few military personnel on duty and is promptly shot by Dell for his trouble. Dell, who helped design the installation and the launch systems and knows them inside and out, contacts General Mackenzie (Richard Widmark) and demands to speak to recently-elected President David Stevens (Charles Durning). Dell gives Stevens his demands: he's going to launch nine nuclear missiles unless he and his associates get $10 million, Air Force One transport to a country of their choosing, and the President going on national television and reading a classified memo that details the true reasons the US got involved in the Vietnam War. The patriotic, socially-conscious Dell is disgusted that so many on both sides died for a war that he insists never had to be fought and was completely fabricated by the US government just to make a point to the Soviet Union that, as one person puts it, "we were capable of inhuman acts" in the name of stopping communism. Dell repeatedly tried to make his views public, but was considered too much of a loose cannon by high-ranking military officials who tried to buy his silence with promotions. When a drunken Dell got involved in a bar fight with a guy who had a weak heart, Mackenzie and others, including Stevens' chief advisor General O'Rourke (Gerald S. O'Loughlin) trumped up a bogus first-degree murder charge and railroaded Dell into a 30-year prison sentence. As Dell explains to Mackenzie, "You sent my memos to the shredder, and when I wouldn't trade what I believed in for a star, you sent me to the shredder."
Aldrich at work on TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING
Aldrich lets the film unfold at a deliberate, methodical pace, rarely rushing or glossing over details. It takes nearly the first hour just to get Silo 3 under the control of Dell and his cohorts and to get the President involved in the matter. Most of the second hour focuses on the President hashing out the situation with his cabinet members and other national security officials. It's here where the film gets interesting. Stevens is an honest, decent man who is revealed to be clearly in over his head as President. Many of his cabinet members--effectively embodied by a number of geriatric actors--represent the old guard politicians of which Stevens is too naive to understand. Durning is guilty of some shameless scenery-chewing on several occasions throughout this film, but he's at his best when he's just glaring in disgust at some of the things he's hearing from smug Secretary of State Renfrew (Joseph Cotten) or the glad-handing CIA chief (Leif Erickson), who shrugs his shoulders and callously explains that "it's a game," and "This is just how it's been since 1945, Mr. President." President Stevens is determined to read this memo on television in order to "open up" to the American people in attempt to heal the still-open wounds of the Vietnam War. But these old men at the table--protectors of "the way it's always been"--can't allow this to happen. They can't allow the American people to know that the Vietnam War was for nothing. Stevens is too earnest, idealistic, trusting, and frankly, not quite ready for prime time to realize what's really going on when it's suggested by the smirking Renfrew--and quickly agreed upon by everyone at the table--that the public cannot be made aware of what's happening at Silo 3 and that he--the President--must go there and talk face-to-face with Dell. Secretary of Defense Guthrie (Melvyn Douglas), the one man at the table who doesn't come off like a callous, out-of-touch asshole, half-heartedly offers to go in the President's place, but instead, Stevens entrusts him to read the memo on television in two weeks if anything happens to him in Montana. Also advising the President is General Crane (Charles McGraw), who first gives Mackenzie the go-ahead to send in a four-man team (which includes John Ratzenberger!) to stop Dell by detonating a small atomic device inside Silo 3, and after that fails, Mackenzie positions snipers outside the base to take out Dell and the escaped cons when they exit with the President.
The film is played completely serious, but some of these old men advising Stevens come off a lot like the inhabitants of DR. STRANGELOVE's War Room 20 or so years later. Both Stevens and Dell are too blinded by ideals and morals to see how the world they're in really operates. Stevens doesn't even recognize the corruption around him. Dell is at least aware of it, but thinks Stevens can help him defeat it. Even after he's been buried by the country he spent his life serving, Dell still thinks a visit from Stevens legitimizes his actions and means the world will finally hear his message. And Stevens is so outraged by a political pissing match taking priority over people that he actually comes to admire Dell's convictions. Willis sees through the plan to send Stevens ("They ain't givin' up that gig! And the President is expendable!") and takes no sides, having only gotten involved for the $10 million ("Grow up, General. Nobody honors nothin', but that's no reason to blow up the whole world"). The rage is hammered home by a closing credits reprise of the Preston tune that takes on an entirely new significance after the President learns too late that a man's word of honor doesn't mean much anymore. Aldrich really cranks the tension by letting large sections of the film play out in anywhere from two to four split screens, watching all of the involved parties for extended periods of time. Aldrich would make a few more movies before his death in 1983, but as his daughter Adell explains in the accompanying 70-minute documentary ALDRICH OVER MUNICH, this was the last of his films that he considered personal and important, the last of his films that made a statement. And what a statement it is. Like many films of the 1970s, TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING probably couldn't be made today, at least not without an incredible amount of controversy. Can you imagine a current film where members of a whistleblowing President's cabinet essentially send him to his own execution? Maybe 1977 audiences weren't ready for it either, although its commercial failure is probably due more to lackluster handling by a soon-to-be-defunct Allied Artists. But in a time of great turmoil from the years of American involvement in Vietnam, films like TAXI DRIVER, COMING HOME, and THE DEER HUNTER addressed that pain and trauma in ways that have made them classics that stand the test of time. TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING raged just as loudly as those other films, and what set it apart was its unique cast of actors more suited for a WWII drama.
Durning's performance probably could've been a little more controlled (he's much better in the President's more reflective moments), though there's certainly an argument to be made that his outbursts and tantrums are indicative of the character's inability to handle what's happening. But almost everyone is top-notch here. Lancaster is great, and the film gives the venerable Cotten, by that time largely reduced to cameos in disreputable Euroschlock, his best late-career role. Widmark delivers some vintage grumpy Widmark, making his entrance in the back of a limo where the driver is listening to the news on the radio and asks "Do you care about the news, General?" to which Widmark's Mackenzie grumbles "Never between wars." A couple of minor gripes: a shot of the President shaving by a bathroom window doesn't really ring true from a security standpoint. And several exterior shots of the installation housing Silo 3 are obvious miniatures that would barely pass in a GODZILLA movie.
Olive's Blu-ray presents the film in a spiffy new HD transfer in its 1.85:1 aspect ratio that looks very nice. The lone extra is the 70-minute retrospective ALDRICH OVER MUNICH, which features interviews with numerous behind the scenes personnel (with much input by German assistant director Wolfgang Glattes), and Aldrich's daughter Adell. O'Loughlin, now 84, is the only cast member present. There's plenty of anecdotes and vintage on-set photos and it's a must-see for any fan of the film. TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING is one of those films that's remembered vividly by everyone who's seen it, with its primary obstacle being that nobody's seen it. This new Blu-ray/DVD release should go far in rescuing this unsung classic of 1970s cinema from years of obscurity.
Some months back, Severin Films announced Blu-ray releases of three late '70s adventure epics: THE WILD GEESE, ZULU DAWN, and ASHANTI, all previously released on DVD in disappointing presentations by the mercifully short-lived Tango Entertainment. Release dates for the Severin upgrades have yet to be announced, but HD prints of two of the films--THE WILD GEESE and ZULU DAWN--turned up this week as Netflix streaming titles.
THE WILD GEESE (UK/Switzerland - 1978)
This classic mercenary adventure was a big hit everywhere but the US, where distributor Allied Artists was in its final days and wasn't able to give it much of a push. That's surprising, considering its big-name cast headed by Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris, and Hardy Kruger. Burton is an aging mercenary hired by powerful financial magnate Stewart Granger to rescue the imprisoned leader (Winston Ntshona) of the fictional African country of Zembela, where Granger has significant interest in the copper mining industry. Burton assembles a crack team of expert soldiers-for-hire (Moore, Harris, Kruger, etc) and they pull off a daring rescue, only to get double-crossed by Granger and left stranded in Zembala, pursued by the rebels who were holding Ntshona, and forced to fight their way out of the country. Directed by longtime John Wayne associate Andrew V. McLaglen (who made the MST3K favorite MITCHELL a couple years earlier), THE WILD GEESE is a terrific action film, with four enthusiastic lead performances (Burton, in particular, has a number of dryly funny lines), plus a memorable supporting turn by Jack Watson (a last-minute replacement for Stephen Boyd, who died shortly before filming began) as a foul-mouthed Sergeant Major hired by Burton to whip the troops into shape ("On your feet, you fucking abortion!" Watson yells to one exhausted soldier). Some of the character bits haven't aged very well--especially the way a mincing, sachaying, flamboyantly gay mercenary (Kenneth Griffith) is played for comic relief--and Kruger's metamorphosis from South African racist to sympathetic nice guy happens entirely too quickly to be plausible.
Dated, late '70s political incorrectness aside, THE WILD GEESE is a rousing, entertaining and very nicely shot large-scale actioner with suspenseful battle sequences, gratuitous bloodletting, and a cast that's impossible to dislike. Also with Frank Finlay, Patrick Allen, Barry Foster, David Ladd, Ian Yule, Ken Gampu, Jeff Corey, and the really out of place theme song "Flight of the Wild Geese," by Joan Armatrading. Burton was set to return for 1985's WILD GEESE II, but died before filming began and was replaced by Edward Fox. THE WILD GEESE was successful enough in foreign markets for Antonio Margheriti to make a trilogy of German-Italian WILD GEESE ripoffs with British TV star Lewis Collins: CODENAME: WILDGEESE (1984, released in the US in 1986), COMMANDO LEOPARD (1985), and THE COMMANDER (1988).
The Netflix print of THE WILD GEESE is HD, and framed at 1.78:1 (close enough to the original 1.85:1), and has some consistent instances of "jerky" movements, almost like it's skipping frames. The audio is never affected, and the film is perfectly watchable as a streaming title, but it's a noticeable distraction throughout, even though there are stretches where it ceases. Also, multiple sources list the film as 134 minutes, but the Netflix print comes in at 129 minutes. (R, 129 mins).
ZULU DAWN (UK - 1979)
The 1964 epic ZULU chronicled the British Empire's victory over the Zulus at the Battle of Rorke's Drift in the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War. This 1979 prequel examines the Battle of Isandhlwana, which took place earlier in the day, and the results weren't so good for the British forces, numbering around 1800 and led by the overly confident Lord Chelmsford (Peter O'Toole), who doesn't take the Zulus seriously with their spears and shields. Needless to say, the British (or more specifically, Chelmsford and his yes-men), fueled by colonial arrogance and entitlement, are blissfully ignorant of what they're up against and don't bother coming up with an effective game plan. As a result, they're almost instantly overwhelmed by 20,000 Zulu warriors and suffer over 1300 casualties in what went down as the worst defeat ever inflicted upon a modern army by native troops (by contrast, with better leadership, the British won Rorke's Drift with just over 150 officers going against 4000 Zulu warriors). Reportedly a troubled production, ZULU DAWN didn't get much of a release and was nowhere near ZULU's level of success. It takes forever to get going and juggles too many characters, many of whom disappear for long stretches of the film, but it steps up where it counts with some truly stunning, expertly-choreographed battle scenes in the last half hour, with thousands of extras (this is pre-CGI, folks) filling the 2.35:1 image.
The large ensemble cast includes many familiar faces: Simon Ward, John Mills, Nigel Davenport, Michael Jayston, Bob Hoskins, Denholm Elliott, Peter Vaughan, Christopher Cazenove, Freddie Jones, James Faulkner, Ronald Lacey, Ronald Pickup, Nicholas Clay, Dai Bradley, Ian Yule, Ken Gampu, Simon Sabela as the Zulu leader Cetshwayo, and top-billed Burt Lancaster as Col. Durnford, the nominal second-in-command, who would die alongside his fellow officers in the final battle and eventually be scapegoated for the disaster by the incompetent Chelmsford. The performances are fine, but Lancaster's having a rare off-day here, sporting a wildly inconsistent Irish brogue that comes and goes at random. I don't know if this is Lancaster's worst performance, but it's the only bad Lancaster performance I've seen. Directed by Douglas Hickox (THEATER OF BLOOD) and co-written by ZULU director Cy Endfield. The US theatrical release was cut down to 98 minutes, but this is the uncut 117 minute version. (PG, 117 mins)
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Written by Franco Arcalli, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Bernardo Bertolucci. Cast: Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland, Stefania Sandrelli, Francesca Bertini, Laura Betti, Werner Bruhns, Stefania Casini, Sterling Hayden, Anna Henkel, Ellen Schwiers, Alida Valli, Romolo Valli, Giacomo Rizzo, Paolo Pavesi, Roberto Maccanti, Maria Monti, Jose Quaglio, Pietro Longari Ponzoni, Piero Vida. (Unrated, 315 mins)
In recent years, Paramount hasn't been known for showing an interest in making its back catalog available, so they've been licensing titles out to the upstart Olive Films label (recent releases include a batch of Jerry Lewis comedies and the '70s cop thrillers HIT! and BADGE 373). Back in 2006, Paramount listened to fan requests and made the surprise decision to release the uncut version of Bernardo Bertolucci's European political epic 1900 on DVD. It wasn't in print very long and now they've farmed it out to Olive Films for a DVD re-release (minus the bonus features on the 2006 DVD but with a 2002 documentary on Bertolucci that wasn't on the previous release) and a debut on Blu-ray. It looks mostly good on Blu-ray, framed at 1.78:1, a change from the DVD's 1.85:1 (IMDb claims the original aspect ratio is 1.66:1, so who knows?). The difference is pretty minor, and I only noticed one shot where the change made a difference and something seemed oddly-framed (we should just be thankful that cinematographer Vittorio "2.00:1" Storaro wasn't put in charge of the Blu-ray transfer) There's some scenes where there's a bit too much saturation and the caked makeup and wig-cap glue lines on the actors' heads are plainly obvious, but overall, the colors are bolder and the textures better-defined than the occasionally washed-out DVD. Probably worth the upgrade for fans of this long-neglected masterpiece, but the transfer is not perfect. If ever a film deserved to be rescued by a Criterion restoration, it's this one, but the Blu-ray's visual inconsistencies may be inherent in the film itself. You know how sometimes the higher-resolution of Blu-ray doesn't help? This might be the case here, depending on one's tolerance for grain. Still, this Blu-ray is probably as good as it'll ever get for a film that may come to be regarded as either Bertolucci's finest work or his ultimate act of madness.
De Niro and Depardieu as best friends torn
apart by political upheaval in 1900
I do think it's Bertolucci's masterpiece and it's also one of the great epics in all of cinema. It never ceases to amaze me that a film this mind-bogglingly expansive and ambitious even got made, let alone distributed by a major Hollywood studio, but after LAST TANGO IN PARIS, Bertolucci clearly had enough clout to do what he wanted. It's a densely-plotted, graphically violent, sexually explicit film with major Hollywood stars and a pro-Communist agenda and it's over five hours long and took over a year to shoot. Of course, the US release was cut down from 315 minutes to 243 minutes, losing a little over an hour but still running four (a 255-minute version also exists). Bertolucci didn't cut any scene in its entirety--he just shortened them or toned down some of the more graphic material to avoid an X rating. The 2006 DVD and this new Blu-ray have the director's complete 315-minute version, restored and shown in the US for the first time in the mid 1990s and given an NC-17 rating, which was dropped in favor of simply going without a rating. How graphic is this film's content? I don't know what necessarily constitutes an abundance of nudity, but even Sterling Hayden's dick gets some screen time.
Burt Lancaster as the padrone
Beginning in 1901 on the day of Verdi's death, the film chronicles the following 44 years of political turmoil in Italy, centered on the wealthy, landowning Berlingheri family and the peasant Dalco family who work their wheat fields and their farm. The patriarchs--padrone Alfredo Berlingheri (Burt Lancaster) and peasant leader Leo Dalco (Hayden) have grandsons born on this very day. As youths, the boys, the Berlingheri child also named Alfredo (Paolo Pavesi) and Olmo Dalco (Roberto Maccanti) are close friends and despite his bourgeois upbringing, Alfredo feels more at home with the field workers than with his family, especially his cold father Giovanni (Romolo Valli). The boys grow, and Alfredo (Robert De Niro) and Olmo (Gerard Depardieu) eventually find themselves at the center of a Fascist uprising, started by greedy Giovanni, who uses religion and patriotism to rope in the rich in his quest to keep profits high and the peasants under their thumbs. Giovanni hires a sadistic foreman, Attila (a demonic Donald Sutherland) to lord over the Dalco clan, who see jobs eliminated and wages reduced while the Berlingheris get richer and more decadent by the year. All the while, the politically active Olmo fights the Fascist movement while Alfredo passively steps aside and looks the other way while Attila's power grows.
Donald Sutherland as the sadistic Attila
Many characters weave in and out of the story, which unfolds and progresses like a great novel. With Storaro's stunning cinematography and a majestic score by Ennio Morricone, 1900 looks and sounds incredible. And rarely has a film this long been so consistently engrossing. It's truly a film like no other. It's remarkably ambitious, grandiose, operatic, overwrought, and profoundly moving in equal measures. Every few minutes, there's some beautifully-staged sequence or some inspired bit of crazed acting or some unexpected transgression happening. The sexual content is surprising at times: young Alfredo and Olmo compare erections in a controversial scene; as young adults, they visit a prostitute (Stefania Casini) who gives them simultaneous handjobs and there's no effects or camera trickery...she's really stroking both De Niro and Depardieu; there's a weird scene where De Niro's Alfredo uses the butt of a shotgun to masturbate his horny cousin Regina (Laura Betti), who's also seen going down on Sutherland while he rants about Fascist ideals. There's also some almost-Pasolini levels of scatology: Lancaster buries his feet in cow shit before asking a peasant girl to feel his impotent penis; Bertolucci gives us a close-up of a horse taking a steaming dump and the piles of manure get thrown at Sutherland. The violence is also very disturbing at times, especially the fate of a little boy raped and killed by Attila and Regina, and a rough, non-faked scene where Depardieu kills and guts a large pig.
Sterling Hayden as peasant leader Leo Dalco
There are shocking elements in 1900, but it's never exploitative. The film is not just a political history of Italy, but it also functions as a history of cinema. Rarely has such an eclectic group of actors been brought together on the same film. Young breakout stars like De Niro and Depardieu, an established box office star in Sutherland, Hollywood legends Lancaster and Hayden, acclaimed European stars Dominique Sanda (as De Niro's wife), Romolo Valli, Alida Valli, and Stefania Sandrelli (as Depardieu's wife), and perhaps most interesting, the inclusion of Francesca Bertini in a rare screen appearance as Lancaster's older sister. Bertini, born in 1892, was the first major star in Italian cinema, with a screen career dating back to 1907. In her 80s and long retired by this point, Bertolucci talked her into taking a small role, and in a film with history as its central theme, Bertini's appearance, limited to maybe three scenes, really does feel special. Bertolucci also establishes a connection to his own inspirations in Lancaster again being cast in an Italian film as an aging patriarch lamenting the passage of time and the changing of values, which he'd portrayed so masterfully in Luchino Visconti's THE LEOPARD (1963). With a mix of actors speaking English, Italian, French, and German (mostly English), the English-dubbed option is probably the way to go, as you get the voices of De Niro, Sutherland, Lancaster, Hayden, and a few others. Depardieu is dubbed by someone else for the English version, but his voice can be heard on the French track.
De Niro's Alfredo, the landowner put
on trial by his field workers
1900 took over a year to film. Shooting began in May 1974 and ended in September 1975. De Niro had finished THE GODFATHER PART II but it hadn't been released when he started shooting 1900. He made TAXI DRIVER immediately after 1900 (and late in 1900's shoot, he would fly from Rome to NYC on weekends to drive a cab to prep for his role as Travis Bickle), but TAXI DRIVER ended up coming out a full year before 1900's US release in late 1977, in its truncated 243-minute version. It obviously didn't do well and vanished from sight for years until the 255-minute cut got released on VHS in the late '80s. Even though the uncensored version was ultimately given a brief release in the '90s, it wasn't until the 2006 DVD that Bertolucci's full version was made widely available in the US. It's an incredible, one-of-a kind film the likes of which we'll never see again, and one that still resonates today. Decidedly not for all tastes, but adventurous cinema fans who have yet to tackle it should consider it essential viewing. You've never seen anything like it.
CONVERSATION PIECE aka GRUPPO DI FAMIGLIA IN UN INTERNO (Italy/France - 1974)
Directed by Luchino Visconti. Written by Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Helmut Berger, Silvana Mangano, Romolo Valli, Dominique Sanda, Claudia Cardinale, Claudia Marsani, Stefano Patrizi, Elvira Cortese, Guy Trejan, Umberto Raho, Enzo Fiermonte. (Unrated, 121 mins)
The penultimate film by legendary Italian director Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) has been derided as one of his worst and most pretentious works for nearly 40 years. It was shot in English, with much of the Italian supporting cast dubbed, and despite acclaim in Italy, film festival screenings abroad resulted in such bad word-of-mouth that it took three years to find a US distributor. When then-fledgling New Line Cinema released it in the US in 1977, a year after Visconti's death (his final film, 1976's THE INNOCENT, wasn't released in the US until 1979), they released a version dubbed in Italian with English subtitles, which most agreed played a little better. Raro USA's new DVD release only has the original English-language audio, and that was the way Visconti intended it to be shown (Raro's Blu-ray, due out in April, will have both audio options). CONVERSATION PIECE has remained relatively obscure in comparison to Visconti classics like THE LEOPARD (1963), but its reputation has improved since its original release, and the essay in the package's accompanying booklet by film historian Mark Rappaport makes a pretty strong case for it being considered essential Visconti.
1974 Italian poster
Watching the film and with the benefit of perspective, CONVERSATION PIECE is, in hindsight, a hauntingly personal, elegiac baring of Visconti's soul. Visconti suffered a debilitating stroke shortly after completing 1973's LUDWIG and was partially paralyzed from then on. CONVERSATION PIECE was his next film, and it's clearly the work of a man who knows he's facing the end, and it's all there on the screen. Rappaport even goes so far as to write that the film itself is Visconti's Last Will and Testament. Admittedly, it's uneven at times, the English dubbing of the supporting cast is an ill fit, and there's some pointless shoehorning of Italy's then-volatile political situation into the crucial final sequences, but, with the passage of time, and years of film students studying Visconti and others of the Italian neo-realist movement, perhaps it's easier to focus on what does work in CONVERSATION PIECE, which is most of the film. It's not without flaws and problems, but what it gets right is too powerful to simply dismiss.
Poster for the film's 1977 US release
A retired American science professor (Burt Lancaster) lives alone in a grand, opulent Rome palazzo filled with the books, music, and art he's collected over a lifetime. He has a maid and his only acquaintances seem to be art dealers with whom he occasionally does business, collecting "conversation piece" portraits of informal family or group gatherings. The professor's solitary existance is disrupted by the Marchesa Bianca Brumonti (Silvana Mangano), a pushy, demanding woman of high social stature, who wants to rent the upper level of the palazzo for her daughter Lietta (Claudia Marsani) and her fiance Stefano (Stefano Patrizi). The professor repeatedly explains that the upstairs is not for rent and that he planned on moving his library up there at some point in the future. The Marchesa refuses to take no for an answer and before he even realizes what's going on, the Professor has signed a one-year lease for Lietta, Stefano, and a third boarder, the Marchesa's flamboyant, much-younger boy-toy and drug-dealing gigolo Konrad (Helmut Berger). The three tenants invade the Professor's life in a variety of ways, including knocking down walls and causing a water leak, loud music at all hours, barging in unannounced, and not to mention the Professor walking in on them in a threesome (Berger and Patrizi do frontal nudity in this scene, but Visconti is careful with how he films 1973 Miss Teen Italy winner Marsani, who was only 15 at the time), but their presence gives an unexpected spark to the Professor's lonely life. He surprises himself by bonding with Konrad, who loathes being the Marchesa's kept man and demonstrates intelligence and refined musical and literary tastes the Professor didn't think possible. The Professor begins to lament all the lost years spent alone and is soon "adopted" by this bizarre trio as the father in their makeshift dysfunctional "family."
Deciding three's already a crowd, the Professor (Burt
Lancaster) declines an invitation from the
free-spirited Lietta (Claudia Marsani,
who's probably doubled in this shot)
Lancaster's Professor (he's never given a name) is a character cut from the same cloth as the aging prince the actor portrayed 11 years earlier for Visconti in THE LEOPARD. Both are old men nearing the end, both filled with regret over roads not taken and societal changes they can't control, and both feel like relics in their own worlds. But Visconti's declining health adds a different level of poignancy to CONVERSATION PIECE. The Professor essentially is Visconti, and it's no coincidence that Konrad is played by Helmut Berger. No one else could've played this role. Berger became Visconti's lover and protege after working together on 1969's THE DAMNED. So much of their reportedly rocky relationship is incorporated into CONVERSATION PIECE, and though a romantic angle is never consummated, it is mentioned when the Marchesa accuses the Professor of having designs on Konrad. It's possible that the Professor feels a romantic desire for Konrad. He walks into the bathroom while Konrad is showering and seems to be in no rush to leave, only excusing himself when someone knocks at the main door. We know the Professor was married once upon a time (Claudia Cardinale plays his wife in a brief flashback), but all he says is "It didn't work." For what reasons, we never know. Visconti was bisexual, so perhaps the Professor is as well.
Burt Lancaster and Helmut Berger
But beyond any possible romantic scenarios, the Professor and Konrad first and foremost demonstrate a father-son relationship more than anything, which probably has parallels to Visconti and Berger's instructor-protege working relationship. Rappaport's essay cites Berger's memoirs and other information to paint a picture of Visconti as someone who preferred a quiet evening at home and who was often frustrated with the much-younger Berger's hard-partying, stay-out-until-dawn ways, which is what happens with the Professor and Konrad. What keeps CONVERSATION PIECE from reaching the level of Visconti masterpiece is the bizarre political tangent that gets introduced in the last part of the film, almost as if Visconti was obliged to say something simply because he came from the school of neo-realism and there was a lot of political tumult in Italy at the time. It doesn't really gel, and in fact, it's a bit of a momentum killer. But it's something that can be overlooked, and while CONVERSATION PIECE isn't on the level of THE LEOPARD, I think Rappaport's arguments are convincing enough to elevate it to the status of essential Visconti. It's also a very beautiful film (the DVD is remastered, 2.35:1 anamorphic), taking place almost entirely inside the Professor's stunningly-decorated, colorful palazzo, a DePaolis interior that looks like it could've been (and probably was) used for several gialli of the period. And while bleak and mournful most of the way, it also has a lot of dark humor, be it an occasional bit of inspired overacting from Berger or the three tenants giving the Professor a parrot that only says "They're killing me!" with Lietta explaining "It'll remind you of us." With Raro USA's release of CONVERSATION PIECE, the time seems right for a reconsideration of this neglected and very deeply personal late-period Visconti work.
Somewhat misleading artwork for the film's
1980s VHS release in the US.
