Julia (1977)

          A posh drama that eventually morphs into a posh thriller, Julia is made with such consummate restraint and taste that it’s as delicate as silk. Alas, beautiful photography and elegant words and graceful direction go only so far, even when combined with strong performances by world-class actors, because, ultimately, story is everything—and the story of Julia is dull, episodic, and far-fetched. Adapted from a book by the venerable Lillian Hellman, the movie depicts an episode in the late 1930s when Hellman allegedly aided Germans who were resisting the rise of the Third Reich. Setting aside the question of whether the events in question ever really happened—even the film’s director, the venerable Fred Zinnemann, later expressed doubts about the veracity of Hellman’s tale—the problem with Julia is that it can’t decide whether it’s a quiet chamber piece or a wartime adventure.

          The movie has at least four major components. First is a long prologue depicting young Lillian’s friendship with a sophisticated girl named Julia. Next comes a long passage during which the adult Lillian (Jane Fonda) becomes a famous writer under the tutelage of her lover/mentor, crime-fiction legend Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards). After that, Lillian ventures to Europe, where she’s reunited with the grown-up Julia (Vanessa Redgrave) for a passage depicting the subtle textures of adult frendship. And finally, the movie shifts into intrigue mode when a rebel operative (Maximillian Schell) enlists Lillian to carry a package through Nazi-occupied terrain. Seen generously, this is the story of how Hellman’s character was built on the road to performing a great deed of selfless heroism, but since even that reading relegates the first half of the movie to the role of backstory, it becomes obvious why the structure of the picture is so peculiar. After all, did the makers of Casablanca (1942) have to spend half the movie explaining Rick Blaine’s childhood so audiences would understand his actions during the movie’s final scene?

          Even though Julia enjoyed considerable acclaim during its original release—winning Oscars for Redgrave, Robards, and screenwriter Alvin Sargent—it’s a tough film to love. For, while Julia contains many great things, from Robards’ world-weary characterization to the gorgeous cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, the various elements never cohere. Worse, the idea that Hellman might have fabricated such an outlandishly self-aggrandizing narrative leaves a bad taste on the palette. In any event, Julia occupies an interesting place in pop-culture history, because it was upon collecting her Academy Award for this film that Redgrave made her infamous “Zionist hoodlums” speech during the 1978 Oscar broadcast.

Julia: FUNKY

The Man in the Glass Booth (1975)

          Although best known as an actor, for extensive work on the London stage and for Hollywood endeavors such as his spectacular performance as Captain Quint in Jaws (1975), the late Robert Shaw was also a novelist and playwright. His most famous literary endeavor was the 1967 novel The Man in the Glass Booth, which he adapted into a 1968 play of the same name. Set in modern-day New York, the story concerns Arthur Goldman, a wealthy Holocaust survivor who spends his days haranguing employees with outlandish opinions about Judaism even as he seems to teeter on the brink of a nervous breakdown. One day, Israeli secret agents break into his home and reveal that Goldman is actually a Nazi war criminal living under an assumed identity. Next, Goldman is illicitly extradited to the Middle East for prosecution. (During the court action, he’s placed in the titular glass booth for his own protection.) All through the trial, Goldman proudly wears his SS uniform and outrageously lectures the Israeli audience with justifications murdering Jews. The story ends with a bizarre twist that raises as many questions as it answers.

          Although the play of The Man in the Glass Booth was presented in New York with an acclaimed production directed by Harold Pinter and starring Donald Pleasence, changes were made after the piece was selected for production by the American Film Theatre, a short-lived production company that filmed plays for limited movie-theater exhibition. The project got a new director (Arthur Hiller), a new star (Maximilian Schell), and a new script (by Edward Anhalt). Shaw was sufficiently displeased with the alterations that he removed his name from the film’s credits. Setting aside the matter of fealty to its source material, the movie version of The Man in the Glass Booth is a strange experience. Hiller does an okay job of opening up cinematic potential, using intricate sets to create separate spaces and thereby divide long scenes into smaller sequences; similarly, he also employs close-ups to accentuate the weird rhythms of Goldman’s euphoric monologues.

          And if Hiller’s filming is lively, Schell’s performance is positively supercharged—though not necessarily in a good way. Flamboyant, loud, and sensual, Schell’s interpretation borders on camp. One can make a strong argument that Schell chews scenery in proper proportion to the way his character does, but it gets suffocating after a while to watch the actor cackle and gesticulate and scream. Still, many found his work impressive, since he got Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. The real challenge of The Man in the Glass Booth, however, relates to the story’s ending, which won’t be spoiled here—suffice to say, the denouement is such a surprise, and such a head-scratcher, that it retroactively colors every preceding scene. Nonetheless, The Man in the Glass Booth offers a unique combination of ideology, philosophy, provocation, and wit—so even at its most questionable, the movie is arresting and sophisticated.

The Man in the Glass Booth: GROOVY

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

          Go figure that a movie about a military operation that was thwarted by excessive ambition would itself be thwarted by excessive ambition. Based on the doomed World War II campaign code-named Operation Market Garden, which was staged in late 1944 by Allied forces eager to maximize the gains of D-Day by ending the European component of the war with a push across Holland into Germany, A Bridge Too Far features one of the most impressive all-star casts of the ’70s, in addition to spectacular production values and a few powerful depictions of heroism and tragedy. Furthermore, the movie deserves ample praise for bucking war-movie convention by dramatizing a campaign that didn’t work. And, indeed, the theme evoked by the poetic title—sometimes, just one X factor stands between glory and ignominy—comes across in several key performances. Yet occasional glimpses of effective storytelling do not equal a completely satisfying movie, and A Bridge Too Far fails on many important levels when analyzed in its entirety.

          The movie is hard to follow, because it tracks too many characters in too many locations, and because, quite frankly, director Richard Attenborough fails to give greater dramatic weight to crucial moments. Everything in A Bridge Too Far is presented with almost exactly the same measure of gravitas, so Attenborough squanders interesting potentialities found throughout the movie’s script, which was penned by two-time Oscar winner William Goldman. Clearly, Attenborough and Goldman were both stymied, to a degree, by the sheer scale of the undertaking; producer Joseph E. Levine made it plain he wanted this movie to equal the 1962 epic The Longest Day, another all-star war picture based on a book by Cornelius Ryan.

          Yet while The Longest Day had the advantages of a triumphant subject (D-Day) and a receptive audience (moviegoers still embraced pro-military themes in the early ’60s), A Bridge Too Far is a far different creature—a story of battlefield hubris made at a time when America was still reeling from the traumas of the Vietnam War. So, even if the movie possessed a clearer narrative, chances are it still would’ve been the wrong movie at the wrong time.

          Having said all that, A Bridge Too Far has many noteworthy elements. The subject matter is fascinating, since Ryan’s book itemized the innumerable strategic errors made by the Allies in planning Operation Market Garden—beyond problems of scale, since the campaign involved things like an air drop of 35,000 paratroopers, the plan was so contingent upon component elements that if any one piece of the plan failed, the whole campaign would collapse. Therefore, the movie is a study of men who represent the margin of error that Operation Market Garden cannot afford—whether they’re Americans, Brits, or Poles, the soldiers in this movie try to achieve the impossible even when it’s plainly evident success is beyond their grasp.

          The most vivid moments involve Sean Connery and Anthony Hopkins as British officers trying to hold the Dutch town of Arnhem for days on end despite a crippling lack of reinforcements and supplies. Robert Redford dominates a key sequence in the third and final hour of the movie, playing an American officer who leads a seemingly suicidal charge across a heavily fortified river in broad daylight. Maximilian Schell makes an elegant impression as a German commander capable of mercy and ruthlessness, while Dirk Bogarde is appropriately infuriating as Schell’s opposite number on the Allied side, a British general who refuses to acknowledge the possibility of failure.

          Unfortunately, many promising characterizations are merely sketches: Actors Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, and Liv Ullmann each have colorful moments, but all are badly underutilized. And as for James Caan, his entire showy sequence could have been deleted without affecting the story, since his subplot feels like a leftover from a World War II movie actually made during World War II. Ironically, though, his are among the film’s most memorable scenes.

A Bridge Too Far: FUNKY

Avalanche Express (1978)

A turgid Cold War thriller featuring a sloppy script and underwhelming special effects, Avalanche Express also suffers because of two unexpected tragedies. The film’s director, action-movie veteran Mark Robson, died partway through production and was replaced with an uncredited Monte Hellman. More glaringly, leading man Robert Shaw died before post-production began, so when the filmmakers decided to re-record the dialogue in his first scene, they ended up hiring actor Robert Rietty to dub Shaw’s entire performance; as a result, not a syllable of Shaw’s distinctive English lilt is heard during the movie. Ultimately, however, these are the least of the movie’s problems, because Avalanche Express grinds through a simultaneously overstuffed and underdeveloped narrative marked by tedious lulls between action sequences. The basic premise is simple enough. When a high-powered Russian general named Marenkov (Shaw) defects to the West, U.S. agents led by Major Wargrave (Lee Marvin) transport Marenkov by train as a means of luring the assassins they know Soviet spymaster Bunin (Maximilian Schell) will send to kill Marenkov. The idea is to flush out long-buried operatives with the bait of a defector whose secrets can unravel important Soviet projects. Unfortunately, the filmmakers smother this workable premise with pointless subplots about double agents, a Middle Eastern terrorist group, a mysterious Russian counterintelligence project, and Wargrave’s on-again/off-again relationship with a fellow spy (Linda Evans). That all of this gets crammed into 88 minutes gives a sense of how superficially each story point gets addressed; the word for every scene in this movie is “perfunctory.” Even the presence of former football great Joe Namath (as Wargrave’s sidekick) and a cheesy avalanche sequence created by Star Wars special-effects guy John Dykstra aren’t enough to overcome the movie’s glaring flaws. Avalanche Express isn’t unwatchable, because there’s just enough action and star power to generate fleeting interest, but it’s a poor epitaph for Robson and Shaw. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Avalanche Express: LAME

End of the Game (1975)

          Ambitious, provocative, and thoughtful—but ultimately jumbled because its reach exceeds its grasp—End of the Game is a twisty whodunit that intertwines the resolution of an epic conflict between two aging enemies with the melodrama of young characters drawn into a scheme beyond their understanding. If that already strikes you as a confusing premise, then you’ve lit upon this highly admirable picture’s main problem: End of the Game tries to tell at least one story too many, and, as a result, all of its narrative elements get short shrift. The movie gets all sorts of points for trying to make a complex statement about morality, but the statement is neither clear nor forcefully expressed.

          Martin Ritt, appearing here as an actor but better known to audiences as a director of sensitive dramas, is appealingly rumpled as a veteran Swiss detective named Baerlach, who has spent decades trying to prove that a powerful industrialist named Gastman (Robert Shaw) once killed a woman. For cold-blooded Gastman, getting away with murder is the ultimate aphrodisiac, so he relishes watching his old adversary struggle with clues and evidence; furthermore, Gastman uses lethal force to protect himself whenever Baerlach gets too close to closing the case. After Baerlach’s aide (Donald Sutherland) dies mysteriously, the relentless investigator decides Gastman was responsible, so he sends an eager young cop (Jon Voight) after Gastman, which unexpectedly draws the young cop’s lover (Jacqueline Bisset) into the intrigue.

          End of the Game was directed by Austrian hyphenate Maximilian Schell, best known as a leading and supporting actor in international movies; unsurprisingly, the flamboyance of his performance style carries over to his directorial approach. (Schell co-wrote the script with German author Friedrich Durrenmatt, upon whose novel the film is based.) Attractive European locations enhance the theme, because it’s as if the “game” has been played since the ancient bridges and buildings surrounding the characters were first erected. More importantly, Schell put together a terrific cast, and the valiant efforts of his leading players make the picture consistently watchable—even when the story becomes impossibly convoluted, the actors ensure that individual scenes are credible and tense.

          The premise of aging adversaries using younger people as pawns is interesting, and the juxtaposition of wise older characters and reckless younger ones gives the picture an existential quality: Everyone in this movie seems to be grasping for the deeper meaning of his or her own life. So, even though End of the Game doesn’t ultimately make all that much sense, it’s worthwhile because what it’s trying to accomplish is so interesting from a psychological perspective.

End of the Game: FUNKY

The Odessa File (1974)

          Adapted from a novel by thriller specialist Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File has all the usual elements of an international-intrigue flick: disguises, investigation, revenge, secrets, suspense, and so on. Furthermore, with its story of a modern-day German hunting down a fugitive Nazi who committed war crimes during the Holocaust, the movie is, for the most part, a brisk morality play fueled by intense emotions. However, significant shortcomings relegate the film to lesser status by comparison with, say, the inspired Forsyth adaptation The Day of the Jackal (1973).

          First, the characterization of leading man Peter Miller (Jon Voight) asks audiences to stretch believability to the limit. A freelance newspaper reporter hungry for a scoop, he discovers a journal left behind by an elderly Jew who just committed suicide. The man had recently learned that his concentration-camp tormentor, Nazi officer Eduard Roschmann (Maximilian Schell), is still alive, and was told that German authorities were unwilling to arrest Roschmann for his past misdeeds.

          As Peter learns from the journal and other sources, Roschmann is among the Nazis protected by the Odessa, a secret pro-Nazi organization that is also supplying arms for attacks against Israel. (There’s a whole subplot in the film about one particular pending missile strike about Israel, but the filmmakers don’t give the subplot enough attention to warrant its inclusion, which is a waste.) Since investigating the Roschmann matter immediately puts Peter and his girlfriend (Mary Tamm) into mortal danger, it’s unbelievable that Peter becomes preoccupied with confronting the aging Nazi; even though the movie eventually provides a last-minute explanation for Peter’s actions, the revelation arrives too late to justify two hours of wondering what’s happening inside the protagonist’s head.

          The Odessa File is also one of those bloated international thrillers in which the good guys take preposterously elaborate measures to accomplish things that, one presumes, could be achieved more simply. Specifically, anti-Nazi secret agents subject Peter to weeks of mental conditioning and physical alterations so he can pretend to be a former Nazi in order to infiltrate the Odessa organization—because, apparently, none of the highly trained operatives working with Peter are as capable of this particular mission as a hotheaded reporter nursing a personal grudge.

          As directed by Poseidon Adventure helmer Ronald Neame, The Odessa File is drably professional, with no real point of view or style, and Voight isn’t particularly impressive; though earnest and intense, he’s constantly on the cusp of over-acting. Given all of these problems, The Odessa File is agreeable entertainment, but nothing more.

The Odessa File: FUNKY

The Black Hole (1979)

          By the late ’70s, a decade after Walt Disney’s death, the movie company bearing his name had lost the marketplace dominance it enjoyed during Walt’s heyday. Although the animation division remained adrift until 1989, Disney’s live-action unit began a brief but daring creative renaissance in 1979. That’s when the studio jumped onto the Star Wars bandwagon with The Black Hole, a dark sci-fi adventure story boasting opulent special effects and a memorably brooding music score by the great John Barry. The story involves a wonderfully absurd contrivance: In the year 2130, a deep-space exploration ship encounters a black hole and discovers that a long-lost spaceship, the Cygnus, is somehow locked in a permanent orbit over the mouth of the black hole. Our intrepid heroes enter the Cygnus and discover that megalomaniacal scientist Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) controls the ship with an army of robots. When Reinhardt tries to shanghai the heroes into participating in a mad scheme, they rebel and trigger a chain of events that sends all of the movie’s main characters plunging into the black hole.

          The story is goofy and turgid, and the clumsiest fingerprint of the Disney brand is the presence of cutesy robots including the wide-eyed V.I.N.CENT (voiced by Roddy McDowall). Furthermore, the acting and dialogue are laughably wooden, with unfortunate leading players Joseph Bottoms, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster, Yvette Mimieux, and Anthony Perkins effortlessly upstaged by Schell, who works a florid Bond-villain groove. (Flattening the overwrought performance styles of both Borgnine and Perkins is a dubious sort of accomplishment.) As a piece of dramatic art, The Black Hole is, well, a black hole. As a compendium of vivid sensations, however, the picture is memorable. Barry’s music is grandiose and malevolent, expressing the vastness of space in such a powerful way that many scenes are genuinely unnerving. Some of the old-school optical effects are breathtaking, with exquisitely detailed spaceship models faring better than inconsistent greenscreen work.
          The Black Hole also boasts one of the weirdest climaxes in mainstream sci-fi cinema—a grim, phantasmagorical sequence illustrating the trippy horrors hidden inside the titular phenomenon. To say there’s disharmony between cutesy robots and a 2001-style head trip is an understatement, but if you’re an imaginative viewer willing to pick and choose which parts of this movie to enjoy, you’ll discover many superficial pleasures, as well as a few surreal ones.

The Black Hole: FUNKY

Cross of Iron (1977)

          Gonzo filmmaker Sam Peckinpah was already starting to lose his creative way when he made the World War II actioner Cross of Iron. By the mid-’70s, he had become such a substance-abusing hellraiser that his productions were nightmares for nearly everyone involved, and Cross of Iron represents his last hurrah as a serious filmmaker. (He cranked out two more features before his death, but both were embarrassments.) As chaotic and overindulgent as the man who made it, Cross of Iron is also clever, disturbing, and provocative, a flawed psychological drama that could have become a masterpiece had it been executed with more discipline.

          Based on a novel by Willi Heinrich and penned by a trio of writers including Hollywood veteran Julius Epstein (Casablanca), the picture follows the adventures of Sgt. Rolf Steiner (James Coburn), a valiant German soldier fighting on the bloody Russian front. Brave, smart, and respected by his men, Steiner would be officer material if he didn’t have a problem with authority, so he quickly gets into a battle of wills with his new commander, Capt. Stransky (Maximilian Schell). A pompous Prussian aristocrat who lacks combat experience, Stransky is an ambitious monster determined to win an Iron Cross by any means necessary. When Stransky tries to claim credit for a heroic charge that was actually led by another man, Steiner emerges as the only eyewitness who can disprove Stransky’s boast, so Stransky abandons Steiner’s platoon in enemy territory when the Germans call a general retreat from the front.

          And that’s just one of the threads in this complex movie: There’s also a subplot about Steiner adopting a young Russian boy as his platoon’s ward, an intense sequence in which Steiner convalesces after suffering shell shock, and a sensitively depicted relationship between cynical Col. Brandt (James Mason) and his idealistic right-hand man, Capt. Kiesel (David Warner). As with most Peckinpah pictures, Cross of Iron unfurls as a bloody phantasmagoria. The dramatic scenes are tight and controlled, with Peckinpah drawing consistently interesting work from his gifted cast, and by contrast the action scenes are disjointed and surreal; during the shell-shock sequence in particular, Peckinpah employs impressionistic editing techniques to replicate Steiner’s fragmented state of mind. There’s also plenty of the director’s signature slow-motion violence, so be prepared for shots of viscera exploding in lingering detail.

          As a result of this multifaceted storytelling, Cross of Iron is dense and uneven. At one extreme there’s an excruciating scene of Stransky goading two soldiers into confessing their homosexual proclivities, and at the other extreme there’s an over-the-top sequence of Steiner’s platoon taking a group of female Russian soliders captive; the level of sexual violence in the latter sequence is predictably gruesome.

          Yet even with all of this transgressive material, the film’s strongest element is a running commentary on the nature of war. By dividing the military mind into a group of sharply individualized characters, the story illustrates how the battlefield both invites and nurtures insanity. Steiner is a strange sort of noble anarchist, bound by a deep sense of loyalty to his men but disdainful of everyone in the upper ranks and virtually oblivious to the politics driving the war. Stransky is a self-serving opportunist not only willing but sadistically eager to make others die for his greater glory. The conflict between these two men becomes more and more heated as the film advances, until finally they’re thrown together in a darkly ironic climax.

          That the picture ends on an ambiguous note, instead of definitively resolving the story, says as much about Cross of Iron’s virtues as it does about the film’s failings. The film raises a hundred probing questions even as it piles on lurid war-movie thrills, then dumps all of this information onto the audience so viewers can sort through the muck and find whatever they find. Cross of Iron is a fascinating mess.

Cross of Iron: GROOVY