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Todestrieb commando, "a little walk in the desert." The feint is on Casablanca, the triangle of the Boer Major (Curd Jürgens), his wife (Ruth Roman) and the Welsh Captain (Richard Burton) she loved before the war, the true poisoned bond is between the men in a sandy void. Documents in Rommel's headquarters in Libya comprise the MacGuffin, the mission has "expendable" soldiers in the streets of Benghazi at night. The aftermath is where the drama lies, an endless sprawl of dunes and ruins for the officers to work out their existential animosity. "What's so funny?" "Courage." Madness of valor, lure of oblivion, continuous metaphysical abstractions made starkly, stunningly visceral by Nicholas Ray. Cowardice is the Major's hobgoblin, it materializes as a dagger trembling in his hand and a scorpion crawling up his foe's leg. "An empty uniform starched by authority so that it can stand up by itself" is how he's called by the Captain, who prefers stones to people. ("An intellectual" and an archeologist, he shrugs at the remains of an ancient Berber burg, "too modern for me.") War is a De Chirico maquette and a grunt's display of hand puppetry, above all it is the blanched CinemaScope in which the nihilist is forced to face the pain behind the romantic pose. An unloaded gun can't finish off the wounded but a "humane" gesture can, the score groans in tandem with the agonizing bloke carried by the would-be hero. (Howling wind, the roar of an unseen plane, a camel's death rattle also figure in the attentively dissonant soundscape.) Camus in the wasteland ("Is it that easy to kill?"), Whitman in the sandstorm ("I always contradict myself!"), the training dummies with painted hearts that witness it all. The cadaver's smile and the mannequin's medal, a magnificently unsettled vision that famously staggered the young Godard, "something you have to survive." The last image is mirrored by Siegel's in Escape from Alcatraz. Cinematography by Michel Kelber. With Raymond Pellegrin, Anthony Bushell, Alfred Burke, Nigel Green, Sean Kelly, Christopher Lee, Andrew Crawford, Sumner Williams, and Harry Landis. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |