West Germany,
1970, 80 min
Shown in 1970
CREDITS
- dir
-
Michael Verhoeven
- scr
-
Michael Verhoeven
- cam
-
Igor Luther
- cast
-
Friedrich Thun, Hartmut Becker, Wolfgang Fischer, Ewald Prechti, Eva Mattes, Michael Verhoeven
- prod co
-
Rob Houwer Film, Munich
- source
-
Rob Houwer Film, Munich
OTHER
This young German director has been the center of political and aesthetic storms in recent months because of his newest film, O.K., the official entry at the Berlin Film Festival. When several members of the Jury labeled the film “anti-American” and thereupon excluded it from competition, a furor ensued on the part of the press, public and cinema colleagues. The controversy became so heated that the festival was closed when several directors withdrew their films in sympathy to Verhoeven’s work. Michael Verhoeven (the son of noted stage and screen actor, Paul Verhoeven) first attracted attention two years ago with a brilliant film debut, Paarungen, based upon Strindberg’s Dance of Death. It was apparent from this film that he is absorbed by psychological themes, where human beings behave unpredictably and the predatory impulses of man overcome his gentler sensibilities. In O.K., a troupe of young German filmmakers and their cast arrive on location in the Bavarian forests. They each introduce themselves to the audience, speaking to the camera, and explain that they intend to reenact a true incident that took place during the Vietnam war. Four bored soldiers at a remote outpost, more out of pique than lust, rape and murder a young Vietnamese girl. A fifth soldier, horrified, tries to convince the authorities about the atrocity, but he is all but ignored. The Brechtian distance given to this terrible tale, quite graphically and brutally presented, places O.K. in the category of great anti-war cinema. The Bavarian dialect illustrates the way in which native types, usually associated with the most charming customs of a country, can behave with incredible savagery within the inhumane landscape of war. The indictments are implicit here, speaking sharply behind the images, and if the film disturbs, it is because the guilt of unseen carnage lies heavily on the conscience for those too complacently distant from the screams.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #80
The globetrotting thespian Anthony Quinn attended the 1969 San Francisco International Film Festival in support of the Opening Night film The Secret of Santa Vittoria, in which he played the half-drunk mayor of an Italian hamlet, protecting his town’s wine collection from German soldiers.
