USA,
1968, 107 min
Shown in 1968
CREDITS
- dir
-
John Flynn
- prod
-
Robert Wise, Richard Goldstone
- scr
-
Dennis Murphy
- cam
-
Henri Persin
- editor
-
Charles Nelson, Francoise Diot
- cast
-
Rod Steiger, John Phillip Law, Ludmila Mikael, Elliott Sullivan, Frank Latimore, Aldous Brown
- source
-
Warner Bros/Seven Arts
-
COMMENTS
Rod Steiger and John Phillip Law attended along with John Flynn, Dennis Murphy and Richard Goldstone.
OTHER
The general attitudes of filmmakers toward military themes have either been comic views of the last war or glorified myths about the present Asian embattlement. In the genre of psychological dramas, with crises arising from the blighted ideals or desires of men in uniform, only Milestone, Wellman, Zinnemann, Kubrick and, most recently, Huston, have succeeded in picturing these moods accurately. In his debut film, John Flynn has chosen the famous novel by Dennis Murphy to establish an exciting and promising career. In an autumnal, postwar area of France, tough-minded Master Sergeant Callan arrives to assume command of a petroleum supply company. He is a 16-year army veteran, haunted by memories of World War II and clutching his sense of superiority with a cold disregard for his captain or the soldiers. Having bolstered his loneliness over the years with the mute, warm comradeship of innumerable pints of Scotch, Callan gradually finds himself drawn toward another human being. This personage happens to be a rather doltish Adonis named Private Tom Swanson, and the tenuous borderline between camaraderie and homosexual impulse are further complicated by the presence of a sentient young French girl with whom Swanson is infatuated. In the title role, Rod Steiger finally inherits the mantle of historic greatness once worn by Muni and Laughton, for his characterization is a detailed, sympathetic portrait of irrational emotionalism; he has perfected every recollection of military subterfuge and added humane, forthright mannerism to the difficulties of defining masculine love.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #123
San Francisco native Mervyn LeRoy, director of the Hollywood classics Little Caesar and Goldiggers of 1933, was honored with the Festival’s first tribute October 22, 1965.
