'Court-Martial' belongs to that most uncinematic of sub-genres, the courtroom drama, the masterpiece of which, 'Anatomy of a Murder', was also directed by Otto Preminger. The epithet 'genre' is justified in that the courtroom drama has developed its own ritualistic codes, plots and characters as much as the gangster film or the musical - the brilliant, bullying prosecutor; the weak, inarticulate defence; the verbal battle-of-wills between lawyers presided over by a petulant judge; the grandiloquent speeches; the playing to the gallery; the last-minute crucial piece of evidence or overlooked witness etc.
All are present and correct here, if not to the entertaining degree of 'Anatomy' or Wilder's 'Witness for the Prosecution'; Gary Cooper is not the man for epigrammatic fireworks. The courtroom drama is a way of airing debates, often of topical interest; or the revealing, or otherwise, of the workings of democracy as enshrined in its legal system. In such a set-up, the semiotic philosophies of Derrida and Barthes seem to have no place; words, easily spoken, are not yet emasculated, and have the power to bully and distort, as well as being a proven vehicle for decency.
But words have to be linked to character. Gullion may be brilliant, but he emerges, in narrative terms, from nowhere, we know nothing about him; his narrative rootlessness robs his words of moral value. Cooper/Mitchell may not be the most graceful of rhetoricians, but both Cooper's four-decade proven persona, and our access to Mitchell's backstory contrive to give weight to his words, and a moral, if not verbal, eloquence.
Yet the courtroom drama here shows the spirit of democracy - revealed not only in its legal system, but in its military - to be Pharisaic. The good man who wants to save lives, the patriot who wants to defend America is dishonoured, stripped of his livelihood and means of subsistence, found guilty. The film shakes with the wagging finger of hindsight, where the mad predictions of an insubordinate visionary have proven to be accurate, and the military establishment everything he accused them of, complacent, negligent, dangerously narrow.
This kind of 'debate' risks seeming sterile, academic, uninteresting - we know Mitchell's right, and the army are blind; where's the conflict? But this is a Preminger film, and therefore more than a courtroom drama. The casting of Cooper is crucial. Like 'The Right Stuff', this film about the military is in actual fact negatively imbued with the spirit of the Western. Cooper, so often Man of the West, ranging the open spaces, embodying American values, now faces the modern world, and finds frontiers closed as he is hemmed in by bureaucracy. The individualistic spirit of adventure, risk, progress is no more, replaced by decision by committee (surely Preminger's metaphor for Hollywood).
Mitchell may be the film's moral centre, but he is a sick man, a weak, passive transgressor, who is made to look stupid and helpless by the new rules of Machiavellian system-playing. The film, made in the mid-1950s, reveals how the founding spirit of America is being smothered by the new conformity - linking the military intransigence here to ex-General Eisenhower's America. The presence of Rod Steiger, fresh from 'On The Waterfront', also reminds us of another recent, prominent showtrial, the McCarthy purges. But, although the film is impeccably anti-military, -bureaucracy and -conformist, it questions that founding spirit, suggesting that such individualism always had something a little mad and sick in it.
That's about all I can say about the film, because I saw it in a dreadful pan-and-scan version. Content is only ever a minor part of any film, so I don't know how Preminger treated his theme visually, only intellectually; which means I didn't really see it at all, although I liked the idea of the courtroom-in-a-warehouse wall being the same khaki colour as the soldiers' uniforms. Great to see the godlike Elizabeth Montgomery in a rare Hollywood role, very cute and young; maybe she should have wrinkled her nose at the script.
All are present and correct here, if not to the entertaining degree of 'Anatomy' or Wilder's 'Witness for the Prosecution'; Gary Cooper is not the man for epigrammatic fireworks. The courtroom drama is a way of airing debates, often of topical interest; or the revealing, or otherwise, of the workings of democracy as enshrined in its legal system. In such a set-up, the semiotic philosophies of Derrida and Barthes seem to have no place; words, easily spoken, are not yet emasculated, and have the power to bully and distort, as well as being a proven vehicle for decency.
But words have to be linked to character. Gullion may be brilliant, but he emerges, in narrative terms, from nowhere, we know nothing about him; his narrative rootlessness robs his words of moral value. Cooper/Mitchell may not be the most graceful of rhetoricians, but both Cooper's four-decade proven persona, and our access to Mitchell's backstory contrive to give weight to his words, and a moral, if not verbal, eloquence.
Yet the courtroom drama here shows the spirit of democracy - revealed not only in its legal system, but in its military - to be Pharisaic. The good man who wants to save lives, the patriot who wants to defend America is dishonoured, stripped of his livelihood and means of subsistence, found guilty. The film shakes with the wagging finger of hindsight, where the mad predictions of an insubordinate visionary have proven to be accurate, and the military establishment everything he accused them of, complacent, negligent, dangerously narrow.
This kind of 'debate' risks seeming sterile, academic, uninteresting - we know Mitchell's right, and the army are blind; where's the conflict? But this is a Preminger film, and therefore more than a courtroom drama. The casting of Cooper is crucial. Like 'The Right Stuff', this film about the military is in actual fact negatively imbued with the spirit of the Western. Cooper, so often Man of the West, ranging the open spaces, embodying American values, now faces the modern world, and finds frontiers closed as he is hemmed in by bureaucracy. The individualistic spirit of adventure, risk, progress is no more, replaced by decision by committee (surely Preminger's metaphor for Hollywood).
Mitchell may be the film's moral centre, but he is a sick man, a weak, passive transgressor, who is made to look stupid and helpless by the new rules of Machiavellian system-playing. The film, made in the mid-1950s, reveals how the founding spirit of America is being smothered by the new conformity - linking the military intransigence here to ex-General Eisenhower's America. The presence of Rod Steiger, fresh from 'On The Waterfront', also reminds us of another recent, prominent showtrial, the McCarthy purges. But, although the film is impeccably anti-military, -bureaucracy and -conformist, it questions that founding spirit, suggesting that such individualism always had something a little mad and sick in it.
That's about all I can say about the film, because I saw it in a dreadful pan-and-scan version. Content is only ever a minor part of any film, so I don't know how Preminger treated his theme visually, only intellectually; which means I didn't really see it at all, although I liked the idea of the courtroom-in-a-warehouse wall being the same khaki colour as the soldiers' uniforms. Great to see the godlike Elizabeth Montgomery in a rare Hollywood role, very cute and young; maybe she should have wrinkled her nose at the script.