Martin Ritt, the director, seemed to handle more than his share of films about contradictory cultural allegiances, and he reveled in them. His background may have had something to do with the interest that developed into his skill. A prep-school educated New York Jew, he played football for Elon College, founded by the United Church of Christ in North Carolina. One wonders what went through his head in the rural South of the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression. Whatever it was, it must have contributed to his handling of the textile mills in "Norma Rae." Later, he was swept up in the Red scare of the early 50s and briefly blacklisted when accused by a grocer in Syracuse of donating money to communist China in 1951.
Actually, although all of that biographical stuff may sound irrelevant to the exhibit before us, it's not. Judging from his films, Ritt's stint in the poverty-stricken racist South didn't infuse him with a particularly leftist point of view or a hatred of Southerners or capitalism or anything so simple minded. Instead, it seems to have sensitized him to the problems of poverty itself, and ignorance and divided allegiances. It was a complicated dynamic.
I'm trying to get out from behind this damned lectern but my shoe seems to be caught on something. Let me give it another tug. There.
A handful of famous international female stars in an occupied Yugoslavian village in 1943 are accused of having had what the French of the period called "collaboration horizontale" and Keats called the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness", with German troops, and specifically with Steve Forrest, an arrogant womanizer who gets the same treatment from the furious villagers as Abelard got for lusting after Heloise.
The errant girls get their heads shaved and booted out of town, following which they have more adventures on their journey than Huckleberry Finn. They fall in with a group of Yugoslav partisans fighting the Germans. The partisans have one rule above all others. No fraternizing among the men and women. Or else. Some men, though, are prompted by their glands to act like satyrs grazing on the lawns, and shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay.
Of course, Vera Miles has to go and willingly fraternize with Harry Guardino, who sheds his usual earnest Italian-American screen persona for a properly goatish performance. "We could die tomorrow," he tells the frightened Vera Miles before throwing himself on her. As a matter of fact, he's right, because the partisan leader, Van Heflin, catches them the next morning.
Van Heflin is quite good. He usually is, despite his beetling brows and pop eyes. He has an especially good moment when there is a pause in the battling and intrigue and Sylvana Mangano bitterly accuses him of caring about nothing but killing. Heflin has no ready answer. He pauses, gulps, manages to say, "I want . . .", and then quickly walks away. It doesn't sound like much but it's a very neat little scene.
There are quite a few scenes in which the women and the partisans talk about human nature, killing, violence, and will there ever be peace or will the war just go on and on and on? The philosophy is strictly routine, and if it weren't for minor touches in the direction and some of the acting -- Jeanne Moreau and Richard Baseheart -- the film would be more ordinary than it is. Carla Gravina has a tall, fey presence that's almost worth the price Steve Forrest pays for impregnating her. Barbara Bel Geddes is miscast. She's not a Yugoslav peasant in black stockings and German boots. She's the well-bred, middle-class illustrator of "Vertigo" and the well-bred, middle-class wife of a Public Health Service officer in "Panic in the Streets." I'm sorry. I just don't see her rolling around in a muddy pig style with some German enlisted man.
I don't know why, but I remember seeing this with my brother in a theater on North Broad Street in Elizabeth, New Jersey, when it was released. Something to do with long-term memory. Tell me, Doc, is my hippocampus turning into flan? Give it to me straight. I can take it.
Actually, although all of that biographical stuff may sound irrelevant to the exhibit before us, it's not. Judging from his films, Ritt's stint in the poverty-stricken racist South didn't infuse him with a particularly leftist point of view or a hatred of Southerners or capitalism or anything so simple minded. Instead, it seems to have sensitized him to the problems of poverty itself, and ignorance and divided allegiances. It was a complicated dynamic.
I'm trying to get out from behind this damned lectern but my shoe seems to be caught on something. Let me give it another tug. There.
A handful of famous international female stars in an occupied Yugoslavian village in 1943 are accused of having had what the French of the period called "collaboration horizontale" and Keats called the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness", with German troops, and specifically with Steve Forrest, an arrogant womanizer who gets the same treatment from the furious villagers as Abelard got for lusting after Heloise.
The errant girls get their heads shaved and booted out of town, following which they have more adventures on their journey than Huckleberry Finn. They fall in with a group of Yugoslav partisans fighting the Germans. The partisans have one rule above all others. No fraternizing among the men and women. Or else. Some men, though, are prompted by their glands to act like satyrs grazing on the lawns, and shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay.
Of course, Vera Miles has to go and willingly fraternize with Harry Guardino, who sheds his usual earnest Italian-American screen persona for a properly goatish performance. "We could die tomorrow," he tells the frightened Vera Miles before throwing himself on her. As a matter of fact, he's right, because the partisan leader, Van Heflin, catches them the next morning.
Van Heflin is quite good. He usually is, despite his beetling brows and pop eyes. He has an especially good moment when there is a pause in the battling and intrigue and Sylvana Mangano bitterly accuses him of caring about nothing but killing. Heflin has no ready answer. He pauses, gulps, manages to say, "I want . . .", and then quickly walks away. It doesn't sound like much but it's a very neat little scene.
There are quite a few scenes in which the women and the partisans talk about human nature, killing, violence, and will there ever be peace or will the war just go on and on and on? The philosophy is strictly routine, and if it weren't for minor touches in the direction and some of the acting -- Jeanne Moreau and Richard Baseheart -- the film would be more ordinary than it is. Carla Gravina has a tall, fey presence that's almost worth the price Steve Forrest pays for impregnating her. Barbara Bel Geddes is miscast. She's not a Yugoslav peasant in black stockings and German boots. She's the well-bred, middle-class illustrator of "Vertigo" and the well-bred, middle-class wife of a Public Health Service officer in "Panic in the Streets." I'm sorry. I just don't see her rolling around in a muddy pig style with some German enlisted man.
I don't know why, but I remember seeing this with my brother in a theater on North Broad Street in Elizabeth, New Jersey, when it was released. Something to do with long-term memory. Tell me, Doc, is my hippocampus turning into flan? Give it to me straight. I can take it.