THE KEEP (1983) - Michael Mann's monster movie

THE KEEP

(1983, UK)

A Michael Mann movie that's not on DVD...

I enjoyed The Keep in the cinema, though it didn't all make total sense at the time. Watching it again after a long break, I understand it better and still enjoy it, especially the dreamlike quality. Admittedly, it's a very dark dream.

In 1983, Michael Mann wasn't a 'name' yet and had only directed TV shows and one other movie. Looking back, The Keep doesn't snugly fit in with his body of work, and perhaps this is why it hasn't been released on home video in nearly twenty years...

But before I'd even seen it, I was already sold on the premise and some of the startling photos. German soldiers tangling with a monstrous evil in an ancient castle keep - it was a story I wanted to see. Hints of the Dracula legend being reimagined, Nazis versus monsters, were all very promising. The coverage in Fantastic Films, Fangoria and Starburst magazines all had cover stories. This looked to be a new kind of monster altogether. The cast looked good, so for me it didn't need a big name director to warrant seeing it.

World War II. A German army commander (Jürgen Prochnow, inbetween Das Boot and Dune) rolls into a remote Romanian village and houses his soldiers in a mysterious old stone fortress. Despite warnings not to tamper with the strange crosses embedded in the walls, his soldiers start to die, blown apart by an unseen force. An SS officer (Gabriel Byrne, inbetween Excalibur and Gothic) arrives to solve the murders, instantly blaming the villagers. He pressures an old Jewish professor (Ian McKellen, in an early leading role) to translate the writing inside the keep and unravel its mysteries. Meanwhile, a lone traveller (Scott Glenn of The Right Stuff, Backdraft) is on his way to the village, somehow alerted the very moment the keep was breached...

But The Keep didn't appear in the usual local cinemas near me but the BFI repertory cinema instead, meaning that it hadn't had a wide release and had been relegated to the arthouse circuit, which suited it very well. The studio were presumably annoyed they hadn't got a straightforward monster movie (though it wasn't much more different approach than Alien, which also had careful art direction and a slowly measured pace). There'd already been news that the film had been extensively recut before release.

Michael Mann directed this after Violent Streets (a gritty heist story, made in 1981, also known as Thief) and wanted to avoid "another street picture" and "another cops and robbers picture" (which he's mostly been stuck with ever since). "It had to be original and unique", "like no other movie with supernatural entities", (Mann quoted in Fantastic Films #38). Instead he was aiming high, at a horror story, a fairy tale, a fable about evil, with stylised visuals, but not gothic like the novel. Watching it again, I think he largely succeeded.

The soundtrack is crucial to the mood, and Tangerine Dream doesn't work for everyone, especially when the synth-heavy score is illustrating a wartime period piece. For me this very 1980s music may be an anachronism, but makes it feel more like it's happening in the now. It adds hugely to a dreamlike experience set against the surreal story and setting.

The visuals are also very 80s, but is that because the look of Mann's work influenced the decade? Carefully colour-coordinated production design, symmetrical camera compositions, backlighting, slow-motion montage, heavy filters and floods of dry ice are consistent with Mann's following few films. His next film was Manhunter, a wait of three years presumably because of The Keep's box-office failure. Meanwhile, he made his name producing the mega-hit TV series Miami Vice.

At the centre of The Keep is a monster. Mann wanted something original but had to compete with the impressive work done on Alien and The Thing. Experimenting with visual mechanical effects, the production was delayed and the budget crept up. Constrained by what was possible at the time, I wonder what he would have imagined with CGI?

The violence is bloodless because he was "not interested in gore", feeling he couldn't outdo John Carpenter, "The Thing was the ultimate prosthetic movie", (Mann quoted in Starburst #58). He did however have visual effects by Wally Veevers (Superman - The Movie) and mechanical effects from Nick Allder (Alien, The Empire Strikes Back), plus some spectacular prosthetic suits made by Nick Maley. Though the 'muscles on the outside' approach had been prefigured by the climax of Altered States. Unfortunately, Cinefex magazine didn't write up the visual effects in detail at the time (probably because it was produced in Britain and not Hollywood), but Fangoria #33 had a well-illustrated look at the suits.

I was disappointed that some of the visual effects hadn't made the final cut, and that the wild-looking photos of various stages of the creature weren't showcased in the film. But it's hard to say why that is. Was that cut out by the director or the studio? There's footage on YouTube of an unseen alternate ending and it's certainly a short film for Mann. Also several minor characters (like William Morgan Shepherd) disappear completely after being dramatically introduced, (more about the deleted scenes here).

The 'less is more' glimpses of the creature work to its advantage. It looks impressively huge, an outsized humanoid like the Golem legend, which is mentioned in passing as the soldiers flee. One unique apparition of the figure enshrouded in a cloud of self-circulating smoke is astounding, mainly because some poor devil had to build it all and make it work!

But the mystery of The Keep is intensified by both the surrounding story and locale. Cinematography that's allowed to breathe, with some very long shots that allow us to relax and enjoy the view. Magnificent sets, particularly the village exterior built in a spectacular slate quarry in North Wales. Mann wanted a steep-sided valley with black walls, and there it is in the Glyn Rhonwy Quarry, Llanberis (before and after photos here), together with a full-sized exterior of the keep and half a Romanian village. I remember visiting a scary open slate quarry in the area on a school trip (we were at the top of the quarry cliff looking over the edge) - we were only camped a few miles away, so there's a very good chance it was this one.

In terms of production, with a British crew and an auteur director striving for atmosphere rather than pace, this bears close comparison to Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). As ambitious maybe, though not as effective. I still find it fascinating and the initial build-up of lurking horror is hard to beat. When the soldiers break inside the inner keep, there's a single mindblowing 'pullback' shot that just keeps on going. It totally worked in the cinema, but the visual 'trick' is more obvious on the laserdisc. With careful grading for a digital presentation, I'm still hoping that this scene will regain it's initial power.

The complete removal of language barriers between all the characters is too convenient, and there's an uneven variety of accents on offer. Ian McKellen is supposedly Eastern European but sounds strangely American (just as strange that his film career was so very slow to take off). Gabriel Byrne (Stigmata, Ghost Ship, Miller's Crossing) plays German without an accent, but Jürgen Prochnow can't help himself. Incidentally it was fun seeing Scott Glenn again in Sucker Punch. Looking good, but with more furrowed wrinkles...

But the performances are excellent, with Alberta Watson (White of the Eye, The Lookout) in a difficult but standout role against all the heavyweights. Also a rare horror-role for Robert Prosky, who I first saw as a regular in Hill Street Blues.

The Keep has a carefully-composed 2.35 widescreen aspect, like all Michael Mann's movies, and was really badly cropped down to 1.33 for the videotape release. Anyone watching the VHS will have trouble following what the hell is going on. After being so impressed by it in the cinema, I was delighted when The Keep had an early widescreen release on laserdisc in the US (one of the main reasons I got into the format was the likelihood of widescreen).

The film is becoming increasingly famous as a 'missing film' on home video, last seen on that Paramount laserdisc in 1993. But there's still no DVD on the horizon. It notably appeared on Netflix recently, in the US.


Here's an original trailer on YouTube, (but cropped to 4:3 for home video...)

Sir Ian 'Gandalf' McKellen wrote a little about his involvement on his own website, including a few photographs...

http://www.mckellen.com/cinema/keep/notes.htm

French special effects artist Stéphane Piter has a huge fansite about his obsession with The Keep. The picture-heavy website, English version, begins here... 
http://the.keep.free.fr/default_en.htm

DOWNFALL (2004) - the horror of Hitler

DOWNFALL

(2004, Germany, DER UNTERGANG)

Who knew Hitler could be a YouTube hit? The stream of variations of 'Hitler is angry' and 'Hitler is informed...' recycles movie clips, but rewrites the English subtitles so that the Dictator appears to vent about lightweight grievances of modern life, ranging from iPads to football transfers. These are actually scenes from the 2004 film Downfall, usually when Hitler blames his staff for not informing him how much his troops have lost ground to the Allied forces.

I was prompted to see Downfall when I realised that producer/writer Bernd Eichinger and actor Bruno Ganz had worked together on this before The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008). I also wanted to see if the YouTube phenomenon might affect newcomers to the movie. I found it engrossing, but also a doom-laden, claustrophobic experience. While I've always sought out horror movies, recently I'm finding well-made reality-based dramas far more horrifying than fiction.

It's not the first portrayal of Hitler's final days. There's been Hitler: The Last Ten Days starring Alec Guinness, and The Bunker starring Anthony Hopkins. It's a temptingly dramatic story. The dictator's death signalled the end of the Third Reich, Nazi Germany and World War II in Europe (Japan held out a little longer). Downfall is the latest version, and the first to be made by Germany, with the added benefit of a new and thorough eyewitness account from Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge.

The story uses her as a central thread to the narrative, from when she first joins Hitler's staff in his reinforced concrete bunker. Crucially, Junge worked with him as the Russian forces finally approached the hideout, and were simultaneously closing in on Berlin. As commander of Germany's forces, Hitler refuses to surrender even though it means the continuing deaths of his outnumbered troops, as well as the civilians left in the city. Despite the desperate situation, his loyalty to his own extreme ideals threaten to drag everyone down with him.

Hitler is undeniably a complex role to portray in any depth, with the added challenge of having to distance the portrayal from every comedian's manic impression. Previous adaptions usually had actors speaking English with a German accent. But Downfall benefits from everyone speaking German. Bruno Ganz (Harker in Herzog's Nosferatu, lead angel in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire) even had access to a rare recording of Hitler in conversation, in order to accurately mimic his ordinary speaking voice.

Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, had remained silent about the events she witnessed for much of her life. In her last years she helped write an account and appear in a documentary about her time with Hitler, when she was living and working in close quarters with him and transcribing his thoughts, right until his final testimonies.

The publicity emphasised this new account, though Downfall uses several other accounts, adding perspectives on what was happening elsewhere, particularly in Berlin. The production was controversial because the German people were still very afraid that any realistic portrayal of Hitler would show him as a human being, and therefore sympathetically.

But of course he was human, and Downfall dares to show the Hitler we don't usually see. Not grainy footage of of him shouting and gesticulating his speeches to the troops. Here he can be quiet, considerate, good with children and animals... But it's carefully presented as a paradox, showing that he was capable of compassion, even though he abhorred it as a weakness in anyone else. Under increasing pressure, his beliefs look like insanity to even his most trusted believers.

Downfall isn't just about historical events, but also an insight into the mentality of the Nazi leadership, and the strength of loyalty that enabled them to commit their crimes. Their lack of compassion extended to German civilians and their own families. The last nightmarish events in the bunker, on Chancellor and Frau Goebbels' final day, are even more as horrifying than the carnage on the streets of Berlin.

I started watching with a sense of dread, that reminded me of Titanic. I knew roughly what was going to happen eventually, and dreaded when and what I was going to see. The two and a half hours running time was a fascinating education and a haunting experience. The grim siege atmosphere where people coldly contemplate suicide over dinner. The horrible tension that the killing will continue as long as he's alive.

It's useful to know a little about the end of World War II beforehand, as there's little historical context included for newcomers. Knowing a little from a few documentaries didn't ready me for how powerful it was as a drama, rather than simply summarised in a voiceover.

The YouTube spoofs didn't spoil the film as I feared. I was already completely drawn into the story by the time that scene appeared. Don't get me wrong, I find them very funny. But I'm conscious that we only see Hitler played for laughs now - like when he pops up in Family Guy. He shouldn't just be a comedy character. Inglorious Basterds was a welcome change, to see a more visceral and emotional response to him.

The narrative is careful to show pivotal events from the perspectives of people we know survived the war to tell their story. In most scenes, it's carefully established which witness was around. I'm in awe of Bernd Eichinger's script having to distilling so much information, while including so much detail. It was a shock back in January when Eichinger passed away at the age of 61. Check out his production credits, you might be surprised at how many of his films you know.

Bruno Ganz's performance as Hitler is easily a career best. But there are many exceptional performances, especially from the women: Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun, and Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels have extremely difficult scenes, but are utterly convincing. Alexandra Maria Lara, as Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, has the central role, though is maybe a little too wise in some of her reactions.

The UK blu-ray from Momentum shows up a lot of film grain, but the 5.1 soundtrack adds to the feeling of being surrounded by a constant enemy bombardment. There are commentary tracks, making-of featurettes, some very interesting interviews with the main cast and an insightful summary from Traudl Junge's biographer of how her full story came to light.

I then watched the documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary (2002) as a test of Downfall's accuracy. It consists solely of filmed interviews with Junge, shortly before she passed away. It was a surprise to see a couple of contradictions between her accounts and some of the events in Downfall, like how she escapes, which proved that it had exercised some dramatic license. But I was very impressed at how the accurately the film portrayed the atmosphere that Junge describes in the final days in the bunker.

Junge talks about her life after the war, apparently dismayed how she was so close to Hitler for so long, while ignorant of what he'd been implementing. Her testimony is fascinating and not all of her stories are dramatised in Downfall, including an account of how his own men tried to kill Hitler (dramatised in Valkyrie) which actually ends up as funny.

Publicity for Downfall says this was the first dramatisation of Hitler in a German film. But interestingly there was another German-language portrayal, which Traudl Junge also advised on, in 1955. Der Letzte Akt (The Last Ten Days) was directed by the G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box), but made in Austria. I can't find this available anywhere though.


Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary was shown as part of BBC's Storyville documentary strand, and has been on DVD in the UK and US. Melissa Muller's book, written with Traudl Junge, is still widely available.

STAR WARS (1977) vs THE DAM BUSTERS (1955) - raiders of the movie archives

The extensive inspiration for Star Wars' first Death Star mission...

I've just re-watched two WWII movies, 633 Squadron (1964) and The Dam Busters (1955), much-loved in the UK after regular TV showings for years of Saturday nights during the 1970s and 80s. It's now an easy observation that the finales for both films provided inspiration for the climax of the first Star Wars (1977), which should really make them more popular now. But looking around in books, magazines and websites dedicated to Star Wars, there's little or no mention of them.

I loved Star Wars when it came out, and pounced on anything written about it at the time. I was surprised that the 1977 Star Wars 'Official Collectors Edition' magazine started with 16 pages of acknowledged influences on the themes and designs of the first Star Wars film. There are photos from the original Flash Gordon serials, The Mark of Zorro, True Grit, Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan and dozens more American productions, plus the robot Maria from Germany's Metropolis. I didn't realise how many films hadn't been mentioned.

I've rewatched The Making of Star Wars ...as told by C-3PO and R2-D2 documentary (released on VHS and laserdisc, and coming soon to the Blu-ray special edition), free TV publicity for the initial movie release. It briefly shows airplane footage from a black-and-white American movie (Jet Pilot?). The voiceover is, "The adventure into which Luke Skywalker is thrust is derived from World War II dogfights as shown in Hollywood films...". My gripe now is that half the movies actually referenced for the outer space battles weren't made in Hollywood, but in Britain (as was much of Star Wars). Like the magazine, this documentary parades clips from similar American movies of the 1940s, of swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks, swordfighting Zorro and cliffhanging Flash Gordon.

This casual mention of dogfights, often abbreviated to 'World War II footage' fails to describe an extensive echoing of scenes from a few specific movies, re-using visual composition of unique shots, their blocking, lighting, and even dialogue. While many directors would screen movies to their crew before a production to establish mood or tone, here we have other people's movies being cut up and used as moving storyboards. Not just black-and-white war movies, but big-budget, widescreen colour classics. Of course, this 'referencing' didn't happen in isolation.

The Dam Busters targeting computer is made of wood.

The young directors who ruled Hollywood in the 1970s, 'The Movie Brats', all came from film schools. They'd studied and dissected classic cinema, sometimes shot-by-shot, heralding an era of movie-making full of intensive homage. Spielberg used camera techniques he'd watched, famously using Hitchcock's 'reverse zoom' from Vertigo for a very different use in Jaws. Brian De Palma would riff on Hitchcock's plots (Obsession, also derived from Vertigo), as well as camera technique.

The Brats weren't above remakes, like Scorsese's Cape Fear, De Palma's Scarface and Spielberg's Always. Earlier on, George Lucas wanted to adapt Flash Gordon (previously filmed as three cliffhanger serials in 1936, 1938, 1940) but discovered the rights had already been purchased (and eventually used for De Laurentiis' 1980 movie). Instead, he wrote Star Wars in the same vein, exploring the same inspirations as Alex Raymond's original comic strip. But that story only explains the space fantasy setting.

The extended climax of the first Star Wars was a dazzling technical and emotional achievement, key to the box-office success of the film and ensuring the birth of a franchise. Despite the assault on the Death Star being in outer space, the X-Wings and TIE fighters glide like airplanes, grouping in battle formations like WWII fighter planes. The mission is to fly into and along the Death Star trench for a remote chance at hitting a well-defended target. This was also the climax of The Dam Busters (1955) and 633 Squadron (1964). The squadrons in The Dam Busters have to fly low over a mountain reservoir to hit a specifically pinpointed weak spot on a dam (to flood enemy factories). 633 Squadron fly low along a narrow, high-sided, heavily-defended fjord to target a specialised fuel factory. Both targets are far more logical than the gaping flaw in the design of the Death Star. The suspense and excitement generated by these scenes are the reason so many elements have been re-used in the climax of Star Wars.

But scarce mention has been made of these movies or how they were used. Here's the best I could find. Joe Johnston (director of The Rocketeer and Captain America) was a visual effects illustrator for Industrial Light & Magic, interviewed in Cinefantastique. He talks about storyboarding the final battle for Star Wars in 1975, using 16mm footage that Lucas had compiled "from World War II dogfights". "A lot of it was from Battle of Britain. Some of it was from Bridges At Toko-Ri, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Jet Pilot, 633 Squadron and some of it was actual combat footage. Quite a bit of footage came from the movie Dam Busters." (1978 Cinefantastique double issue - vol 6. no. 4/vol. 7 no. 1, p.78),

In American Cinematographer magazine (July 1977), there's an example of a storyboard 'conversion' on page 744 - a sketch of a shot of two planes diving(which looks like it's from Tora! Tora! Tora!) shown next to the equivalent sketch of an X-wing and a TIE fighter in the same positions, same shot composition, the horizon mapped onto the edge of the Death Star. This would then be the storyboard for the visual effects department.

Usually there are only few movies that get name-checks when the subject is raised, even in the weightiest books on the making of the film. In the George Lucas Interviews (edited by Sally Kline), Lucas refers to a few of the same movies as Joe Johnston "plus about 45 other movies". To me that's a very poor tribute to the film-makers who unwittingly provided blueprints for one of the most famous scenes in movie history.

Common knowledge is now that "World War II footage" was used, when it should be 'World War II movie footage'. Personally, the impression I'd always had was that they'd just used combat footage. But I hadn't realised there's more than a logistical similarity between the missions in The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron and the Death Star run. Using combat footage as technical reference material would add to the realism. Using other movies' special effects shots and set-ups is unimaginative.

Now I'm not going to micro-analyse all the similarities for you, and I'm surprised no-one else has put a slew of parallel shot breakdowns of the Death Star trench scene online, with a ton of screen captures best-guessing how these films were used. (Not to mention the dialogue also lifted from The Dam Busters). It's obviously extensive, and just as innovative as it is cheeky. But I'm not going to devote any more time proving the point.

The three directors of Airplane! (1980) Jim Abrahams, Jerry and David Zucker, all referred to Zero Hour! (1957) because they'd never directed a movie before. Besides spoofing the plot and the dialogue, they even looked at the film to choose camera see-ups. The difference here is that they got nervous and bought the rights to Zero Hour! in case they were later accused of plagiarism (they tell this story on the Airplane! DVD commentary track).

Cinema is rife with homage, but it seems that Spielberg and Scorsese talk about their influences and 'quotes' freely and often. Quentin Tarantino energetically diverts fans back to his beloved grindhouse classics. But no-one is leading Star Wars followers to all of its major inspirations.

The proof is in the referenced films themselves. I'd encourage you to watch a few in Joe Johnston's list and play spot-the-homage for yourself! If you're going to steal, steal from the best.

THE DAM BUSTERS

(1955, UK)

I'm looking forward to seeing Tora! Tora! Tora! and Battle of Britain again on Blu-ray, in search of further quotations, but it was The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron that reminded me of all this. In both films, the whole story is devoted to the final mission.

The Dam Busters aims for historical accuracy, describing inventor Barnes Wallis' own determination to persuade the military that his eccentric-looking 'bouncing bomb' could successfully be deployed. It's a story of perseverance and also a tribute to the airmen who practised for and flew the final mission. Especially those who didn't return. Of course it's not a thrill-machine like Star Wars, but a dramatic story heightened by the fact that it happened for real. Slightly surprising that a major film of the era was made in black-and-white and aspected 1.33, but probably because it wanted to intercut actual wartime footage of the bombing test runs.

It stars Michael Redgrave (Vanessa's dad), probably better known to you from Dead Of Night (1945) and Richard Todd (Asylum, House of the Long Shadows). Fun to see a young Robert Shaw (Jaws, From Russia With Love) so early in his career. Director Michael Anderson later made Logan's Run and Orca - The Killer Whale!

See also DVD Beaver for a thorough and informative review of The Dam Busters on Blu-ray, with their persuasive DVD/Blu comparison screenshots.

633 SQUADRON

(1964, UK)

633 Squadron has a fast-paced, action-oriented story, but felt like a pumped-up remake of The Dam Busters in widescreen and colour. There's gun battles, nasty Nazis and much more aerial action. Their target, at the end of a long sea inlet (flat base of the water, high steep mountains to the sides) is as close to a natural double for the Death Star trench as you could wish for (until Firefox came along). There's less drama, more melodrama. Less emotion, more shouting. It's an exciting, easy watch, but the modelwork is unbelievably small in scale, something that barely registered when I used to watch it on a small TV. Cliff Robertson (Obsession, Spider-man) and George Chakiris (West Side Story) star.

These films, Tora! Tora! Tora! (an epic reconstruction of the attack on Pearl Harbor) and Battle of Britain were all made when there were still enough operational aircraft around not to have to rely on special effects. They all have really impressive scenes of restored World War II airplanes taking off and in flight. Battle of Britain even hazardously recreated aerial dogfights between swarms of British and German planes.

I'm now wondering if Peter Jackson's upcoming remake of The Dam Busters will bring us full circle and look like Star Wars...

Finally, please check out the hairstyle of actress Ursula Jeans, who plays Barnes Wallis' wife in The Dam Busters. Nice buns!

KING NARESUAN (2007) - Thai epics finally hit America as KINGDOM OF WAR

KINGDOM OF WAR - PARTS 1 and 2

(2007, Thailand, King Naresuan)

It's been a long wait for these two historical epics to get English-subtitled releases in the west, while many more recent Thai movies like Tony Jaa's and various Thai horrors have wasted no time. King Naresuan parts 1 and 2 have presumably been waiting to tie-in with the delayed release of part 3, which premiered in Thailand in March this year. Raising the unprecedented budgets for these films has been a battle in itself, relying partly on the director's connections with the royal family.

The whole story tells of the birth of Thailand's fight for independence from it's neighbouring countries and brings to life a famous period of history. But if it's epic war action you want, I'd reluctantly advise you to skip to Part 2. If you want the whole story and to wallow in the sights and culture of 16th century Thailand and Burma, then start with Part 1. The events of these films even follow on from the same director's earlier epic Legend of Suriyothi (2001), which was presented in America by Francis Ford Coppola in 2003.

The DVD and blu-ray releases have been retitled as Kingdom of War for the US release by Magnet. Be careful not to confuse it with the Donnie Yen epic, An Empress and the Warrior (2008), which was also renamed Kingdom of War in some European countries.

I reviewed both films after seeing them in the cinema in Thailand in 2007. I'll report back on how the blu-ray compares.

King Naresuan Part 1 - Hostage of Hongsawadi review

King Naresuan Part 2 - Reclamation of Sovereignty review

The Making of King Naresuan documentary and merchandise review

Kingdom of War Parts 1 and 2 blu-ray on Amazon.com

J'ACCUSE (1919 and 1938) - return of the war dead

J'ACCUSE

(France, silent version 1919, sound remake 1938)

Powerful pleas for an end to war

Never thinking I'd get to see it, I was fascinated by the images from J'accuse in the 1975 book Catastrophe: The End of Cinema (an illustrated guide to visions of the apocalypse that predated the 70's 'disaster movie' craze, and also anticipated the climax of Inglourious Basterds). I saw my first clip in David Gill and Kevin Brownlow's brilliant 1996 documentary The Other Hollywood (which looked at six European countries that once had film industries to rival America, before they were all put on hold by the two World Wars - enough time for Hollywood to dominate the market).


Director Abel Gance rose to command the country's biggest budget for a silent film with the epic Napoleon (1927), pushing the medium to its technological limits. A James Cameron for silent cinema, Gance attempted to include a sequence shot in every film format yet devised, including his famous triptych of three side-by-side sequences, and even a 3D section (removed from the final cut).

But Gance's two versions of J'accuse interest me more, for their early anti-war theme and horror-themed climaxes, where the war dead rise up and march on the living. A zombie fantasy to convey the real horrors of war. But the supernatural isn't the central premise to the films by any means. Gance is trying to convey many aspects of the impact of war through emotion rather than shock, through reality rather than fantasy.

Such bold statements from a famous director, I thought these films would be easy to see. But the 1919 film has only just hit DVD (as a special edition restoration from Flicker Alley), and the 1938 remake was restored and last released on VHS in 1991 in the US. Such sparse access through the years has meant that films like All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, 1979) are better known for representing World War One.

J'accuse (1919)

Abel Gance wrote and directed both versions, and even shot actual fighting during the end of the war. I'd love to know how on Earth he was allowed to borrow thousands of soldiers for the climactic marching scenes, during wartime, for an anti-war film! The splendid photography, lighting and rapid editing help the film look ahead of its time.

The story starts in a small French village, where idealistic poet Jean Diaz (Romuald Joubé), and brutish huntsman Francois (the impressive Séverin-Mars) are both in love with the same woman. Their rivalry is interrupted when they enlist to defend France from the German invasion. I was then surprised by a little comedy as both rivals find themselves in the same regiment.


When their beloved Edith is captured by the advancing enemy, both men are driven to the edge of sanity amidst the bullets and missiles of the trenches of 'the western front'. The war-torn love triangle reminded me of Pearl Harbor (2001).

Eventually Jean is discharged from the army with shell shock, leaving Francois tortured that Jean can now see his wife, who is actually hiding another more terrible secret from her husband.


When the war finally ends, Jean dares the townspeople not to forget their dead relatives and friends. He tries to convince them that the dead soldiers will rise up and revisit them unless their consciences are clear. Is that really going to happen, or has he been driven mad?


For the most part this is more melodrama than war film, but it benefits from being made at the time. There's realism in the emotional effects of war on the families and soldiers alike. Even small details ring horrifyingly true - the extended scenes of families saying farewell to sons, fathers and friends as they head for almost certain death, the soldiers' growing immunity to being around corpses, Francois thinking of his hunting dog as he lies in hospital... all well-observed and still uncliched.

Gance demonstrates his skill in directing actors, using choice close-ups, symbolic superimpositions and even rapidfire editing, I found his overuse of the iris effect the only dated visual device. But this remains an accessible and sophisticated film for 1919, helped by a good score, authentic tinted scenes and a realistic projection speed. It's still very watchable, owing to the relatively natural performances.


The new DVD presents an often scratchy, jumpy print, but one that gives us the original version of the story. Despite being 90 years old, many of the film elements still look good today, preserving the carefully lit cinematography. The montage that visualises Jean's poem to the Sun is particularly beautiful.

J'accuse (1938)

The remake is a very different film, a far more emotional and direct plea, albeit a mysterious one. When he completed the 1919 film the war had just ended, but in 1938 Gance was desperate to prevent it happening again.

It plunges straight into the war, eliminating practically the first two hours of his original story. The rest of the scenario is drastically altered and tightened. I only spotted a couple of shots recycled from the first film, and that was actual war footage.

Jean and Francois are still rivalling for Edith's affections. But in an attempt to settle their differences, Francois makes Jean swear that if he dies, Jean won't hook up with his wife. Victor Francen (as Jean) is so intense when promising his friend, it's almost hypnotic, and frighteningly convincing. Throughout the story, Francen repeatedly and passionately laments the dead with enough tears and conviction for a dozen Oscars. I'm surprised that the only other film I've noticed him in was as the ailing concert pianist in the Hollywood horror The Beast With Five Fingers (1945).

Gance is harsher, angrier, inter-cutting between the actual victory parade in Paris through the Arch De Triomphe, and shots of graves and corpses, all while upbeat marching music blares out. As the world gets back to normal after the war, Jean returns to live on the site of the battleground, near the graves of his comrades. His only friend, the cafe owner who kept the soldiers spirits high during the war.


The centre section of the story then tries to rush through the love triangle plot of the first film, adding a second more unsettling triangle between his beloved Edith and her daughter (who confusingly look the same age)! The narrative then skips forward twenty years to the eve of World War Two, suddenly introducing that Jean works at a glass factory where new war technology is being prepared.

One night, in the only passage of the film that deliberately looks like a horror film, his hair turns white while he's off tunnelling among the tombs. What has he seen? What has he learnt? He hints that he's now tense about what's going to happen and the power he now has...

I wish the core of the film was Jean's promise to his fallen comrades and his progressively more mysterious connection with their graveyard, as the scenes in his hometown appear to be far less relevant here. He appears to have been driven insane by his connection with the dead, rather than by shell shock in the first film.

This is a much darker film, with many evocative passages pleading for sanity. The climax is far longer, more elaborate, a little confusing and pregnant with unused possibilities. The march of the war dead is realised both by stony (clay?) make-up and hundreds of actual war veterans who had been maimed and disfigured in the war, at a time when plastic surgery and prosthetic replacement were in still their infancy.


I suppose it's not important how Jean calls the dead back - it appears to be by sheer force of will - but with a two-hour running time, a little more time spent on his methods would have been welcome. For such a monumental build-up, the final pay-off is powerful, but relatively short and ultimately too simple. Obviously, the dead want the living to remember their sacrifice, nothing more. I'd like a sequel to see what the dead did next! With all the rage and sacrifice, I'd have expected more anger and choicer targets. In a similar vein, Joe Dante's Masters of Horror episode 'Homecoming' (2005) brilliantly brought all the dead soldiers back to life... to vote!

Again Gance uses real war footage, but by 1938 film projection speeds had changed, resulting in a marked difference in quality and far too 'sped up'. His use of cross-cutting is more jarring as a result. But I'd have thought this version of J'accuse was one to deserve a special edition DVD. The only copy I could find was this 20 year old VHS from Connoisseur Video.



I'd also recommend The Great War (1964) as a first hand guide to the First World War. Using only documentary and newsreel footage, as well as eyewitness testimonials from both sides, this BBC series exhaustively described the harrowing history of 'the war to end all wars'. It was recently released on DVD in the UK.

The World At War (1973) is an epic documentary series about the Second World War, and has just been restored and released on Blu-Ray. It's a harrowing and thorough history lesson, that I'd be reluctant to see again in any greater visual detail. Some of it is so gruesome and tragic.