Movie Review: The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)

A star-infused anthology drama, The Yellow Rolls-Royce features three distinct European-set adventures linked by one vehicle. The stories toil towards stodgy adequacy.

The opening segment is set in London of the 1920s. The wealthy Charles, Marquess of Frinton (Rex Harrison) of the British Foreign Office purchases a brand new yellow Rolls-Royce as an anniversary gift for his wife Eloise (Jeanne Moreau). He is looking forward to fielding the favourite horse at Ascot's Gold Cup, but Eloise is having an affair with diplomat John Fane (Edmund Purdom).

The second and longest story is set in Italy's Genoa area in the 1930s. Mafioso Paolo Maltese (George C. Scott) buys the Rolls-Royce when his moll Mae Jenkins (Shirley MacLaine) falls in love with it. She has no appreciation for culture, but gigolo tourist photographer Stefano (Alain Delon) catches her attention. When Paolo is called back to the United States, Mae and Stefano pursue an affair under the watchful eye of Paolo's right-hand man Joey Friedlander (Art Carney).

The final instalment starts in Italy near the border with Yugoslavia in 1941. Wealthy and influential American widow Gerda Millett (Ingrid Bergman) purchases the aging Rolls-Royce to drive into troubled Yugoslavia and meet the newly installed leader. Partisan Yugoslav commander Davich (Omar Sharif) is aware the Nazis are about to invade his country, and spots an opportunity to slip across the border in the vehicle's trunk.

A British MGM studios production, The Yellow Rolls-Royce labours away with plenty of verbiage yielding relatively limited impact. Writer Terence Rattigan demonstrates a propensity for long paragraphs of irrelevant dialogue, and despite the short length of each segment, the film gets bogged down in long scenes digging away at the obvious. To compensate, director Anthony Asquith makes good use of scenic European locations, and when all else fails, the yellow Rolls-Royce itself adds elegance to any frame.

As expected the format reveals interesting ideas beset by insufficient evolution. The third chapter is energized by the World War Two context and carries the most promise as a potential long-form drama. Finally the Rolls-Royce is put to use for something other than discrete love-making, as Ingrid Bergman's Gerda descends from haughty pretensions and helps partisans re-group in the mountains. 

The middle story is the longest, occupying half the two hours of running time, but remains in middling territory. Shirley MacLaine tries hard as the American hat-check girl and a fish out of water in Italy, Alain Delon the only piece of culture she is interested in. George C. Scott over-cooks his mafia boss into a cartoon character. Art Carney is more circumspect as the aging deputy and driver.

The first story is the weakest, all pomp and circumstance with Rex Harrison in his theatrical element. Asquith stages a lavish banquet then enjoys the Ascot surroundings, leaving limited room for the central illicit love affair.

The common themes across the three chapters include secretive love affairs and characters exposed to both stark realities and trajectory-changing revelations. The Yellow Rolls-Royce is gracefully staid, and perhaps unsurprisingly, never moves out of third gear.



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Movie Review: The Train (1964)

A gripping World War Two action film, The Train is an intense story of heroism presented with considerable panache. An uncompromising battle over the fate of a train unfolds as a metaphor for unyielding resistance in the chaotic dying days of the German occupation of France.

It's August 1944, and the Allies are close to liberating Paris. German Colonel von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) is intent on transporting to Germany hundreds of celebrated paintings by famous artists looted by the Nazis from throughout France. He overcomes bureaucratic delays and secures a train, loading it with his cargo of stolen art.

Arts curator Mademoiselle Villard (Suzanne Flon) understands the value of keeping the masterworks in France, and appeals to the underground cell led by rail yard manager Labiche (Burt Lancaster) to stall the train's progress until the Allies arrive. But Labiche's group strength has been decimated, and he expresses no interest in culture. His cell is anyway busy delaying a German armaments train to expose it to a British bombing raid.

When gruff engineer Papa Boule (Michel Simon) risks his life to save the arts train, Labiche and his collaborators Didont (Albert Rémy) and Pesquet (Charles Millot) decide to risk everything for one last mission. They improvise an elaborate and risky ruse to try and keep the train in France, a plan that will involve station manager Jacques (Jacques Marin) and innkeeper Christine (Jeanne Moreau).

Combining ferocious action with quiet moments of tension, The Train is a superlative World War Two adventure. Loosely inspired by factual events recounted in the 1961 book Le Front De L'art by Rose Valland, the film extracts surprising drama and poignancy from a simple story about a small group of resistance fighters doing all they can to derail a grand theft. The focus is a train, but the message is about national pride and standing up with limited and ever dwindling resources to a barbaric regime.

In a classic distillation of the war to two individuals on opposite sides of the conflict, the script by Franklin Coen, Frank Davis, and Walter Bernstein pits Colonel von Waldheim against Labiche. The irony is that it is von Waldheim who is an admirer of the arts while Labiche could care less. The struggle between them transcends the train cargo and evolves into a battle of wills to record one last blow before the Germans depart France.

The film is a visual study in dynamic fluidity. Director John Frankenheimer was a late replacement for Arthur Penn, and elevates The Train to a stylish art piece. Making excellent use of black and white cinematography, Frankenheimer goes looking for eye catching framing, and packs the film with several memorable long uninterrupted tracking shots featuring exquisitely choreographed activity. The settings vary from offices filled with German army clerks frantically burning documents as defeat looms to bustling rail yards where French workers, German soldiers and their nervous officers intermingle with cacophonous train traffic supporting the war effort.

The heart of the film is action, and The Train is filled with breathless set-pieces, from a bombing raid on a train yard to several clandestine stealth missions, and a quite spectacular derailment / crash combo designed to wedge and delay a treasure. All the action scenes are real, and star Burt Lancaster does many of his own stunts in a performance full of understated bravado.

The human cost of exceptional courage is high, and The Train is unblinking in confronting the sacrifice required to stop evil. After years of brutal conflict, a resigned determination on both sides to wage battle to the bitter end assures horrific casualties. And for the French resistance fighters, the prize is much more than a train full of paintings.

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Movie Review: Five Branded Women (1960)

An independent war film with a unique perspective, Five Branded Women is a thought-provoking drama delving into the human cost of war, and the warped values that emerge in a world consumed by an endless conflict.

The setting is a small town in Yugoslavia under German occupation in 1943. Womanizing German officer Sergeant Keller (Steve Forrest) is simultaneously seducing five local women. Members of the local anti-Nazi partisan militia, led by Velko (Van Heflin), soon catch up with Keller and summarily extract revenge. The five women are punished for sleeping with the enemy: the partisans forcibly cut their hair short to visibly humiliate them. The embarrassed Nazis evict the disgraced women out of town.

The women are Jovanka (Silvana Mangano), Ljuba (Jeanne Moreau), Daniza (Vera Miles), Marja (Barbara Bel Geddes), and Mira (Carla Gravina). Jovanka perceives war, rather than the Germans, as the enemy interrupting her lust for life. Ljuba is the innocent shop girl looking for an ideal man. Daniza never actually slept with Keller, but was swept up in the roundup of the women. The widow Marja was desperately trying to get pregnant with Keller, while Mira is already carrying his child.

The women have to fend for themselves in the unforgiving war-torn countryside. Jovanka assumes the group's leadership as they sleep rough and steal food to survive. Before long they witness partisan attacks on German convoys and make contact with Velko's militia, which includes the charismatic fighter Branco (Harry Guardino), who has difficulty controlling his libido. The women prove themselves in combat, and even capture the German Captain Reinhardt (Richard Basehart) as a prisoner. But the war is long, and the strain begins to tell.

A Dino De Laurentiis production directed by Martin Ritt, Five Branded Women carries a European sensibility towards the war. Traversing territory devoid of heroes and villains, the Yugoslavian countryside contains mostly victims trying to carve out a path to survival. While there are some cringe-worthy moments of wooden acting and melodramatic dialogue, the film thrives in an environment of humanity shorn of civility and stripped down to the basics of endurance.

Ritt alternates his characters' musings about the war with sharp action scenes, mostly consisting of noisy ambushes as the partisans deploy classic hit and run tactics to make life miserable for the occupying Germans. But the film's impact is carried by the strong-held beliefs of Jovanka and Velko. Jovanka does not care who is at war with whom; she just resents the war for disrupting her quest for a full life, and seeks the opportunities to strike back at the tide of misery. Velko is resigned to becoming a killer, and has parked his soul to the side, fully accepting that his embrace of brutality creates little functional separation between him and the occupiers. Silvana Mangano and Van Heflin bring these two memorable characters to life with a welcome facade of dour determination.

The grim black and white cinematography adds to the appropriately depressed tone: the lush countryside may be beautiful, but now is not the time to admire nature's colours. And in the unhinged reality of a land ravaged by war, ironies prevail. Daniza is punished once for a sin she did not commit with the enemy; she will be punished again for consorting with an ally. Ljuba establishes a relationship with the prisoner Reinhardt. He helps bring life to a countryside filled with death unleashed by his army before presenting Ljuba, who has long been waiting for a decent man, with a stark choice.

War resets the rules of sex, and Five Branded Women is unflinching in dealing with a topic that Hollywood movies typically avoided. The town is obsessed with the liaisons perpetrated by the womanizing Keller. Out in the fields, Branco's first instinct is to rape Jovanka; there is barely a difference between occupiers and freedom fighters in claiming women as trophies. Velko insists that the first rule of his militia is no fraternization between men and women, a goal both noble and impossible.

And although Velko and Jovanka avoid getting romantically entangled, they finally connect intellectually. He wants to free his country at all cost, she wants the freedom to embrace all that a miserable life can offer, and after an audacious militia attack their interests finally intersect, machine gun at the ready, Nazis in pursuit.

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