Monday, October 6, 2025

"Spartacus: Film and History" by Martin Winkler

 Today is the anniversary of the release of one of my favorite movies. I have seen it possibly more than any other movie because I showed it in my Western Civ classes for years. 

1.  The Catholic Legion of Decency put pressure on Universal to cut shot of severing of limbs. drowning in soup, blood spurting on Crassus when he kills Draba, and hints of homosexuality (“oysters and snails”)

2.  Scenes that were cut and lost included several scenes of Gracchus and Ceasar.  So much of his performance was cut that the irascible Laughton sued.

3.  Kubrick disavowed the film because he felt he did not have enough control over the story.  However, he did insist on the final battle scene. 

4.  Douglas insisted the theme be “a slave whose vision of freedom almost overthrew the Roman Empire”.  He also bumped up the love story.

5.  The original plan was for an expanded battle with Glabrus, a battle montage of the subsequent battles, and a small version of the final battle.

6.  After Trumbo’s critique of the first rough cut, scenes were added including:  the first meeting with Tigranes, Spartacus’ speech at the gladiator school, Spartacus’ speech on the beach, the duel with Antoninus. 

7.  Universal cut the Battle of Metapontum, leaving only a reference made to the loss at the public bath.

8.  Kubrick wanted the cause of defeat to be moral weakness of the slave class and the Crixus split.  Douglas overruled him, thankfully.

Thursday, October 2, 2025

FIVE FINGERS (1952)

 

            “Five Fingers” is a spy noir movie along the lines of “Notorious”. It was directed by the famous screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz (“The Quiet American” (1958)). The film is based on the book Operation Cicero by Ludwig Moyzisch. The book and movie are the true story of Albanian-born Elyesa Bazna. He was the valet to the British ambassador in Turkey. Bazna would photograph top secret documents from the ambassador’s safe and sell them to the Germans. It was filmed on location in Ankara and other sites.

            The film begins in 1944 in neutral Turkey. Polish Countessa Anna Staviska (Danielle Darrieux) offers her services to German Ambassador Count Van Papen (John Wengraf) as a spy. Surprisingly, he turns her down. And then he turns around and agrees to let Ulysses Diello (James Mason) play amateur spy for money. Diello has access to British secrets and sells them. He may be an amateur, but he has the moxey of a James Bond. Because there has to be a dame in a movie like this, Diello falls in love with the downtrodden countessa and shares some of his payments with her. The British get suspicious and sent a counter-intelligent agent to Ankara. Colin Travers (Michael Rennie) starts snooping around Ulysses and Anna. The couple plan to escape to Argentina or so Diello thinks), but they need one last big score. It involves the plans for Operation Overlord. Don’t ask why those plans are in the British Ambassador to Turkey’s safe.

            “Five Fingers” is better than expected. It is not in a league with “Notorious”, but it is a true story so it has one up on the Hitchcock film. (Both films star the always reliable Mason.) Mason is great as Diello. His character is not a Nazi. He’s just in it for the money. Carrieux is not on the same level of acting as him, but she does well as a femme fatale. Their relationship has some interesting twists.

            Dialogue is crucial in this type of film and “Five Fingers” is strong in this area. Some of it is crackling. The plot rests on the usual cat and mouse format. The movie is unpredictable and that is saying a lot because the subgenre of spy movies is rife with cliches. The score supports the movie well. It is a well-crafted film. It is entertaining, but how educational is it?

            The movie adds a lot of historical license. Banza did get a job as a valet to Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. If the name gives you the impression that the ambassador was a daft nobleman without a clue, you would be right. Banza was hired with the flimsiest of background checks. His Lordship made Banza into a glorified butler and dressed him like a guard in a harem. Banza hooked up with his bosses nurse-maid, but she was not his partner in crime. The true story has no one equivalent to the Countessa. Banza was adept at picking locks so he easily got into the safe. Knatchbull-Hugessen was very careless with security. Banza passed on information about the Teheran and Cairo Conferences. Nothing earth-shaking. He was paid a lot, but it was mostly counterfeit money. Ha ha! The money came from Operation Bernhard. (Covered in the film “The Counterfeiters”.)  Banza’s biggest theft was documents about Operation Overlord which ironically, the Germans failed to use. The British did suspect someone in the embassy was passing secrets, so they sent a Cornella Kapp to catch the mole. She was not successful. There are several historians who think Banza was a double agent and there is evidence supporting this. I bet Knatchbull-Hugessen prayed that was true. He didn’t get a lot of party invitations after the war. Banza also had a depressing post-war. The money was discovered to be counterfeit and he spent some time in prison for passing it. He did not go to Rio.

 

GRADE  =  B+



Tuesday, September 30, 2025

The Cowra Breakout (1984)


               “The Cowra Breakout” is an Australian miniseries about the Japanese breakout from a prisoner of war camp on New South Wales in 1944.  The first episode has the main character, Private Davidson (Alan David Lee) at war on New Guinea. His patrol runs into  a Japanese machine gun nest. Most of the patrol is wiped out, including his best buddy who is mortally wounded and put out of his misery by Davidson. Their leader, Lt. MacDonald (Andrew Lloyde) runs and leaves Davidson behind. Davidson ends up as a guard at Camp Cowra. In a major coincidence, Murphy’s widow and two daughters live near the camp. They strike up a romance. He is surprised to find the surviving Japanese soldier, Hiyashi (Junichi Ishida) is in the camp. At first, Davidson is bitter towards the man who killed his friend and not sympathetic towards the other prisoners. He is very perturbed when Lt. MacDonald is assigned to the camp and he’s wearing a medal for bravery! MacDonald refuses to admit to stolen valor. At first, the Japanese in the camp are docile, but this changes when a bushido believer arrives and roils the barracks with talk of fighting back. He convinces a majority of the men that to return home after being prisoners will be disgraceful. They must rise up and die fighting.

               SPOILER:  “The Cowra Breakout” is based on an actual prison break, although all of the characters are fictional. The breakout is accurately depicted. The prisoners broke out on the night of August 5, 1944. It started with Hajime Toyoshima, the first Japanese prisoner taken by the Australians in WWII, blowing a bugle. A prisoner tried to  warn the guards, but the mob managed to break through the fence. They were armed with knives, bats, and clubs. Two soldiers, Privates Benjamin Hardy and Ralph Jones tried to hold them back with a machine gun, but they were overrun and killed. They received the George Cross. 359 of the 1,104 prisoners escaped. 231 of them ending up dying either from gunfire or suicide. Four Aussie troops died. All of the escaped prisoners were recovered. It was the largest and bloodiest prison escape in WWII.

               The miniseries is small scale, but sincere. Although the characters are fictional they certainly represented typical guards and prisoners. It was interesting to see how the original prisoners were content with serving out the war in a prison camp. The guards grew complacent because these prisoners offered no problems. The commander treated the prisoners well. The miniseries gives no indication that the prisoners were rebelling because of mistreatment. It may be a bit simplistic to blame it all on one fanatical prisoner, but it seems reasonable that the later prisoners would have been more hardcore since they would have been fighting longer. The relationship between Davidson and MacDonald is interesting and not predictable. On the other hand, Davidson’s friendship with Hiyashi is trite. The romance is obviously thrown in for the female audience. The acting is solid from a cast none of whom I recognized. Alan David Lee is fine as a soldier who overcomes his PTSD to find the humanity he lost when his best friend was killed. Junichi Ishida does a good job as a prisoner who feels it is best to live to return to his loved ones. But that philosophy conflicts with Japanese martial culture. He gets caught up in the inevitable banzai charge at the gate.

               Australia has a strong track record for war movies and miniseries. “The Cowra Breakout” is somewhere in the middle. It gets credit for covering a famous event in the war and sticking to the basic facts. It’s a bit melodramatic, but that is to be expected from a television miniseries.

GRADE  =  B-

 

Thursday, September 18, 2025

Land of Mine (2015)

 

                “Land of Mine” is a Danish film (“Under Sadet”). It was written and directed by Martin Zandvliet. It was based on the aftermath of WWII in Denmark. The Germans had left millions of mines on Danish beaches to discourage an Allied invasion. After the war, the Danish government used German prisoners to discover and disarm the mines. Some of the prisoners were just teenagers. Of the 2,000 prisoners used, 149 were killed in the five months of work. The movie was filmed on some of the beaches. At one point, a live mine was uncovered during actor training. That took actor boot camp a little too far.

               The movie opens in May, 1945. Five years of German occupation has finally ended. A group of young German prisoners are put to work locating mines. They are overseen by a Danish Sgt. Rasmussen (Roland Moller). He is not the coddling type. Practice diffusing a mine in a bunker begins the winnowing process and now we have eleven. Clearly the movie is going to be a “who will survive?” movie. As though they aren’t already in danger, some of the boys talk about their future. Can you say “dead meat”? The work involves crawling on their bellies on the beach using probes to find the mines. When they are not tempting fate, they are being mistreated by Rasmussen and being ill-fed. Gradually, Rasmussen warms to his charges, but just as he gives up his villain shirt, his evil boss shows up. Capt. Jensen (Mikkel Folsgaard) does not plan on keeping the promise that once they finish one last beach, they can go home.

               The cast is fine, but the characters lack development. We never find out why Rasmussen is so belligerent. Of the Germans, only Sebastian (Louis Hofmann) stands out. In fact, it is hard to tell the boys apart. Jensen is a cartoonish villain. Rasmussen is more interesting and is given a roller-coaster arc. He goes from contempt to tolerance to anger to empathy. The other characters are mainly there to die. And the deaths are pretty predictable. Don’t talk about the future! Not surprising, since this is a movie, 71% of the boys die. Contrast that to the 7% who actually died in the mine disposal.

               The movie uses the mine discovery to create realistic suspense. Although you know some will be killed and it is sometimes forshadowed, you don’t know when the explosions will occur. While the time on the beach is edge of your seat, the time spent in the barracks is tame. There is no dysfunction in the squad partly because the unit is homogeneous.

               The main strength of the film is it brings a little known event to light. It is admirable that Denmark nominated a film for the Academy Awards which does not reflect well on the Danes. In fact, what happened to the German prisoners was a war crime. The Geneva Convention expressly prohibits the use of prisoners to do dangerous jobs. To make Denmark look even worse, none of the characters in the movie deserved their fate. They are not Nazis, they are just boys. Some of the deaths are heart-breaking. It’s a pretty bleak film.

               I have seen “Land of Mine” on several lists of the best war movies. It is entertaining, but overrated. I do recommend it mainly for the history lesson. Now let’s see if we get an American movie about treatment of German prisoners.

GRADE  =  B