morituri: those about to die

{According to Suetonius, MORITURI TE SALUTANT, "those about to die salute you," was the traditional greeting the troops gave Caesar.}

Hollywood loves war. War slips easily between those comfy old Hollywood sheets: good guys vs bad guys, lovers separated by circumstance, the tragedy of death intruding on youth, and, best of all, it lends itself to overblown visual displays. Then came the '60s, and a demand for the anti-war statement. Mostly Hollywood dealt with it by making its war films more cynical, or murking up the endings. Morituri, then, which emerged in 1965 from the hand of German actor and director Bernhard Wicki, goes a step further. One might have expected it out of Europe, but with big stars speaking English, it comes as a shock.

It begins squarely as a recognizable anti-Nazi movie. Brando is Robert Crain, a wealthy German sitting out the war comfortably in India with nothing but scorn for both sides, a cynical pacifist. Trevor Howard, in his inimitible role as Most British of the Brits (my favorite part of Inglorious Basterds was the Trevor Howard character, and that damned Quentin went and killed him off in the basement alongside my two OTHER favorite characters. But I digress), blackmails Brando into disguising himself as SS to infiltrate a Nazi freighter, his mission to disarm the scuttling charges so the precious rubber cargo can be salvaged by the Allies. Yul Brynner plays the ship's Captain Mueller, the Good Soldier Serving the Corrupt Master. He is a man whose reputation has come under a cloud because his conscience has been driving him to drink, and he assumes Brando is there to keep an eye on him.

It's the kind of role I love for Brando, a man who has to think on his feet, strong on purpose and forward movement, keeping him focused, keeping at bay that howlingly annoying tendency he's got to meander. Had he been young today, he'd have made a bundle in action films. He's got that action-hero je-ne-sais-quoi: graceful in motion, eye-catching in stillness. Brynner is at the peak of his powers, giving us a fearless leader of men whose compass has been sent spinning by a world gone mad. He's got a lovely, weary speech about "you young men who make the world breathless," by trying to rule it with brutality divorced from mercy.

So far, so good. In its first hour, it's rollicking good and filled with suspense and strong character development, shaping up to be my favorite Outsmart-the-Nazis film ever. And then, a little past halfway through, it opens up its trenchcoat, as it were, to display its true purpose.

The MacGuffin arrives in the shapely form of Janet Margolin as a young Jewess, transported on board with a group of captured Yanks. The first sign of trouble comes when she is used to make apparent the Captain's heart-of-gold cred, a completely unnecessary gesture, since we're already quite certain of his good, moral heart through a combination of his very fine performance and a more than adequate script. But here it is: Captain Mueller recognizes her as a Jewess when others have not (although the name on her passport is Esther Levy; not very bright Nazis, those), gives her a private cabin and a pledge of protection, perhaps even an opportunity to lose herself once they reach Bordeaux. But that is just the first sign of trouble.

>SPOILER ALERT<

Later on we learn that she has been gang-raped by Gestapo, and, later still, that in our own story she will offer herself up in a disturbing, Peckinpah-coy-eyed-victim way, for gang-rape by the cowardly Yanks in order to convince them to join Crain in his attempt to take over the ship. After that, she's brutally murdered by the Nazi second-in-command to make us hate him even more, but she has to die, because she is not a character, just an animated and doomed plot-device. I have a friend who boycotts movies that use rape as a plot-device, and this one takes some kind of hideous cake in that realm. The point is made: the Yanks are as bad as the Gestapo; no side is better than the other; in war, everyone sucks, reaching for a lowest common denominator. Still, in a script that has been as good as this one, the episode comes off as clumsy and leering and it is a relief, frankly, when she is dead and we can stop worrying about her.

It's such a disturbing interlude, and changes the tone so completely, that one has to reorient oneself entirely for the final battles, which are satisfyingly well-done as long as one is craning one's neck from the proper darkly cynical angle. It's so disturbing that it shed a star in my Netflix rating, even as it made the movie more twisted and complex. I have to admire its boldness, and far be it from me to deny that rapine happens fierce and frequent in wartime, but this one rang devilishly false. Why would sexually brutalizing a girl make soldiers change their minds, which had been firmly made up, about staying out of a battle which would risk their lives? Easy enough to have her then keep safe in their little dungeon. The logic is absurd, and because the crime is so awful, it points to some lurking evil in the heart of the filmmaker. Brrrr. I still shudder from its coldness, thinking on it.

And yet, three days on, the film is still lingering in my head. It's gorgeous in black and white. All those big brown eyes, of Brando and Brynner and Margolin, they're doubly arresting in black-and-white. It's beautifully shot by Conrad Hall with graceful, unobtrusive cameras which serve the story faithfully and make the most of that sometimes cramped shipboard world. The ending is written well and played well, and I think, God help me, that in spite of everything I may have to watch it again.