cinema obscura: Carl Foreman's "The Victors" (1963)

George Hamilton (from left), Vince Edwards, Jim Mitchum and George Peppard in "The Victors"

Note: Carl Foreman's anti-war epic from 1963, "The Victors," a lost film, was originally profiled here as a cinema obscura entry on December 6, 2007, in conjunction with a rare screening of the full-length roadshow version on The Military Channel, scheduled for January 19 of the following year. Since then, the film has surfaced in its full version, courtesy of The Film Society of Lincoln Center, on March 1, 2010 and is scheduled for a showing at 3 p.m. on tomorrow (Saturday, August 16) at The Billy Wilder Theater of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.  Is it just possible that, at long last, a DVD release will follow? (Apparently, a DVD has already been released in the UK.) Let's hope so. Below is the original cinema obscura essay and the initial comments posted at that time.

The sole directorial effort of Carl Foreman, the prolific writer and producer, "The Victors" remains one of the most powerful of anti-war films. 

It was one of Columbia's major productions of 1963 - a three-hour (plus intermission) roadshow production for which the studio harbored Oscar fantasies. The studio's other big Oscar bid that year was Otto Preminger's equally sprawling "The Cardinal." But while "The Cardinal" has surfaced on VHS, Laser and DVD, "The Victors" continues to sit on some shelf at Sony.

Neglected.

Shot in widescreen and black-&-white by Christopher Challis and boasting a huge international cast, "The Victors" works essentially as a series of short stories about the various members of an infantry squad as it treks from Sicily to Germany during the final weeks of World War II, crosscutting their interpersonal relationships with those they share with the enemy and with assorted women. Foreman, who wrote his own script, keeps his film big and hulking, while also managing to concentrate on the human interest in his vignettes.

Peter Fonda, for example, pops up as a soldier obsessed with saving a puppy from the ravages of war; Eli Wallach plays a harsh sergeant who has his face blown off in combat;  George Hamilton is a G.I. disillusioned when the woman he falls for becomes a prostitute; and, in the finale, Albert Finney appears as a drunken Russian soldier whose face-to-face encounter with the disgusted Hamilton neatly sums up the insanity of war. (A bit of trivia: Romy Schneider, pictured left, played Hamilton's love interest and, although her name remained in the credits, her role was completely deleted from the film when CBS aired the movie for the first time in the late '60s.)

The best moment in the film, for my money, is the stark sequence when a young American deserter is executed in the snow while Frank Sinatra's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" plays in the background.

There's more, but I haven't been able to see the film in years and it is quickly disappearing from my mind.

As a writer, Foreman worked largely with producer-director Stanley Kramer, penning both including "Home of the Brave" (1949) and "The Men" (1950). His last film in tandem with Kramer would be the Fred Zinnemann-directed "High Noon" (1952), whose release coincided with Foreman's "hostile" testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. His refusal to cooperate ultimately led to his blacklisting.

Foreman would continue to write movies, using assorted pseudonyms (including Derek Frye) and often without taking credit at all. It was pretty much known that he wrote the screenplay for David Lean's 1957 Oscar-winning "The Bridge on the River Kwai," although credit would go to Pierre Boule, the French author who wrote the novel upon which "Kawi" was based. Boule subsequently took home the Oscar for Best Screenplay, although the Academy would honor Foreman for his contribution in 1985, following his death from brain cancer the year before.

As a producer, Forman was responsible for such fine films as "Born Free," "Young Winston" and, best of all, John Dexter's 1970 "The Virgin Soldiers," another vivid (and lost) anti-war film starring Hywell Bennett (and whatever happened to him?), Lynn Redgrave and Nigel Davenport.

But, for me,"The Victors" remains his towering achievement.

Alert! "At Long Last Love" and "The Victors" sightings

Two lost films recently showcased here have been sighted...

Peter Bogdanovich's brilliant and criminally misunderstood film musical, "At Long Last Love," profiled here last May, has been plucked out of movie purgatory by San Francisco-based film buff Jesse Hawthore Ficks for a one-time showing at S.F.'s legendary Castro Theater at 7:30 p.m., Friday, December 7th.

The long-neglected film - Fox never bothered to issue it on home enterainment in any format - is part of a Burt Reynolds evening at the Castro, which will also include Reynold's other film musical, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" (1982), also underrated; "Smoky & The Bandit," which gets a midnite screening, and scores of trailers from other Reynolds films.

Last May, I wrote of "ALLL": "Bogdanovich was arguably at his most creative on this movie, filming it in color but designing it largely in black-and-white, so that the only colors in the film are his actors' skin tones. He also enlisted his cast of game, nonprofessional singers to perform their songs live, every one of them, and despite the hasty assumptions that were made at the time of the film's release, the singing is fine here - more than fine actually, given that Shepherd, Kahn and Del Prete all sport trained voices, while Reynolds affects a soothing Dean Martin-style croon.

"To complement the stress-free singing, choreographer Rita Abrams kept her dance routines light and easy-going. The result is that the dancing here has the off-the-cuff, scratch-pad casualness of the in-between numbers in the Astaire-Rogers films. The film doesn't feel choreographed."

For more information, check out Fick's terrific site, Midnites for Maniacs (www.midniteformaniacs.com)

* * *
In an August 29th essay, I profiled Carl Foreman's missing war epic from 1963,"The Victors."

The film will be televised on the Military Channel on January 19th. Hopefully, the three-hour epic, once considered a major film by its studio, Columbia, and now all but abandoned, will not be cut for broadcast.


(Artwork: Poster art for Peter Bogdanovich's "At Long Last Love" and Carl Foreman's "The Victors")

representation

Ben Mankiewicz was diplomatic, as he always is.

Last night, he screened "West Side Story" as part of TCM's "The Essentials." The film was picked by his charming co-host, filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who teased us by saying it is one of her two favorite movies.

"No one wants to see Natalie Wood in brownface, but what do you think of her performance?," Ben asked at the top of the post-screening discussion. "Gorgeous!," a beaming Ava proclaimed.

This was in preamble to a brief conversation about Hollywood's bottom-line decision to cast white performers as people of color because, as Ben summed it up, "We gotta sell this movie." Sixty-eight years ago, MGM cast Ava Gardner as Julie in "Show Boat" when Lena Horne was under contract. Go figure.

But it is Natalie Wood who, since the 1961 release of "West Side Story," remains The Official Poster Child of Misguided Casting, despite the strength and sincerity of her performance in the film.

It's too bad that Mankiewicz's chat with DuVernay was limited to about five minutes because there are other issues about "West Side Story" that have never been considered and could use some scrutiny. First, It's worth noting that a precedent of casting a white actress to play Maria was set by the original 1957 stage production, which starred Carol Lawrence in the role and, frankly, no one noticed and certainly no one cared enough to comment or complain. But, fair or unfair, film is somehow different, largely because of the camera's eye with its uncanny ability to magnify images a thousand times over.

A quick aside... None of the stars of the original Broadway version were considered for the film (just a few of the dancers). Only Michael Callen - billed as Mickey Calin when he created the role of Riff, leader of the Jets, on stage - ended up with a movie contract in 1959. But it was with Columbia Pictures, not United Artists which released WSS. Columbia put Callen in such titles as "Pepe," "The Interns," "Gidget Goes Hawaiian" and "The Victors." It was Russ Tamblyn who was cast as Riff in the movie.

And if Natalie Wood was "miscast" because she was white, then so was George Chakiris who plays her brother Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, in the film. Like Wood, Charkiris is decidedly not Puerto Rican. He is the son of Greek immigrants and also went brownface for the movie. Unlike Wood, however, his casting in the movie has never been questoned. Ironically, Chakiris played the role of Riff in the 1958 London production of the show.

Then there's the close proximity of another major 1961 movie musical at the time. Universal's "Flower Drum Song" was released almost in tandem with "West Side Story" and it is difficult not to notice the difference in casting choices. The leading roles in "Flower Drum Song," produced by Ross Hunter, were cast with Asian actors (both Chinese and Japanese), a truly enlightened move at the time. The original 1958 stage version?

Not so much.

Composer Richard Rodgers, speaking strictly as a Caucasian, had been quoted saying that "what was important was that the actors gave the illusion of being Chinese." He said this because of the difficulty of casting the role of Sammy Fong. Larry Storch played it during the Boston tryout but Larry Blyden took over the role when it opened on Broadway.

Storch and Blyden - two white men.

Hunter and director Henry Koster wisely cast Jack Soo for the movie version. (Soo, who had played another role in the Broadway production, succeeded Blyden as Fong and played Fong in the national touring company of the show.)

If "West Side Story" can be criticized for anything, it's not for the casting of Natalie Wood but rather for the cringe-inducing stereotypical performances that director Robert Wise coaxed out of the actors who play Puerto Ricans in the film, the various performers who were cast as the Sharks and their women, including the film's two Oscar winners, Rita Moreno and Chakiris.

Actually, it's almost cartoon-like, something jarring for a work that has congratulated itself for five decades now for being a "serious musical."

Perhaps, Steven Spielberg, working with scenarist Tony Kushner, will get it right with his planned remake. He's already cast a Latina as Maria.

That said, Mankiewicz' discourse with DuVernay is a good start that will lead, hopefully, to lengthier discussions, especially since so many of the classic musicals on TCM routinely include blackface sequences featuring the likes of Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire and Dennis Morgan.

Once enjoyable, they are now something of head-scratchers: "What on earth were they thinking?" Or maybe for other decision-makers - "artists" like Richard Rodgers - only illusion really matters. At one time, at least.

click on photo to enlarge

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~images~
(from top) 

~Natalie Wood performing a dance created for her by Jerome Robbins for the film version of "West Side Story" 
~photography: United Artists 1961©

~TCM host Ben Mankiewicz
~photography: Turner Classic Movies 2018©

~Filmmaker Ava DuVernay

~Rita Moreno and Wood in the "A Boy Like That"/"I Have a Love" duet in the film
~photography: United Artists 1961©

~Chita Rivera and Carol Lawrence performing the same duet in the stage version 
~photography: Friedman-Abeles 1957©

~The cast of the film of "Flower Drum Song" - Jack Soo, Nancy Kwan, Miyoshi Umeki and James Shigeta
~photography: Universal-International 1961©

~Natalie Wood in a publicity photo announcing her casting in "West Side Story." She's holding a copy of the song score autographed by Leonard Bernstein
~photography: United Artists 1960©

tribalism

Given that the notion of independent thinking is dead in Hollywood, not only are its films generally a bore, but so are the assorted award shows that bestow usually undeserved laurels upon them.

The last in the line of the Big Statuette Giveaways is, of course, the annual Oscarcast - the biggest company picnic ever. And the general feeling is that all the other piddling award presentations that precede it have effectively watered down its importance. Probably. But what about the utter predictablity of the modern awards process in general?

Even before the nominations were announced this year, it had become (rather painfully) apparent that 2011's Oscar victors would be Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Melissa Leo and, if the Weinsteins have their way (and they probably will), "The King's Speech." No contest. Yawn.

Exacerbating matters is the news that this year's Oscarcast will be hosted by the ubiquitous (and oddly unappealing) James Franco and bland Anne Hathaway who, I sense, will work hard at being "cute" and witty.

I'll pass.