I remember hearing about this movie in the 70s, but it seemed to be relegated to adult fare that wasn't appropriate for me as a child. This came up, as I recall, in the television programs that I remember watching. It certainly wasn't among the film staples viewed by my parents who were living in their own cultural bubble, pining desperately for the Mexico they had left behind and dragging us unwillingly to see Cantinflas movies, that babbling rural bumpkin who was already old-fashioned back then but who evoked all that was most quintessentially Mexican. My dad used to howl when watching those movies, and we, his children, marvelled and were a little afraid at his transformation.
This movie highlighted a trope that was much in evidence in the 70s, and that was the theme of the escaped Nazi as villain. It was still fashionable to continue to relive the drama of World War Two, but now transmuted to more modern times, in which the relics of that regime were said to have somehow survived and were staging a resurgence. We saw it in other movies as well, such as "The Boys from Brazil", and it seemed to be an enduring theme. Nazis seemed to figure large in popular culture, and in my memories as well of the kitsch in my cousin Tony's bedroom. He used to keep a glazed clay sculpture of a skull wearing a helmet with a swastika. It seems they were popular momentos bought in Tijuana as people waited to reenter the United States.
The ending was very much in evidence. The Nazi character would be cornered and defeated in the end, and some measure of retribution would be enacted. The only problem was that this ending rang false. It seemed as if it was too trite and predictable, as if the Dustin Hoffman character (Babe) had not undergone any form of permanent change as a result of having been tortured. It hardly falls into our expectations of what this form of treatment entails. Pain changes personalities, and this was part of the central affirmation of William Goldman's novel. Originally, as explained in the short documentary that accompanied the DVD, the story ended with the hero sadistically disposing of the villain, killing him outright. It was changed to suit different considerations, among them the unwillingness of Hoffmann to have his character undergo that transformation. Goldman explains that he accepted the change, in which the Nazi ends up impaling himself with the knife as he falls down some steps. However, he seems ambivalent, as if he might secretly have regretted this. I certainly did, because the change didn't conform to what I imagined might have been the true consequences of such an experience. It felt dishonest.
We speak of torture in a light way, and this only goes to show that very few of us (fortunately) have any experience with it. Torture plays on our worse fears and highlights precisely how tied we are to our material selves, and how we are unable to escape our bodies. Pain is insistent and unbearable, and as manifested in a movie such as this one, in which the Nazi, a former dentist, cuts away into the nerves of the hero's mouth, it is hardly to be imagined. Although the torture seems somehow muted in this film, however unsettling it may have been for audiences in the 70s. There have been much more gruesome depictions in more contemporary films, such as the Japanese classic "Ichi the Killer", in which slices of an unfortunate man's skin and other assorted body parts are slowly snipped away, and a vat of boiling oil is poured on his naked, suspended back. I found that film much too difficult to watch, and had to return it without finishing it.
The villains evolve and conform to several prototypes. We had the savage and barbaric Mexican in several old Westerns, and then, of course, the Nazis and the inscrutable and implacable Soviets. We've had drug dealers and Communists and Russian nationalist as well as Middle Eastern terrorists. We've also had corporate thugs of various stripes. They seem to be generated in response to a certain zeitgeist that finds it easy to personify villains as examples of a deranged, damaged personalities. As if we could exculpate much less personalized institutional factors, such as the economic, political and cultural processes. If structuralists proclaimed the death of the author, wouldn't a necessary corollary be as well the death of the villain? There are much more fundamental underlying processes at work.
And yet it was satisfying at that time to be able to neatly rely on certain types to fulfill the role of villain. And Laurence Olivier did make a convincing, sinister and satifying villain. It is a tribute to his mastery of the craft of acting. Another master of this craft, Dustin Hoffmann, didn't acquit himself nearly as well in this film.
I enjoyed the film but, ultimately, it was ephemeral. It may seem unusual to confess this but, as I viewed the scenes in which the hero jogged around the bay and viewed the New York skyline, I found myself reflecting that this was the period in which John Lennon had chosen to withdraw and lead a private life. And this brought to the fore all the sadness as well as nostalgia I felt for this seminal artist and for the life he led. The New York skyline and the look of 70s films will always bring this out, whatever the genre of the film I am watching.
My obsession continues with the 70s.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2011
Copyrights ORomero 2011
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