All Quiet on the Western Front

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed. 

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) on the Oscar for Best Motion Picture. It remains one of the best dramatic depictions of the horror of war. The opening note states the film is trying “to tell of a generation of men, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.”

The film begins in Germany. It is interesting that the perspective is from the enemy of the allies. It creates understanding that war is horrible to the youth of any country. Here, there is a feeling of patriotism as soldiers march through the streets with cheers from the populace. Professor Kantorek (Arnold Lucy) exhorts his students to be patriotic and wishes that they would enlist to fight for “the fatherland.” That paternal influence carries over as a student imagines coming home in a military uniform. The mother is frightened for her child, while the father smiles with pride. Thus, there is an immediate indictment of men as supporters of warfare. The voiceover from the professor says, “Are your mothers so weak that they cannot send a son to defend the land which gave them birth?” That statement is false, since it is the mother who gave birth, not the country. The film satirically shows the feeling at the time that weakness, not love and compassion, seem to define motherhood.

Other students picture being adored by women and received as heroes. Kantorek, abusing his position to manipulate innocent youths, goes on to say that he believes the war will be quick with not that many casualties. Boy, was he wrong about WWI. As to those that do fall in battle, he translates a Latin phrase that says, “Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.” The film suggests that kind of patriotism is just a rationalization to have young men sacrifice themselves. Although acknowledging that one young man there has the talent to become a great writer, Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres), the professor says that personal ambitions must be sacrificed for the country. And using that propaganda a country seduces many youths into sacrificing themselves for what in the end was no good reason. However, one student, Behn (Walter Rogers) cries, probably realizing the horror of confronting death in war.

The others see Paul as a leader and when he succumbs to the patriotic call, the others ride the wave of peer pressure, saying they will enlist. That pressure even convinces the reluctant Behn to join them. The empty classroom after they leave feels like a graveyard for lost possibilities.

In the barracks the young men are pumped up with adrenalin as they think about participating in battles to come, like school children wanting to play make-believe games. Himmelstoss (John Wray), who used to be the town postman, is now their commander, since he was in the reserves. He bullies the group as he puts them through degrading training. The story shows how power can warp the ego and convince a person that one’s self-importance overshadows all others. He says, “I’ll make soldiers out of you, or I’ll kill you!” The crawling through the mud during their exercises symbolizes how uncivilized one becomes to engage in the savagery of war. Even though the film was released in 1930, Himmelstoss’s regimentation and breaking down individuality are what we see in many films about boot camp (for example, Full Metal Jacket and An Officer and a Gentleman).

Ideas of war being glorious turn to feelings of horror. Bombs go off killing soldiers as Behn feels paralyzed next to the body of one of their fallen comrades. There is chaos as everyone scatters. The older, cynical soldiers laugh when Paul asks about getting some food, since they know it’s in short supply. They must pay for their food with supplies to eat portions of a pig that the forager, Kat Katczinsky (Louis Wolheim), stole from a field station. The film depicts a desperate situation where they must steal from each other to get by. Kat tells the new recruits he wonders what can make them want to enlist, but he is talking from experience.

On an assignment with Kat to set up barbed wire fencing, one of the new soldiers complains about the driving of the truck. Kat says if the soldier breaks his arm in an accident, he gets to go home which is better that getting a “hole in your gut.” Whistling bombs fall and the men duck in fear. The immersion in the reality of combat quashes their religious zeal for fighting.

As bombs fall, Behn sustains injuries. One soldier risks his life to get him to the trenches, but Behn dies. Kat says don’t risk your life for a lost cause, which is basically what war is for its victims. The constant bombing keeps them up at night. When one does sleep, he has a nightmare about the loss of Behn. A couple get hysterical as bombs get closer and Kat knocks them out so they don’t rush from their bunker. Franz Kemmerick (Ben Alexander) later does run outside and is wounded in the stomach. The men are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, which was called “shell shock” back then.

If glory hasn’t already been dispensed with, the bullet holes in a bucket carrying one loaf of bread to feed many and the infestation of rats help dispel ideas of glorious heroism. (Does the one load allude to the need for a miracle to feed a multitude?). The soldiers finally get the call to fight. What they witness is horrific. Bombs and gunfire wipe out soldiers. All that’s left of one soldier are his hands grasping barbed wire. Hand-to-hand combat depicts soldiers using bayonets on each other. Camera angles are from the ground to involve the audience in the horror. For 1930, this film is particularly gruesome showing the devastation of war.

When they get back behind the battle lines a soldier wipes blood off a loaf of bread. Even basic sustenance is contaminated by death. At their camp, because the cook prepared food for twice as many soldiers, but only half survived, there is irony in the fact that they get extra rations, darkly benefitting due to the death of their comrades.

The camera focuses on individual soldiers as they suffer and when they eat, showing them as unique people, not just an indistinct mass of weaponry. As they finish their meal, the men, who have had their fill of dead bodies and now food, finally question the whole existence of war. One says that the people of one country become offended by another. Tjaden (Slim Summerville) says he shouldn’t be there since he is not offended. He says if the Kaiser is back home, why shouldn’t he be? Another says he never met Englishmen before and yet he now is supposed to shoot them. He reasons that many have never met a German. The stress here is that those fighting the war most of the time don’t have any personal reasons for being there, and they were never asked their wishes. One soldier says the orders come from those rulers who want to be “famous. Why, that’s history.” One says, “manufacturers get rich.” Amother soldier sums up the driving force behind those that initiate war, which is selfishness. Kat says that the leaders should be the ones fighting each other, which implies that then there wouldn’t be the loss of so many lives that way.

While the comrades visit Franz, he experiences phantom pain in his foot, and realizes that doctors have amputated it. Mueller (Russell Gleason) asks if he can have Franz’s boots until he realizes how selfish (the force behind war) he is being. After the others leave, Paul tries to comfort the nineteen-year-old after the desensitized doctor says there is nothing to be done. Paul returns to the camp and says that he watched Franz die. His understandable defense mechanism was to run away and seek mental comfort thinking about being in open fields and wanting to be with girls.

Paul has Franz’s boots and Mueller puts them on. He says he doesn’t mind the war with such comfortable footwear. The camera focuses on the boots as Mueller marches with a smile on his face. That look is gone as he sustains wounds. There is no escape from the pain that war brings.

The soldiers have learned the hard way about what they have lost and now yearn for the lives they gave up, such as work, families, and the company of women. Himmelstoss shows up and his former recruits mock him now as self-importance has no place in the trenches. He is in the same boat as the rest of them now and he suffers the same fate on the front lines, getting killed by enemy fire, appropriately in a cemetery.

Paul gets attacked in a foxhole by a French soldier whom he stabs. They are in the ditch together all night, and that closeness to another human casualty makes the war intimate for Paul. He now tries to help the victim he was forced to harm. He says that if they didn’t have to wear the opposing uniforms they could be brothers. After the man dies, Paul seeks forgiveness for what he now considers not justified violence but a crime he was forced to commit.

There is some comic relief for these men (and for the audience) as they bring food and drink for local young women so they can spend time with them. Kat gets drunk, as he distracts an inebriated Tjaden so that Paul and his two fellow soldiers can have the three women to themselves. The film is pretty raunchy for its time as the men earlier bathed in the canal and their naked behinds can be seen. Later, there is a conversation offstage between Paul and the girl Suzanne who are obviously in bed together. Even though he will never see her again, she has helped him shed the horrors of war for the moment, a moment he says he will never forget, which unhappily will not be for long.

Back to harsh reality, Paul is wounded and the cruel facts of the hospital become evident. They move those who are dying or dead quickly to a room next to the morgue for convenience purposes. By doing so they open up a bed for the next victim. They must amputate the leg of Paul’s friend, Alfred Kropp (William Bakewell), and his phantom pain is an echo of what happened to Franz, which points to the awful repetition of war. Paul is discharged but as Alfred remains, he blots out the heads of himself and Paul in a picture, showing how the war has ended his life as he knew it.

As Paul walks in his hometown on furlough, there are images of heartbreak as we see one soldier using crutches to deal with an amputation and there is a boy with what might be his dead father’s uniform and weapons. Paul’s mother is ill which adds to the sadness of the homecoming. A butterfly collection in his home is just a memory that shows how peaceful life used to be. The movie is an early depiction (as we later see in many films, such as Coming Home, and The Hurt Locker) of how a returning soldier is alienated by the average lives of others who do not understand the impact of combat on soldiers. One man at the pub acts like the sacrifice of soldiers is needed and that the food is worse back home, saying there is only the best for the soldiers. He tells this misinformation to Paul who has suffered hunger on the front lines. Men at the pub pull out a map and tell Paul what must be done to claim victory. It is easy for them to plot strategy in the absence of what it is really like in the trenches.

Paul returns to Kantorek’s classroom where the professor still is exhorting youths to believe in the heroic mythology about how grand and patriotic it is to sign up to be soldiers. A reluctant Paul tells them the simple truth: “We live in the trenches out there. We fight. We try not to be killed, but sometimes we are. That’s all.” When the professor tells him not to dwell on the negative, Paul angrily says, “When it comes to dying for your country, it’s better not to die at all.” He says there are millions who die in war “and what good is it?” The point being made is that the cost of war renders nobody a winner. The students don’t want to listen to someone upsetting what they have heard and want to believe. They yell out “coward!” in their naïve ignorance. Paul says he wants to cut his leave short because the pain of seeing how warped are the views of the civilians is more disturbing than being at the front. At least there he knows where he stands, as do the other soldiers.

When Paul returns, he sees more youth there to replace those dying as the circle of death continues. He sees Kat and they speak the truth about how hopeless the war is. When a bomb goes off near them Kat says he broke his shin, but his wounds are worse than he lets on. Paul carries him back to the camp and finds out that Kat died. Kat said he would be the last to go, so his passing is an omen as to the state of the conflict. Paul said Kat was all he had left, so he is now empty of connection to anything.

In a trench, Paul sees a beautiful butterfly. He reaches for it, as if trying to capture some innocence and beauty that was in his childhood. However, death is on the battlefield and an enemy soldier shoots and kills Paul. His outstretched hand, which was seeking an escape. is stopped in the act. The last shot of the film is devastating as young soldiers march off to war with a cemetery and a sea of crosses appearing in the background as if to say that they are heading to their deaths. The thrust here is that it is only quiet on the western front for those in the graveyard.

The Ipcress File

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

There were spy stories on film before the early 1960’s, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock, which leaned toward the seedy side of a secret agent’s life. However, after the James Bond franchise started, the impression then became what a glamorous life spies had, bordering on superhero status. John le Carre’s stories changed the direction back to the grim view, and in 1965 his The Spy Who Came in from the Cold appeared on screen and so did The Ipcress File. The latter, produced by Harry Saltzman, a producer behind many James Bond flicks, presented an anti-hero as the focus of the story, but kept some of the Bond humor. It also jump-started the career of Michael Caine, the first leading man to wear non-dashing eyeglasses.

The movie’s plot centers on the inability of several top British to continue their work. The latest one is named Dr. Radcliffe (Aubrey Richards). He is kidnapped and his bodyguard is killed during the abduction, which happens on a train (trains are good places for intrigue. Think of North by Northwest, Murder on the Orient Express, even the Bond film, Frome Russia with Love). The secret agent boss is the condescending Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman), who recruits Harry Palmer (Caine) to replace the dead agent. Our first view of Harry is when a loud alarm clock rings, like an alert sounding, waking him. We see blurred vision through his myopic eyes which becomes clear after he puts on the eyeglasses. The shot suggests how reality can be distorted by deceptive people until the perception of them becomes clear.

The musical score is adept at mimicking the feeling of something mysterious that ends in climatic notes suggesting revelation. Think of Henry Mancini’s work in Experiment in Terror and Charade.

Harry lives a modest life except for the surprising fact that he is a gourmet who enjoys a cup of freshly ground coffee made in a French press which hints at his special nature which contrasts with his boring current assignment. He occupies a sleazy stakeout room where he reports boring details of his observations. It is quite a contrast to the exotic locales and adrenalin-pumped Bond or Matt Helm adventures. Harry’s wit appears early when his relief shows up and the man expresses disdain for their boss. Harry says he must do some “wiping” because the tape is “still running.”

The first meeting with Colonel Ross is in a shadowy room, which reflects the covert dealings of these operatives. Those shadows persist throughout the film. As IMDb notes, many camera views appear through half-open doors, over shoulders, or through windows or screens to suggest people are spying on others. In this first scene with Ross the camera is aimed upwards. As IMDb notes, it makes the viewers feel as if they are crouching, looking at things from below. That lurking perspective may be to place the audience in the positions of spies themselves, which, of course, is the feeling Hitchcock conveys in his films that stress the audience’s voyeurism.

Ross’s condescending nature is evident as he immediately chastises Harry for not being secretive enough when he doesn’t close the door as he enters. Harry’s wages are pitiful even for the time, and since he is transferring to a promotion, Ross says he will get him a pittance more. Harry says, in a quietly sarcastic way, that he can now get that “infrared grille” he wanted. The squabbling over wages would never appear in a Bond movie, and the conversation grounds the story in what concerns everyday people. Ross says he is transferring Harry to a spot that can make better use of his talents. Later, we see how telling that remark is. The caustic Ross says that Harry’s new boss, Major Dalby (Nigel Greene), does not have Ross’s “sense of humor.” Harry wittily says, “Yes sir. I will miss that sir.”

The interchange between Ross and Dalby conveys much with action and words. Ross thuds his umbrella and an attaché case on Dalby’s desk, implying he’s upset with Dalby’s work. When the Major says he hopes Ross isn’t suggesting that his section was negligent in Dr. Radcliffe’s disappearance, Ross’s response of “There’s no question of that,” can be taken two ways, which fits in with the secretive nature of their work. He adds menace to his conversation when he threatens that if they don’t get Radcliffe back, their superiors may shut Dalby’s office down. He notes that Harry is a bit “insubordinate” but a good man. Ross downplays that aspect of Harry as we see for his own purposes, which, of course, are hidden here.

When Harry meets Dalby for the first time, he again forgets to shut the door. Could that fact suggest that Harry is more transparent and not as devious as his superiors? Ross’s superior attitude is more subtle, but Dalby’s manner is blunt, harshly threatening Harry if he doesn’t toe the line. He reads from Harry’s personnel file, which labels him, “Insubordinate, insolent. A trickster. Perhaps with criminal tendencies.” Dalby admits that the “last quality may be useful.” What does that say about the fine line between the lawful and the unlawful? Dalby makes sure that Harry understands that he reports to Dalby first, not Ross. Other than the fact that Dalby is his immediate superior, why this rule? Is he being secretive within his own organization, or does he suspect Ross of being a traitor?

Instead of the exotic devices that Q supplies Bond, Palmer just gets a different gun and observes some film footage with other agents of the likely man who has the power to kidnap Radcliffe and sell him to the highest bidder. The assignment is to track down the person, Grantby, known as Bluejay (Frank Gatliff), a deceptively benign name, and his second-in-command, Housemartin (Oliver MacGreevy), and let them know the British government wants to buy the scientist back. At the briefing, Harry develops a friendship with Jock Carswell (Gordon Jackson).

The grumpy Alice (Frida Bamford), with a cigarette dangling from her lips which reinforces her sour disposition, is a sort of anti-Moneypenny employee, not lovely or fun. She instead is a bureaucrat, doling out restrictions and forms. Dalby wants his operatives to fill out a field report every time they make an inquiry. It’s not Harry’s style, so instead of getting bogged down in the numerous leads that Dalby issues (deliberate procrastination?), Harry uses a source at Scotland Yard to find Bluejay who showed up at the same place three times for long enough to get parking tickets. It implies that the man could have been doing some business at the location. (The gray, rainy weather is another attempt to de-romanticize the work).

After acquiring Bluejay’s car license number, Harry stakes out the place where the car shows up. Housemartin appears to put more change in the parking meter, and that allows the astute Harry to follow the man into a science museum library. The studious setting contrasts with the intrigue that transpires, although the science part fits what’s happening to the “brain drain” that England is experiencing. After making contact with Bluejay, the man gives Harry a phone number to call later. Harry’s intelligence is on display as he immediately goes to a phone booth and discovers that the number is invalid. When he tries to stop Bluejay outside, he gets into a fight with Housemartin, who escapes and drives his boss away. The camera films the fight through a car window, suggesting the way one spies on others.

On his way back to his place with his foodie goodies, Harry is clever enough to notice the light on in his flat. He has his gun out and the camera gives us a covert shot through a keyhole in keeping with the spy story. Fellow agent Jean Courtney (Sue Lloyed) is there, holding Harry’s automatic pistol. She notes it’s forbidden to use it, and Harry’s sharp response is that his mother gave it to him for Christmas. He quickly realizes that she is on the job, and she admits that Dalby sent her to assess Harry as a new member of the team (which turns out to be a lie). However, it again shows the suspicious nature of the profession. He asks Jean to put on Mozart as he prepares a fine meal, which points to Harry’s refined tastes despite his otherwise unsavory existence. Jean confirms Harry’s “criminal tendencies” by noting while in the military Harry was illegally exploiting the Germans for profit and was caught. Instead of serving a two-year prison sentence, the intelligence service offered a difficult-to-decline stint as a spy. Here, you either go to jail or work in a job for the government. The story does not offer good alternatives.

Harry’s connections note that Housemartin was arrested, but somebody impersonating Harry and Jock pretended to interrogate the man and killed him. Duplicity and murder are part of the goings on here. Housemartin was in possession of electrical equipment in a suitcase, which the killers took with them. Housemartin was apprehended at an abandoned factory. Harry lies (in this profession it obviously comes in handy he realizes) about his authority on the phone and gets a team to join him at the factory. Dalby shows up and Harry justifies his not following the rules because he thinks the missing scientist is there. Whoever was there cleared out. It seems, suspiciously, like others are always one step ahead of Harry. Harry says that if Radcliffe had been there, he would have been “a hero.” Dalby’s curt response is, “He wasn’t. And you’re not.” There is no larger-than-life super heroism going on here, as in Bond or Marvel films. However, Harry does find a piece of audio tape that did not get destroyed in a stove in the factory. It has “IPCRESS” written on it. When they play the tape all they hear is what sounds like strange, distorted sounds.

Ross appears at the grocery store while Harry buys his food. Ross has trouble navigating his shopping cart among the people there, suggesting that his clandestine life causes him to be out of his element when it comes to the average citizen. He is only there to try and get Harry to photograph the IPCRESS file, and to keep his actions secret from Dalby. He threatens Harry with imprisonment if he doesn’t keep the request private. Dalby didn’t want Harry to report any findings to Ross, and now Ross is acting suspiciously, meeting outside of work, and keeping secrets from Dalby. Harry is caught in the middle of questionable activity by two agents who are supposed to be patriotic government workers. What adds to the duplicity is Harry thinks Jean is working for Ross, and she thinks he is still working for Ross. It doesn’t stop them from becoming intimate despite their suspicions.

Dalby has made contact with Bluejay and they meet at an outdoor band concert to discuss the exchange of cash for Radcliffe. Interestingly, Dalby brings Harry with him, which does not seem necessary. The subsequent rendezvous is at a dark underground garage, which fits the secret activity occurring. Both sides carry automatic weapons as cash is counted while a doctor checks out the sedated Radcliffe. The transaction goes smoothly until Harry sees someone lurking in the shadows and opens fire. Dalby discovers Harry has killed an American agent, who was tailing Bluejay. Again, we do not have a flawless protagonist, and the death indicates the danger of a hidden agenda.

Harry becomes Radcliffe’s bodyguard. The scientist seems physically fine but does not remember anything about his abduction. When he is to give a talk about his area of expertise, he begins to repeat the same words over and over while we hear the sounds that were on the tape Harry discovered. So, we know that he has been brainwashed in a sort of The Manchurian Candidate manner. The scientist appeared healthy on the surface but was defective underneath, adding to the theme of appearances being deceptive.

More devious activity occurs when Harry spots a man smoking a pipe tailing him. Turns out the man is also a CIA agent (Thomas Baptiste) who is suspicious of Harry’s killing of one of his comrades. He says he will continue to follow him and if he concludes that Harry is crooked, he will kill him. These men operate outside the law. Dalby and Ross meet, and Dalby said he assigned Harry the task of exacting repayment from Bluejay for the selling of “damaged goods.” Ross believes that Radcliffe fits the pattern of many other scientists who no longer participate in scientific research. Both Dalby and Ross are cold emotionally as they decide to let Harry suffer his fate if the CIA agent decides to kill him.

The pipe-smoking CIA agent sees Harry talking to Bluejay, which makes Harry seem like he is conspiring with a kidnapper. What is on the surface in this film is not what it seems. At the office, Jock has been doing research, and he found something that discusses “Induction of Psychoneurosis by Conditioned Reflex Under Stress.” He prompts Harry to realize that IPCRESS is an acronym for this type of devious mental manipulation that the scientists have experienced.

The next scene finds Jock shot to death while driving Harry’s agency-issued car. Harry tells Jean that he believes the American agent thought it was Harry in the car and shot Jock. Maybe or maybe not, but in any case we have more false appearances. Jean suggests more hiding when she invites Harry to stay at her place for safety purposes. When Harry goes to his place to gather his belongings, it is obviously dark inside, until Harry turns on the light which reveals a deadly reality. The American agent lies dead on the floor. In Hitchcock fashion, someone is falsely setting Harry up as a guilty person.

Back at the office Harry finds that the IPCRESS file is missing. He calls Dalby to meet in person. He doesn’t trust talking on the phone because he knows that things have degenerated to the point that his world is under attack. When he meets Dalby he says Ross probably stole the file because he wanted him to microfilm it. Dalby says he will take care of the body in the apartment, but he will not protect Harry because he is too “hot.” The spy world exists in this film in the underbelly of society where it is callous and perilous.

Since Dalby told Harry to disappear, he plans on taking a train (not a safe place in these films as we have seen). After he leaves Jean’s apartment she calls Ross. We wonder now if even the woman he has become close to is a false ally. Another shot through a window shows a hand clearing the view of Harry on the platform. Danger seems to be lurking behind every supposedly safe corner.

Dalby tells Ross about the dead American agent in Harry’s flat. Ross says that there is a high casualty rate in Dalby’s department, to which Dalby says, “I wonder why?” Again, the sinister acts seem to anticipate Harry’s every move and the implication behind Dalby’s words is that he suspects Ross is behind the nasty business.

As suspected, Harry is abducted from the train. He is rendered unconscious, and when he wakes he finds himself in a cell. He has not been the only victim there because there are scratches on the wall, which suggests that his fate is not a positive one. He pries loose a metal clip from his cot and adds scratches to the wall which indicate he is there for several days. A captor looks through yet another peep hole, adding to the spy motif. Harry experiences cold. He has little food and drink, as he can’t touch the overheated cup in a revolving opening which tempts and then removes sustenance.

Grantby (Bleujay) is there saying they are in his home country of Albania, but at this point, can one trust anything someone says? Harry doesn’t have his glasses, and we see images through his eyes, and the blurring shows a distorted reality.

They don’t let Harry sleep and subject him to the loud, disorienting sound found on the IPCRESS tape. He experiences pulsing videos on all four walls in a room where he is bound in a chair. The purpose is to break his resistance so he will suffer the same fate as the scientists. After the bombarding sounds and images, lulling colors and sounds follow. Bluejay’s hypnotic voice tells Harry to forget about the IPCRESS file, and even his own name. The sense of one’s own identity is at risk in this totalitarian space.

Harry is clever and distracts the conditioning on him by using pain by rubbing his wrist against the leather restraints. They put padding on the restraints, but Harry uses the metal clip he secretly holds in his hand to create pain, an act of deception of his own. However, he can’t maintain his resistance and drops the bloody piece of metal in the conditioning room. Bluejay says when a voice says, “Now listen to me. Listen to me,” he is to obey that voice. Bluejay tries to set up Harry as the fall guy who killed agents and stole the IPCRESS file to be sold to his country’s enemies. Bluejay orders Harry not to remember any of this programming until he hears the voice.

Harry escapes, and in keeping with all the false information in the story, he is in London, not Albania. He calls Dalby. We find that it is Dalby who is the traitor as he has Bluejay with him. For Ross’s sake, Dalby had to pretend (more deception) that he was trying to find out about the problem with the scientists. Dalby tells Harry the triggering words and orders him to call Ross and tell him to meet him at the warehouse where he had been held, which has been abandoned by the IPCRESS team. (There is a red lampshade next to Dalby in this scene. As IMDb points out, Dalby is associated with red in many scenes. Other examples are: in the park, the military band members wear red outfits and play "The Thin Red Line", which Dalby likes; his sports car has a red interior; he stands next to firefighting equipment in the last scene, and there is a red bucket near him when we see he is the villain. Along with his sinister mustache, the film paints him as a devil figure, and red can associate him with the Soviet Union in existence at the time).

 Bluejay said he would have liked more sessions with Harry. So, when Dalby shows up at the warehouse, Harry is not conditioned enough to blindly follow his programming. He suspects Dalby as much as Ross. We see him now spying through an open door while he was the one being observed in the past, indicating that the situation has shifted. It is interesting that he tells Dalby to stand under the light. Yes, he wants to see him, but it also implies wanting to bring the truth out in the open. When Ross shows up, he disarms him and says he knows one of them is a traitor. He discovers that Jean was working for Ross, not Dalby, as we already know.

Dalby then uses the words, “Now listen to me,” and tells him to shoot Ross. Harry wavers, slams his hand against some movie projector equipment (interesting that this shot, in a movie, shows how film can be used for dangerous purposes). This act which breaks the trance, and he then shoots and kills Dalby as the man pulls out a gun. Harry is angry at Ross for using his insubordinate nature to reveal Dalby’s double-agent status. Ross’s response is, “That’s what you’re paid for.” Considering what a small sum that is, we see what little compensation Harry, the working-class spy, must settle for despite the perilous nature of the job.

The Damned

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The Damned (1969), directed by Luchino Visconti, offers us a sort of A Clockwork Orange situation. Visconti sets the story at the time of the rise of Nazism in Germany. He reveals the amoral actions of a corrupt capitalist family which commits murder, child molestation, and rape. When this type of extreme behavior occurs, it invites fascism. Freedom allows for horrendous behavior to take place. If society opts for totalitarian control, there may be order but at the cost of what makes us human, including our emotions and morality.

The film opens with a shot of the steel mill owned by the Essenbecks, a wealthy family that has endured WWI and the following years of economic depression. The steam and fire remind one of the infernal depictions of Hell.

In contrast to the arduous labor of the mill’s workers, there is the lavish setting of the birthday celebration dinner for the company’s leader, Joachim (Albrecht Schoenhals). Herbert (Umberto Orsini), an anti-Nazi, comments that the more they feed the family members, “the more ravenous they become.” He suggests that these rich people are greedy and never satisfied.

There is a shot of Konstantin (Reinhard Kolldehoff), who is pro Third Reich, looking at himself in the mirror with a picture of Hitler attached to the upper left corner along with a swastika. As I have noted often in this blog, mirrors can reflect the darker, or other side, of an individual’s personality. Visconti continues to use mirrors in the film, implying that many here are among the damned.

Visconti uses zooming in and out closeups which create a feeling of distortion, which reflects the unbalanced world we are viewing. In the car. as Friedrich (Dirk Bogarde) approaches the party, he has a discussion with his friend, Aschenbach (Helmut Griem), which reveals the family’s struggle with disliking Hitler, who is Chancellor at this time, and gaining power, and the desire to maintain their business’s superiority. At the estate house, the pictures of Hitler and of the older patriarchs of Germany stress this division. Aschenbach says to Friedrich that there are no moral dictates now in Hitler’s Germany’s, and anything can happen with an elite in control. As we know, that is frightfully true.

The children who perform for their grandfather suggest that Visconti wants to show how these innocents will be corrupted by the adults. We have contrast again when grandnephew Gunther (Renaud Verley) plays a classical piece of music on the cello and then Joachim’s grandson, Martin (Helmut Berger), performs, in Marlene Dietrich drag, a sing that yearns, ironically, for “a real man” in the traditional sense. Even without the costume, Martin wears thin, raised eyebrows that give him a demonic mask-like look. His outsider appearance does not celebrate crossdressing but instead hides a dark pathology.

A terrorist attack, supposedly by Communists, is reported in the middle of Martin’s performance. Herbert thinks Hitler’s minions set the fire to stoke the feeling that outsiders are attacking German nationalism, which will empower Hitler’s agenda. Herbert fears giving power to an authoritarian, like Hitler, while Aschenbach, who is in Hitler’s SS, or Gestapo, loudly stresses the need to quash those who defy those in power. Instead of Herbert, Joachim abandons his ethical stance, business coming first, and makes Konstantin, a SA member, or “brownshirt,” a Hitler goon, his vice-president to prevent Hitler becoming an enemy of the company.

Friedrich is involved with Sophie (Ingrid Thulin), Martin’s mother, and he admits to her in private that Herbert’s conspiracy theory has merit. Friedrich has ambitions to take over the company, and Sophie says she can manipulate Martin to help. The scene is shot in shadows, echoing the devious scheme they are devising, as is much of the film to suggest the darker side of humanity.

Aschenbach, who is like Iago, manipulating people, says to Friedrich and Sophie that soon all The Reich’s enemies will be reduced “to ashes.” Again, there is the reference to fire, and his words may not only refer to infernal flames but are also a foreshadowing of the ovens at the concentration camps. They plan on murdering the anti-Nazi Joachim with Herbert’s gun. Aschenbach says that any trial of Herbert can be dispensed with, since it would just be a formality. When the lawless are in control, there is no protection by the rule of law. (Aschenbach has a beguiling smile, which reminds one of the line from Hamlet that states one may smile though he may be a “villain.” It shows how the shiny surface may be used to hide the darkness below).

Herbert tells Gunther, Konstantin’s son, bullied by his father, that, “It's all over, Gunther. It was everyone's fault, even mine. It does no good to raise one's voice when it's too late, not even to save your soul. The fear of a proletariat revolution, which would've thrown the entire country to the left... was too great, and now we can't defend it any longer! Nazism, Gunther, is our creation. It was born in our factories, nourished with our money!” Herbert is willing to take the blame for a growing proletariat sentiment that has created the reactionary Nazism. He is admitting that the exploitative capitalists started the problems that Germany now faces. He is contemplating fleeing the country, as so many others did. He escapes as the SS come to arrest him for the murder.

Since Martin has the majority of stock holdings, he, under the influence of his mother, appoints Friedrich in charge of the company, outraging Konstantin. Aschenbach wants to make sure the armaments that the steel factory manufactures do not go to the SA since Hiter now wants his personal SS to replace the brownshirts. He uses his influence on the promoted Friedrich to reach this goal. Amid all the turmoil these people are like the gangsters in The Godfather, where business outweighs all other human concerns.

We hear on the radio how the leaders stoke the nationalistic fervor of the citizens. Books by such writers as Helen Keller and Marcel Proust are burned, suppressing any ideas that may question the words of the authoritarian regime.

Martin’s evil nature appears as he plays with the young family girls. We later learn that he most likely molested his young nieces. When he visits the apartment of his girlfriend, Lisa Keller, he ogles the young girl next door as she skips in the street. He gives her a gift when he returns, attempting to groom her. The child realizes it is not appropriate as Martin strokes her arm and puts his head in her lap. She moves away. But Martin persists, later giving her a necklace. She kisses him, probably because her scolding mother has not shown her love. But the guilt she feels after submitting to Martin is so severe that she hangs herself. She is Jewish, so this exploitation of a Jew by a German is symbolic of the Holocaust to come. Martin’s character shows how the worst of humanity rises out of the depths of society as unscrupulous rulers give them free reign.

Intimidation by the powerful causes the college administration to reprimand Gunther because of his communication with the wanted Herbert. The university dean is afraid that the college will be dragged into the persecution that is building in the country.

A chilling scene occurs when Aschenbach shows Sophie the Gestapo's huge room filled with files on German citizens. He says, "These are the most complete archives ever conceived... You see it's not very difficult to enter the lives of people. Every citizen today is potentially one of our informers." The film is saying that when a government dismisses the rights and privacy of citizens, it can gather all the information that exists about people and weaponize it to weed out opponents. Aschenbach said earlier that if a flower, a thing of beauty, was in the way of machinery plowing a field, it must be destroyed. He sees getting rid of people the same way.

Martin is a person of interest in the hanging of the little girl. He hides out in an attic of the family estate. His placement in this Gothic hideaway implies that he is a monster not fit to be part of society.

The local SA has a celebration at a hotel and members voice dissatisfaction with Hitler, probably realizing that their usefulness has been replaced by the Gestapo. They drink and confess their feelings of alienation and loneliness. They eventually have sex with each other. The outward regimentation that was hiding their true selves is literally and figuratively stripped away. It is ironic that they sing extremist songs that demonize “the other” when they, in fact, fit that category. For political reasons and implicitly for their unapproved behavior as dictated by the state, the Gestapo massacres them. Aschenbach makes sure that Friedrich personally kills Konstantin, making the new president of the company pay the price for his business deal with the Third Reich. Visconti, who was gay, depicts those who demonize homosexuality on the surface, and shows victimization of those who hide their sexual preference behind the dictates of society.

Aschenbach uses his knowledge of Martin’s involvement in the death of the girl to recruit him to take down Friedrich because he is becoming independent. As Aschenbach says, he is “beginning to think for himself.” That attitude is not allowed in a totalitarian state. Martin would be next in line to run the company if both Friedrich and Sophie were eliminated. Martin says he “could do anything” with “power.” It is frightening that a psychopath would receive a license to indulge his demented desires.

Friedrich, with the help of Sophie, has attained the position of Baron and so he is her equal and can marry her. At another family dinner Friedrich acts like a dictator himself (once authoritarianism is unleased, it is contagious), ordering those in attendance around. Surprisingly, the exiled Herbert arrives, saying that instead of helping his wife and children escape, Sophie gave them to the authorities, and they went to the concentration camp at Dachau. He knows his gun was used in the murder, but it is obvious he knows that it was Friedrich who committed the crime. His wife perished, and Herbert wants to make a deal, confessing to killing Joachim if they will release his children. Such are the demonic deals made in such an immoral environment.

Martin now carries out Aschenbach’s plan, exposing Friedrich as the killer and his mother as the accomplice. The Gestapo official sees the psychopathic Martin as a good protégé for the Nazi cause, a telling turn that shows where evil gets its army. Martin sits by himself at the head of the empty family table, banging his hand on it, showing his lust for power.

Martin tells his mother that she took everything from him, all power and wealth, and possibly allowing for his proclivities to flourish. He undresses and rips her clothes off. She screams but becomes passive in the sexual assault that Martin executes as retribution. Afterwards she looks at mementos of his childhood, which show an ironic contrast between the innocence of youth and the corruption that followed. Sophie lapses into an almost catatonic state, holding a lock of Martin’s hair she kept when he was young as she reclines on her bed with his drawings as a child, as opposed to him as an adult, at her side. It’s as if that is the way she wants to remember her son, wiping away in her mind what he has become. She is now incapable of helping Friedrich with his defense.

Martin, once just a lone wolf, is now in full Gestapo uniform, showing how the Nazis give official sanction for madness to rule as the state and the psychopath become one. Martin arranges an absurd Nazi wedding, with a huge swastika on display, where Sophie must declare herself belonging to the Aryian race and not subject to any hereditary diseases, which of course, might poison the pure blood of the ruling class. Sophie is so pale she looks already like the ghost she will become. The ceremony is empty of the fervor and passion of the SA gay party. It stands in contrast to that erotic gathering as the Nazis drain all humanity out of lovemaking. Sofie’s wears a fur which depicts two animals kissing, but they are dead. The totalitarian world drains individual intimacy out of humanity for the sake of control. Martin echoes that element as he gives vials of poison To Friedrich and his mother so that they can die instead of having a honeymoon. He then inherits everything, and the Reich can have the power of industry to proceed with its dire plans.

Martin blows out candles as if symbolically extinguishing whatever is left of freedom and gives the bodies of Friedrich and Sophie a Nazi salute, showing how their deaths will lead to the new order. The last shot is the same as the first, with the flames of the factory stressing the hell on earth that has come to pass.