Film Review: Seven Days in May (1964)

This past week saw the latest chapter in the GOP's hysterical attempts to demonize anything Barack Obama says or does. On this occasion they brought in a pinch hitter, Benjamin Netanyahu, who addressed Congress (against all normal protocol) on the dangers of signing a nuclear treaty with Iran. The Republicans cheered and applauded Benjy's every word, and the only thing missing from the event was the ceremonial lighting of torches and sharpening of pitchforks prior to attacking the White House to drive the monster out. Yes, the GOP is now officially one of those peasant mobs in Universal horror movies of the 1930s, with John Boehner in the role of the burgomeister. The Iran fuss follows on the heels of GOP ragefests over immigration, the Affordable Care Act, Benghazi, Obama's birth certificate, and a variety of other issues, both large and small. The common denominator is that the Republicans and the Nazguls at Fox News are convinced that Obama is a crazed muslim marxist who is hellbent on destroying the US of A.

The right-wing's vitriol and fear, both strongly flavored with racism, has been epic, and at several points during Obama's tenure I seriously wondered if a significant minority of Americans who have their hands on the levers of power wouldn't be OK with a coup. I also wondered why no one was rushing to remake Seven Days in May, a thriller about a cabal of Pentagon generals and a right-wing TV news host who conspire to overthrow the government before the President can sign a treaty with the USSR banning all nuclear weapons. Burt Lancaster as Gen. Scott is the head conspirator, Frederic March is the Prez, and Kirk Douglas plays an aide to Scott who uncovers the conspiracy. Probably due to its age, or perhaps because it's story was seen as too far-fetched, Seven Days in May never seems to make any lists of the all-time great conspiracy thrillers. It should. John Frankenheimer was the director, and he's a master at eliciting intense performances from alpha male actors. The discovery of the conspiracy and the President's attempts to derail it are effectively handled, the dialogue is intelligent, and its documentary-style look makes the whole story seem that much more probable.

The film isn't, however, entirely without flaws. A sub-plot involving Gen. Scott's ex-lover and some incriminating love letters could have been pruned, and the documentary look of the film sometimes veers into flat, made-for-TV visuals. Produced at the height of the Cold War, Seven Days in May shows the coup plotters enraged by a policy decision. They have no personal beef with the president, just his plan to scrap nuclear weapons. Contrast that with Obama, whose bitterest opponents have a visceral loathing for him that transcends matters of policy. The remake practically writes itself with Obama's fictional equivalent facing a hostile array of billionaires such as Donald Trump, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers; the combined forces of talk radio and Fox News; and Christian fundamentalist elements in the armed forces. Denzil, are you paying attention? This is your next big role.

Film Review: The Train (1964)

A few months ago director Spike Lee released his list of the 87 films he deems as "essential" viewing for students in his NYU film class. Like any list of this variety there were a few surprises (Kung Fu Hustle?), but it was mostly a pretty sober and conventional inventory of great films. One film that stuck out for me, one that rarely gets a mention on any kind of list, was John Frankenheimer's The Train. Lee has it right; The Train is an example of flawless filmmaking.

John Frankenheimer is the best director to never have been nominated for a Best Director Oscar. Despite making classics like Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, he never got a nod from the Academy. Frankenheimer was a master of directing stories about men butting heads with other men, which isn't to say he was strictly an action movie director. He was equally skilled at showing conflict that was based around ideology, as in Seven Days in May (1964), a political thriller that feels more contemporary with every passing year.

The Train features both action and ideas, and it combines the two brilliantly. Set in August of 1944, the story pits Labiche (Burt Lancaster), a French Resistance fighter, against Von Waldheim (Paul Scofield), a German officer attempting to ferry a trainload of invaluable artworks out of Paris to Germany just ahead of the advancing Allies. Using a combination of sabotage and subterfuge, Labiche delays and finally stops the train. However, each act of sabotage costs dearly in terms of lost lives--Resistance fighters are killed and civilians are shot as reprisals for attacks on the train.

The action elements are superb. Frankenheimer manages the neat trick of making the movement of trains as exciting as the best car chases, and since the film was made in the Jurassic era before CGI, the explosions and train crashes are the real deal and they're all spectacular. And of course any film with Burt Lancaster already has a head start in the action department. He did all his own stunts and did them with an effortless grace that made him the Baryshnikov of action. The real action star here is Frankenheimer. Practically every scene features crowds of extras, moving vehicles, trains, and this is in addition to the main actors going through their paces in the foreground. Frankenheimer's coordination of all these moving parts within scenes is amazing, and gives the film a kinetic energy that very few other films have ever matched.

This is also possibly the most noir war film ever made. The subject of the film is the theft of artistic masterpieces, but the look of the film is enthusiastically, and ironically, grimy. The paintings are glimpsed briefly at the beginning of the film, but after that we see nothing but the smoky, steamy, noisy world of life and work around railway yards. Everyone and everything seems to be permanently coated in coal dust and oil. Adding to the noir tone is the fatalistic attitude of Labiche and his fellow fighters. They perform heroic deeds, but they do it feeling that their efforts are doomed to failure. This is where The Train also becomes a film about conflicting philosophies. Labiche has no taste or interest in art; he's blue collar to the core and his character is as implacable and brutally efficient as the trains he operates. He's also cautious with the idea of risking lives to stop a train with a cargo he sees as having no value. Waldheim cares deeply about the art, despite the fact that it's labelled by Nazi officialdom as "degenerate." His love of art, however, overrides his humanity completely, leading to a climactic scene in which a group of civilian hostages are pointlessly executed as the train is abandoned.  This powerful scene questions whether great art is worth the sacrifice of even one life, and the answer the film gives is an emphatic no. And as exciting as the film has been, the ending is very downbeat and makes the film at once one of the great action films as well as a great anti-war film.

Special mention also has to go to Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield. Lancaster was the most ebullient actor on the planet, but here he dials things way down. His Labiche is taciturn and economical in his actions. In an early scene he walks across a busy railway yard swarming with German troops and he never so much as acknowledges their existence; he simply moves through and around them as though they weren't there. It's a brilliant way of showing his disdain for them and also his subtle caution since he's on his way to a Resistance meeting. Scofield is the fire to Lancaster's ice. His towering, Shakespearean rages as his train is delayed are well worth the price of admission. It's almost as though the two actors realized they had to ramp up their performance level just to stay equal with the quality of the filmmaking.

If you watch The Train on DVD, check out Frankenheimer's director's commentary, which is an excellent blend of anecdote and discussion of filmmaking techniques.