Trains, Nazis, More Trains, Murders

The thing that sticks with my from Crossfire is Robert Ryan's character grabbing his buddy Floyd by the throat and nearly throttling him while snarling 'No stinking Jew's gonna tell me how to drink his liquor!' I picture Samuels, the Jew in question, chastising Ryan for gulping down cognac, telling him he must swirl it first, the savor the aroma, then drink a small amount, and Ryan growing furious, then killing him.

Crossfire is supposedly the first Hollywood film to directly address anti-Semitism, and in some cases, it does that well, when Ryan's character makes an offhand remark about guys who skipped out on fighting in the war, making money and living in their fancy apartments. How some of them are named Samuels, and others got 'funny' names. Other times it goes for hammering the point home, as when Captain Finely (played by Robert Young) makes a speech about it to Leroy, to convince the kid from Tennessee to help them trip Ryan up.

It's an interesting film, moves quickly, though I'm not sure why Finley seems so willing to open up to Robert Mitchum's character about the case (Mitchum, like Ryan and Mitchell, the young man originally suspected of the murder, are soldiers). There's a sequence where Mitchell wakes up in the apartment of a woman he met at a club. she'd given him the key, but isn't there. He's confused and hung over, and then another man enters. First he says he's Ginny's husband, then that he's not her husband, but he loves her madly. Then that he's like Mitchell, just a man she met at the dance hall, who is gonna pay for the privilege of sleeping with her. In any event, he was so eerily calm, and knew his way around the apartment so well, I was thought it was a surreal dream Mitchell was having, reflecting his depression over being distant from his wife and the war.

Train starred Burt Lancaster as a yardman in a Paris rail station. He's also a member of the Resistance, albeit one who has no interest in risking his neck to stop the Nazis from shipping crates of French art back to Berlin. Then a father figure of his dies trying to do just that, for 'the glory of France', and LeBiche (Lancaster) is in. He and many other Resistance members pull off a rather impressive trick to get the train right back where it started, even wrecking the engine in the process. But they underestimate the German colonel in charge, who is obsessed with the art, and eventually it's down to LeBiche to stop the train on his own. Not because he really cares about the art, but because all his friends did care enough to die for it, and he'll do it for them. I think the fact the colonel is a murdering scumbag played a role as well. LeBiche is not going to let that guy win.

That he carried it out for his friends helped me invest in the movie, because the idea of dying for paintings, or the ideal they represent, doesn't hold any appeal to me. Mostly because it seems to me people who encourage others to do so, aren't putting their own lives on the line. They send those others to die in their place. Case in point, after the big trick fails to deter the Colonel, this reisistance cell leader arrives and tells LeBiche and his friend that no, they can't blow up the train with plastique. London wants the train and art spared, so instead they will sneak up to this now heavily guarded train and paint the top of the cars white, so the bombers will know to leave it alone. The resistance leader then waddles away in the night, leaving the painting and dying to LeBiche and his friends.

It's about 130 minutes, but it zips along, with a lot of tense scenes as the Resistance tries to put their plans into action under the not-nearly-watchful enough eyes of the Nazis.

Dark of the Sun I'll pass on discussing, except to say I thought the end of the movie didn't fit with what was established up to that point, and seemed dark and depressing mostly for the sake of being dark and depressing.