I think it is informative to speculate why this film fails and fails badly. It has great production values, sumptuous photography, classy music (a bit smaltzy for current times but spot on for the 1960s), and a professional cast. Lee Cobb roars, as always, and Paul Lukas and Charles Boyer play their usual European gentlemen quite nicely, and Paul Henreid is heroic. It is based on a wildly successful, classic book which led to an equally successful and admired classic silent movie.
Okay, so far, but why does the film drag along as a meandering story which seldom engages the viewer? The stars are one possibility. A listless Glenn Ford in an anachronistic hat looks bewildered much of the time, as if he stepped onto the set of a different movie. Ingrid Thulin was somehow out of sync. Her lips and the dubbed English were well coordinated, but her expressions and body language were not quite congruent with her lines. Also, what was that sudden, powerful attraction between them? They both looked too old for it to have been pure hormones.
A major problem is the era depicted in this film. The book and silent movie depict the time of the first World War. This purposeless Great War was the result of bumbling leaders who stumbled into a war in which their moronic generals could only slaughter soldiers by the millions. The actual history was not too different from the war in the satire, Duck Soup. No one knew how to either end the war or win it. The book and silent movie tell the story of family members from neutral Argentina who get drawn into this maw of hell. Their fates are roughly parallel to what happened to the world itself during this time. A powerful, moving existential tale.
This 1962 film changes the era to the second World War. This was a war which gave much of the world the option of fighting or becoming a slave or being murdered. In this film one part of the family is in conquered France while the other part is in the barbaric Nazi S.S. No decision to fight or remain neutral is really available. No existential crisis. No credible conflict is evident.Thus, the films winds down to a formulaic heroic (and impossible) ending. At some point, it looks like everyone just wants to quit and go home.
The film tries to tell a story which is out of sync with the time and situation in which it is located. Its lead players do not mesh with the other performers, nor with each other, and look lost. The film is not very good, but the big problem is that it is bewildering to consider how so much talent can go so terribly wrong.
Okay, so far, but why does the film drag along as a meandering story which seldom engages the viewer? The stars are one possibility. A listless Glenn Ford in an anachronistic hat looks bewildered much of the time, as if he stepped onto the set of a different movie. Ingrid Thulin was somehow out of sync. Her lips and the dubbed English were well coordinated, but her expressions and body language were not quite congruent with her lines. Also, what was that sudden, powerful attraction between them? They both looked too old for it to have been pure hormones.
A major problem is the era depicted in this film. The book and silent movie depict the time of the first World War. This purposeless Great War was the result of bumbling leaders who stumbled into a war in which their moronic generals could only slaughter soldiers by the millions. The actual history was not too different from the war in the satire, Duck Soup. No one knew how to either end the war or win it. The book and silent movie tell the story of family members from neutral Argentina who get drawn into this maw of hell. Their fates are roughly parallel to what happened to the world itself during this time. A powerful, moving existential tale.
This 1962 film changes the era to the second World War. This was a war which gave much of the world the option of fighting or becoming a slave or being murdered. In this film one part of the family is in conquered France while the other part is in the barbaric Nazi S.S. No decision to fight or remain neutral is really available. No existential crisis. No credible conflict is evident.Thus, the films winds down to a formulaic heroic (and impossible) ending. At some point, it looks like everyone just wants to quit and go home.
The film tries to tell a story which is out of sync with the time and situation in which it is located. Its lead players do not mesh with the other performers, nor with each other, and look lost. The film is not very good, but the big problem is that it is bewildering to consider how so much talent can go so terribly wrong.