Reeling Backward: "The Andromeda Strain" (1971)

"The Andromeda Strain" was a procedural show before they had a name for such a thing.

I'm guessing in 1971 it seemed like a fairly tense, purposeful sci-fi drama at a time when such things were still fairly novel. Science fiction had been generally regarded as the plaything of young people -- at least since the early silent film era of "Metropolis" and the like.

Then after Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" in 1968, audiences were again willing to watch serious stories involving lasers, space aliens and the like. (Along with a few acid-droppers.)

Michael Crichton's novel was a huge hit for the doctor-turned-best-selling-author, launching a long run of film adaptations. The story involves an American satellite that has crash-landed in the desert, killing nearly everyone in the tiny town of Piedmont, Ariz. A crack team of scientists discovers that an alien lifeform fell to Earth with it, threatening all human life on the planet.

In a lot of ways, it's the godfather of the "outbreak" disaster movie subgenre -- "28 Days Later," "Contagion," etc.

"Andromeda" was directed by the great Robert Wise from an adaptation by pet screenwriter Nelson Gidding. Wise began as a film editor in the 1930s and directed films spanning seven decades and virtually every genre.

For a "race against the clock" type of movie, it's a rather listless, obstinately paced one. Popular films just had a generally different pace back then, with long establishing shots, pregnant pauses and an observational camera perspective.

By today's standards it's incredibly slow and mired in minutia. There's a sequence that's about 15 minutes long that just involves the scientists making their way down through five levels of a secret underground station, going through various rounds of decontamination and body scanning.

It's completely dead weight, and a modern editor would lop off the entire thing if they were halfway competent.

"Andromeda" is very much dominated by its special effects to an almost fetishistic degree. It was one of the first films to use computerized visual effects, so an astonishing portion of the 130 minutes of screen time involves staring at screens, or watching characters stare at screens. Douglas Trumbull also did the effects for "2001."

Of course it all looks terribly outdated almost a half-century later, with blocky graphics and green-lettered screen readouts. My issue is not so much with the aesthetics of the effects as how much the movies relies on them to propel the story.

Interestingly, "Andromeda" is not set in the future but the present, with contemporary military hardware, clothing, hardware, etc. It's an idealized portrait of a modernistic present, but the present nonetheless. I would very much place it in the "hard" science fiction category, with its emphasis on technology and harsh realities.

Another notable thing about the film is the cast is so, well, normal-looking. It's pretty much all middle-aged actors very much not in the Harrison Ford/Julia Roberts mold. There are ample bellies, receding hairlines and neck wattle galore.

James Olson plays Mark Hall, the brash young surgeon who provides the youthful energy on the team, and even he was in his 40s when the film came out. Arthur Hill is more or less the central characters as Dr. Jeremy Stone, architect of the Wildfire facility designed to deal with extraterrestrial encounters. David Wayne is Charles Dutton, the elder member of the scientist team.

By far the most interesting character is Dr. Ruth Leavitt, payed by Kate Reid. She's the cantankerous, independent-minded researcher who was more or less forcibly drafted to Wildfire when some soldiers with guns showed up at her laboratory. She's also later revealed to have been hiding an epileptic condition, which ends up endangering the mission.

Leavitt was a male character in the novel but Gidding suggested changing it to a woman. Wise was initially hesitant, but in the end was happy with the switcheroo.

The main conflict in the story is between Leavitt and Hall, as their personalities and specialties do not mesh. Even though Leavitt is portrayed as much older, Reid and Olson were actually the exact same age.

It's the "Hollywood Age Differential," in which male and female characters of different generations are played by actors who are contemporaries.

There are two survivors of the Piedmont disaster: Jackson (George Mitchell), a 69-year-old kook who drinks Sterno (a liquid fuel used for campires) to combat his ulcers, and a 6-month-old baby who never stops crying. It turns out these peculiarities rendered them (mostly) immune to the effect of the alien virus.

The extraterrestrials, given the titular code name, are non-sentient green crystalline structures that are constantly growing and mutating, given the right environment... such as the human body. The result is that the blood in the body turns to a powder, which makes for a couple of gruesome autopsy scenes.

Paula Kelly plays Anson, the nurse who assists Hall in the Wildfire infirmary. She's smart and sassy, though not above accepting a little light groping from Mitchell. Both her and Hall have to work in large, clumsy environmental suits.

Another notable aspect of the film is the "odd man hypothesis." Although it's pretty much fictional bunk, the idea is that unmarried men are most likely to carry out dispassionate orders with large-scale effects -- like launching nuclear missiles, for example.

As someone who didn't get married until rather late in life, I'm amused at the notion that bachelors are just assumed to be weird. Tell it to my uncle, who didn't start a family until he was 60. Thus Hall is selected to carry the self-destruct key for the Wildfire station should the contagion break its barriers and threaten the world above. Though in this case the scenario is reversed: a 5-minute countdown is automatically initiated for a small nuclear bomb hidden in the lowest level, and it's Hall's job to turn it off.

This leads to pretty much the only genuine excitement in the film, where he has to clamber through the innards of the facility while dodging lasers and the like. He takes a couple of good shots to the hand and cheek.

I'd been looking forward to catching up with "The Andromeda Strain" for some time, and am sorry to say I was sorely disappointed. Some films stand the test of time, while others give birth to later, superior copycats.

Reeling Backward: "Executive Suite" (1954)

While a fairly typical Golden Age drama in a lot of ways, "Executive Suite" diverged from other Hollywood dramas of the day.

Most notably, it was set inside the top leadership of a national furniture company and focuses on a struggle for power when the enigmatic president suddenly drops dead. That's it. There is no spy intrigue, no murders, not very much sex (or the implication thereof, this still being 1954).

Nope, it's a business story set in a business world.

Hollywood has never liked business settings, then or now. Since few writers or directors came up in the business world, they struggle to find something interesting to tell a story about in a common office setting. Even when creative stories are set at work, they tend to focus on the personalities rather than the actual job, like the TV series "The Office."

Try to think of some modern films that are entirely set in the quotidian workplace, and you'll be hard pressed to name many, especially those that aren't "sexed up" with murdery-mystery elements. "Working Girl," "Glengarry Glen Ross," "9 to 5" and "Michael Clayton" are the only ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

Director Robert Wise also made the interesting choice not to use any musical score or soundtrack of any kind, which was very unusual for the day. The board room proceedings play out in tense silence, which I don't think would've been helped with a ladling of syrupy strings.

"Executive Suite" features the prototypical 'cavalcade of stars' that was popular in that era, particularly from MGM., which had a vast pool of talent to pull from. This includes William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Pidgeon, Fredric March, June Allyson, Paul Douglas, Dean Jagger, Louis Calhern, Shelly Winters and Nina Foch.

In a lot of ways it reminds me of a forbear of "Modern Men," focusing on the men and women carousing the Big Apple corridors of power, often winding up in each other's laps or beds. (Or at least what I know of the show from pop culture, having never seen an episode.)

These great actesses are largely relegated to the role of the wife, the secretary, the jilted mistress, the girlfriend -- or some combination thereof.

Produced by John Houseman (who does not appear), written by Ernest Lehman from a script based on the book by Cameron Hawley, this is defintely a tale of a man's world where the womenfolk populate the fringes of the story.

The president, Avery Bullard, is never actually depicted in the film, other than his body being seen put into an ambulance from afar. The film actually opens with a first-person perspective of Bullard exiting the Wall Street headquarters of the Tredway Corporation, filling out a telegram calling for a board of directors meeting for that Friday evening at 6 o'clock, then keeling over dead from an apparent heart attack.

His wallet, which he'd just used to pay for the telegram, flies out of his hand into a street gutter, where it is pilfered for cash and the ID tossed into a trashcan. So it takes a few hours for the police to identify Bullard.

As it would happen, two people in the Tredway building saw the commotion and identified Bullard: George Caswell (Louis Calhern), a conniving playboy board member, and Julius Steigel (Edgar Stehli), an old hand who would seem to be a lawyer or similar advisor. This sets all sorts of higgledy-piggledy into motion.

The men had just been arguing about Bullard's failure to appoint one of his vice presidents as executive VP, thereby anointing an heir apparent. Julius had waved the need off, pointing out that Bullard was a hale 56 years of age, while he himself is almost 71.

Caswell responds to the death by immediately selling off of as much of his stock as possible, anticipating the price will crash when Bullard's death hits the news. But because of the snafu with the wallet, this happens after the stock market has closed, so on Monday he will either turn a handsome profit or be wiped out.

As the story plays on, we learn the identity of the other executives and the background of Tredway. It seems the company's founder died some years ago leaving it in a lurch, and Bullard was able to turn things around and make it very profitable. But in recent years they've gotten away from their hallmark of well-made furniture in favor of cheap stuff like the new K-H line, which is little more than the DIY pressboard so common today.

Don Walling (William Holden) is a hard-charging young designer who was brought in personally by Bullard five years ago to develop new styles and experiment with more efficient production methods. He's mostly a rolled-up-sleeves type hobnobbing with workers in the factory rather than authoring memos in "the tower," aka the NYC HQ. His wife, Mary (June Allyson), is supportive but assertive, insisting that it's time for him to move on from Tredway.

Frederick Alderson (Walter Pidgeon), the treasurer, would seem to be the obvious pick to succeed Bullard. He's been at the company forever, is appropriately grey-haired with a patrician mien, and yearns for a return to the company's glory days.

However, Alderson is outmaneuvered by Loren Shaw (Fredric March), the controller who sees everything in terms of dollars and cents. He gets to the office before anyone, handles the press, the official statement, even arranges the funeral so it will not interfere with Monday's day shift. Shaw also takes the liberty of releasing the company's stellar earnings report early to mitigate the hit to the stock price.

Of course, this has the effect of underming Caswell's little scheme. The two men hatch an arrangement to transfer some of the company's reserved stock to Caswell to cover his wager in return for his vote to make Shaw the next president.

It's a very subtle, internal performance from the great Fredrick March. He plays a man of quiet ambition who has been licking his chops for the top job for years, and obviously has done the legwork to make it happen. If there were an element of intrigue in this story, I'm sure it would be Shaw who had poisoned Bullard's martini or something.

Shaw's not a bad guy, or certainly he would not see himself as such. He's just a (then) new breed of corporate denizen who believes everything should be about maximizing shareholder dividends rather than thinking about and investing in the future.

After Shaw undercuts Alderson's self-confidence, he feels he's blown his own chance at taking over the corner suite, and withdraws his own candidacy. (This is ludicrous, of course; though surrendering after one minor defeat is probably a good indicator he doesn't possess the mettle for the job.)

Alderson and Walling flail around trying to find somebody else who would be less objectionable than Shaw, but the most obvious choice, manufacturing chief Jesse Grimm (Dean Jagger), had already determined to retire, tired of the company's decline in quality products. They try to tag Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas), the likeable sales VP, but Walling feels he'd do little to halt the company's wayward path.

What they don't know is Shaw has already secured Dudley's vote by subtly blackmailing him over his affair with his secretary, Eva (Shelley Winters). Meanwhile, Walling puts himself forward as an alternative. Alderson is initially hesitant given his age, and likely his own pride, but eventually comes around.

The other major player is Julia Tredway (Stanwyck), daughter of the company founder and owner of the largest share of company stock. It was also a well-known secret that she had carried on a 10-year affair with Bullard, who ultimately rejected her in favor of the company. She's easily manipulated by the men, particularly Shaw.

Stanwyck has one great scene where she's confronted by Walling, and she nearly throws herself off the skycraper balcony. It's not a big part, but Stanwyck makes the most of it.

Foch plays Erica Martin, the president's secretary and keeper of secrets. It's an interesting role, played very close to the vest as the loyal person who carries out orders. She's the one who makes the calls, arranges the meetings, tallies the votes. Shaw tries to press her for dirt on Bullard but is sharply rebuffed.

Foch is in the only peformer in the film to receive an Oscar nomination, which must have stung for all these male thespians wearing their three-piece suits and spouting urgent dialogue. The film also received nods for the cinematography (by George J. Folsey), costumes (Helen Rose) and art direction.

In general I love black-and-white pictures, though I do wish this one had been in color. All the handsome wood board rooms and costumes probably would've looked quite amazing in Technicolor.

An odd egg of a movie that still slides seamlessly into mainstream Hollywood fare of that era, "Executive Suite" is well-acted and undeniably entertaining. Even if business films have hardly ever been a going concern, this one is cinematically profitable.

Reeling Backward: "The Sound of Music" (1965)

Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I find myself having more patience for movies I didn't care for when I was younger.

I've tried on a couple of occasions before to watch "The Sound of Music," and ended up turning it off after just a few minutes. Too cornball, too "old people movie," that fastidiously unironic tone. It seemed hard to reconcile this movie residing during the tumult of the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam war protests, surge of harder music and bolder films, and other massive cultural shifts of the '60s. It seems more a product of the 1930s-1950s.

It's a stubbornly un-hip movie from an era when "cool" became the indispensable cultural attribute.

So I decided to give it another go, if for no other reason than an effort I started a couple of years ago to watch all the remaining Best Picture winners I hadn't seen before. With Oscar season upon us again as I write this, seeing this movie was given a bit of imperative in what has admittedly been a somewhat lackadaisical project.

I still felt that tug of listlessness during the early scenes -- Julie Andrews' iconic twirling on a mountaintop while warbling "The Hills Are Alive," dour nuns who suddenly start singing with tremulous old-lady timbres. But I held on to the point Andrews' earnest nun-to-be, Maria, joins the von Trapp family at their sprawling mansion in Salzburg, and the movie suddenly took off for me, like a bloated beast that sprouts wings and takes to the air with graceful majesty.

Despite its nearly three-hour run time, "The Sound of Music" has very little fat in it. Even the song and dance scenes move along at a brisk pace and never loiter -- unlike another musical Best Picture winner I could name.

I was also struck by how memorable nearly every song in the film is. An adaption of the 1959 stage musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein, it includes tunes like "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," "Maria," "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," "My Favorite Things," "Do-Re-Mi," "The Lonely Goatherd," "So Long, Farewell," "Edelweiss," "Something Good" and "I Have Confidence." Even though I hadn't seen the movie as a child, I grew up hearing and singing these songs.

There's not much to the storyline. Maria is the rebellious sister at the convent, not of out meanspiritedness but an uncrushable desire to laugh, sing and enjoy life. She's sent to be the nanny to the seven von Trapp children as a way to test her faith. She soon takes the children under a maternal wing, and falls in love with their father, the imperious Captain Georg von Trapp, a retired naval commander and widower who is betrothed to a gold-digging baroness (Eleanor Parker).

Things work out and Maria ends up marrying Georg, but not until right after Austria has agreed to be annexed by Nazi Germany. Pressed into service due to his military experience, Georg sneaks his family over the border to Italy.

It's based on a real family, who eventually made their way to America and gained fame as the Trapp Family Singers. Which was ironic, as Georg refused to let his children sing outside the home, considering it common behavior to perform in public. (Though Austria officially banished the nobility in 1919, many like he still carried their unofficial titles and used "von" before their surnames.)

Quite a lot of historical details were changed for the stage production and movie, the most notable being that Maria and Georg married in the 1920s, not during the rise of Nazism. The family lost most of its wealth during the worldwide depression of the 1930s, and did not live nearly so luxuriously as depicted in the movie, with a gated mansion and servants.

And, if the accounts of the surviving children are accurate, Maria was hardly the angelic mother figure depicted by Andrews, being prone to sudden fits of range and melancholy.

Ultimately, it's the performances of Andrews and Christopher Plummer as Georg that propel the movie forward. I was struck by the fact they are actually close in age -- Andrews was 28 and Plummer was 34 when they began shooting the film. Within the context of the story, Maria would be an ingenue while Georg was a middle-aged father of teenagers -- old enough to have retired from a naval career. (The real Georg was close to 50 when they met.)

Andrews had already played in 1964's "Mary Poppins" when director/producer Robert Wise and screenwriter Ernest Lehman were able to view footage of her prior to that film's release. They immediately locked her into a contract because they knew she would become a major star.

Plummer was harder to get, a theater star who repeatedly refused the role because he thought the father character was underdeveloped. They eventually got their man, and Plummer's film career is still spinning along nicely more than 50 years later. Plummer's singing voice was dubbed by Bill Lee, a legendary "playback singer" who achieves a very naturalistic match with Plummer's speaking voice.

Richard Haydn plays "Uncle" Max, a conniving music promoter who apparently spends his day scouring the Austrian countryside for regional singing groups, and scrounging off the beneficence of wealthy hosts. He's partnering with the baroness to fleece Georg via marriage, with even the barest of suggestions the two of them are romantically involved. Still, he's portrayed in a positive light as the charming rapscallion.

Likewise, the baroness, who lies about the state of her own wealth to entice Georg, is redeemed by being the one to recognize his feelings for Maria, and initiating the breakup of their engagement herself.

Ben Wright plays Herr Zeller, the only true villain of the piece, a local official of some sort who leads the Nazification effort. Daniel Truhitte is Rolfe, the telegram delivery boy-cum-Hitler Youth recruit, who dallies with the eldest von Trapp daughter for a time.

The kids are played by, from eldest to youngest, Charmian Carr as Liesl, Nicholas Hammond as Friedrich, Heather Menzies as Louisa, Duane Chase as Kurt, Angela Cartwright as Brigitta, Debbie Turner as Marta and Kym Karath as Gretl.

(Carr was 26 when she played 16-year-old Liesel, showing that the Hollywood trend of having much older actors masquerade as teens is hardly a new phenomenon.)

Shot in beautiful, bold colors by Ted D. McCord (who lost the cinematography Oscar to Freddie Young for "Dr. Zhivago"), "The Sound of Music" has been well-preserved with a number of high-quality video additions and theater re-releases as recently as 2000. More than 50,000 people a year still take the official bus tour visiting the various filming locations around Salzburg.

What struck me most was how emotionally involving the characters and stories are. All the children have distinct personalities despite not getting a lot of individual screen time aside from Liesel. Georg's familial reawakening, in which he joins his children in song after a long period of mourning his late wife, is a real heart-grabber.

Sometimes movies just need time to mature before they're fully appreciated; the same goes for movie critics to appreciate them.

Reeling Backward: "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951)

Honestly, I found it a little slow. And heavy-handed.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" has lived far too long on my list of iconic classic films that I've never seen. The fact that I had watched the awful 2008 remake with Keanu Reeves but not the original weighed on my conscious as someone who purports to be a serious critic.

I can see why many people regard it as one of the most seminal science fiction movies ever made. The special effects, for 1951, were quite extravagant, with the spaceship descending upon the National Mall in Washington D.C. like an angelic discus. Gort, the 8-foot-tall metal(ish) robot who acts as the alien ambassador's personal bodyguard as well as the turn-the-Earth-into-a-cinder failsafe for his mission, is scary enough and imposing.

(Even if his legs do crinkle at the back of the knee like trousers when he walks.)

With a ton of extras, military hardware, scenes of chaos from around the globe, armies of vehicles being moved around, an A-list director in Robert Wise and a musical score by the great Bernard Herrmann, it had the scope of a big-budget spectacle in what is really a B-movie at heart.

Sometimes just being first gets you forever tagged as the best, too. Indeed, "Day" established many of the tropes of science fiction, from Herrmann's use of a theremin to suggest something alien and eerie, to the saucer-like shape of spacecraft. You also have robot sidekicks who frequently pose a threat to humans.

But perhaps its most lasting legacy is as a piece of cautionary propaganda. You may already know the basics of the story: alien ambassador Klaatu (Michael Rennie) comes to Earth to deliver a message of peace, and a warning. But he's shot and wounded by a jittery soldier, and after escaping from the hospital becomes a fugitive from justice.

After slumming around at a boarding house and getting to know some humans, Klaatu warns that the grand federation of peaceful planets are disturbed by humans' development of atomic weapons and missiles, which they see as a threat to their tranquility. Unless mankind chooses to put aside its squabbles and embrace non-violence, they will have no choice but to turn the planet into a smoking ruin.

Most subsequent films and TV shows about humans encountering a more scientifically advanced alien race involve some aspects of this rather paternalistic disposition: "Behave, or you'll be spanked." You can also see it flipped around in the Prime Directive of the Star Trek universe, which essentially treats more primitive cultures as children to be watched over with benevolent neglect.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the philosophy embodied by Klaatu, since it's pretty clear that director Wise and screenwriter Edmund H. North (based on a short story by Harry Bates) enthusiastically agree with the sentiments espoused.

For starters, it's totalitarianism. "Conform to our expectations of behavior or we'll end you" is hardly an example of the exercise of free will. People who are peaceable only because they'll be killed if they aren't haven't really embraced non-violence as a way of life. Rather, the explicit threat of violence against them is what prevents them from expressing their passions, even if it is in negative and destructive ways.

In my experience, people who are forced to bottle up their emotions in one way usually find an awful way to express them in another venue.

I also feel compelled to point out that Klaatu and Gort are rather slippery on the internal logic of their own dictums. Klaatu describes Gort, who fires an energy beam out of his visor that can vaporize anything, as part of an intergalactic police force that enacts the will of the peace-loving planets. He states that this enforcement exists outside of their control, and that once it has begun, they do not have the power to stop it.

Except, of course, that's exactly what happens, when Klaatu instructs a sympathetic human woman (Patricia Neal) to utter the phrase "Klaatu barada nikto" to Gort after he has been killed. Apparently it's a failsafe command that instructs the robot to halt his attacks upon humans and retrieve Klaatu's corpse so it can be revived.

In a late change to the script at the behest of Hollywood censors, Klaatu reveals that his resurrection is to be short-lived, since the ultimate power over life and death is reserved for "the Almighty Spirit." This underlines the suggestion of Klaatu as a Jesus-like figure -- he arises from the dead, but then departs for the heavens. While hiding out he goes by the name of "Carpenter," after the name on the suit he stole, which was the vocation of Christ.

Sam Jaffe has a small but effective role as Professor Jacob Barnhardt, the world's leading scientist who is recruited by Klaatu to present his message to like-minded individuals, since he can't convince the President of the United States or other world leaders to meet with him. (It's never made exactly clear why POTUS won't do this; we're simply told it's "impossible.")

The beginning and end of the film are terrific sci-fi, though the middle section drags badly, with Rennie wandering around with his congenial smile, pulling an "My Alien Father Knows Best" act.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" is one of those Great Movies that assumed its mantle of greatness without ever escaping the fact that it's merely good. The film hasn't aged well, but then again not many of us do.

Reeling Backward: "The Desert Rats" (1953)

"The Desert Rats" is a quasi/sorta sequel to "The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommell" with James Mason reprising his role as the famed German military tactician. I didn't care for the first film, as described in a previous column, but the follow-up is quite a ripping good war picture, as the old-timers are wont to say. (They are also wont to use antediluvian terms, like "wont" and "antediluvian.")

Instead of being a sympathetic, heroic figure, this time Rommel has a supporting role as the arrogant German commander, speaking mostly German and inspiring terror in all those around him. The focus, rather, is on the Australian troops who defied him during the long siege of Tobruk, a turning point in the World War II African front.

The film was directed by Robert Wise, one of Hollywood's most successful genre-hopping directors, and it was just Richard Burton's second American film, released when he was age 27. Burton was one of those actors who always seemed older than he really was -- when I first started watching the film I thought it was made in the mid-1960s, when in fact it came out in '53.

It's not that he appeared prematurely aged, despite his life of hard drinking and smoking; rather, his manly bearing and clipped line readings tended to make him seem more authoritarian and older.

Burton and Mason share one great scene together, where both men are wounded and being treated in a German medical tent, after Burton's character has been captured. Both actors taunt and sneer at each other, a mano-a-mano combat of words by two bloodied but proud men. It's also practically a contest to see which thespian can display better diction.

As far as historic fidelity goes, "The Desert Rats" is a total wipeout. Start out with the fact that the title got its nickname from an entirely different British outfit. In the film the Australian 9th Division holds the seaside base of Tobruk against Rommel for over eight months, allowing time for a newly-formed Allied army to forum up in Egypt and head west to oppose him. The real Aussies began referring to themselves as "the rats of Tobruk" in defiance of German propaganda that labeled them so.

Virtually everything that is depicted, from the personnel to the military tactics, was a fabrication by screenwriter Richard Murphy. The key sequence in which the British commanders allow Rommel's Panzers to penetrate their outer defenses as a trap is a concoction, as is the daring commando raid undertaken to blow up a German ammunition dump. And in actuality, the Australians were withdrawn after five months and the latter portion of the defense held by British troops.

In the best Hollywood tradition, Murphy, having taken a real, dramatic event and made up virtually everything about it for his script, was rewarded with an Oscar nomination.

And he deserved it. "The Desert Rats" is a war adventure, not a historical drama, and its allegiance is to its own semblance of truth, not a factual one.

Burton plays "Tammy" MacRoberts, aka Mac, a British infantryman captain who's given lead of an Australian outfit when their commander buys it. Over the course of the long siege, he is promoted to major and then a field promotion to lieutenant colonel, and placed in charge of several battalions.

The Aussies are naturally distrustful of having a British officer command them, and the resentment grows to near-mutiny level when Mac orders the Australian lieutenant (Charles Tingwell) court-martialed for leaving his post during a barrage to rescue a fellow officer. After getting a talking-to by both an Australian confidante and the British general, he agrees to withdraw the charges.

Eventually, Mac garners the respect of his troops and does them proud. His main access point in this endeavor is Tom Bartlett (Robert Newton), a middle-aged private who turns out to be an old schoolmaster of Mac's. He is deferential to his old teacher, repeatedly referring to him as "sir" despite their wide distance in rank and showing favoritism toward Bartlett in terms of cushy assignments.

Bartlett is an interesting character to have dropped into the middle of a film like this, and despite a fine performance by Newton -- best remembered for playing Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island" -- the character never really quite fits in. A self-confessed drunk, failure and coward, Bartlett moved to Australia to start a new life and enlisted while intoxicated when war broke out.

Near the end Bartlett volunteers for the most dangerous assignment there is, manning the forward sentry post where soldiers last about four hours before being killed. In movies of this sort, it's virtually a requirement that a character such as his die a noble death, but here Bartlett survives and is cheered by his fellow soldiers, becoming the unofficial mascot of their defiance.

As a footnote, I'd like to point out that "Rats" is one of those testosterone-laden movies in which no women have speaking roles, or are even seen. At one point we see a photograph of Mac's wife, as he comments that he's only seen her for a week since they got married in 1939 (the events take place in '41) and he's never met his son.

Wise and Murphy keep the action focused on the men and the military strategy, rather than making the mistake so many war pictures do of bringing in a bunch of mushy romance and secondary plots to distract us. At a crisp 86 minutes, "The Desert Rats" is all business.

Reeling Backward: "The Set-Up" (1949)

"The Set-Up" is as lean and spare as star Robert Ryan's sinewy body.

Ryan, a character actor who occasionally was blessed with leading roles, did not have an ounce of fat on him. He actually seemed to grow thinner as he aged, and by age 60, his rawboned face had sunken in enough to play the regretful Deke Thornton, let out of prison to pursue his old gang of outlaws in "The Wild Bunch."

It was the perfect role for Ryan, who always seemed more comfortable playing characters with some measure of shadow looming across their souls, usually through circumstance rather than choosing. "A good man in a bad spot" is a pretty decent way to sum up his most memorable roles. "Noble loser" is another, and it certainly applies to this boxing picture.

"The Set-Up" was one of director Robert Wise's early efforts, a tightly-wound film noir about an aging boxer desperate for one last score. Midway through his epic bout against a hot young prospect, Stoker Thompson learns that his manager and trainer have sold him out, accepting a mobster's bribe to take a dive without even bothering to cut him in on it.

Tiny (George Tobias), his cynical inkspot of a manager, figures Stoker is sure to lose, so why share part of the $50 bribe with him? "There's no percentage in smartening up a chump," is the gruff justification Tiny provides.

Even Stoker's wife Julie (Audrey Totter) fails to show up for his big fight, sick of the endless life on the road -- picking him up after each fight and patching him up in time for the next slaughter.

So Stoker has, quite literally, no one in his corner. After he takes a hard shot and appears to be down for the count, Tiny and his trainer Gus (Wallace Ford) put their coats on and head for the exits, only to return disappointed when Stoker struggles back to his feet.

But the old man -- he's 35, practically ancient by boxing standards in the 1940s -- still has a strong punch, and knows that all he needs to do is land one good one on Tiger Nelson (Hal Baylor) to turn things his way. What's more, he may be just this side of a stumblebum, but at least he's one who doesn't take a dive.

Things do go his way, and he scores an upset victory through sheer grit and determination. Unfortunately, the mob boss Little Boy (Alan Baxter) doesn't like being double-crossed, and makes Stoker pay for it by smashing his right hand with a brick.

In the last scene, Julie finds her husband staggering through the streets barely conscious. Looking at his mangled hand, their regret and anger turns to relief, as they both realize his boxing days are finished. Whatever their future holds -- good, bad or somewhere in between -- they've escaped the cruel chains of bloodsport.

"The Set-Up" is based on a poem by Joseph Moncure March, although screenwriter Art Cohn changed things around considerably. For starters, the protagonist is African-American in the poem, and is thrown under a subway rather than being merely crippled.

The film is a spare 72 minutes, and several years before "High Noon" was lauded for it, the story unspools in real time. We observe Stoker as he argues with his wife, gets ready for the fight, and interacts with other boxers before their fights. All shoved into one tiny locker room, they range from a total rookie, up-and-comer Luther Hawkins (James Edwards), to punchy wash-up Gunboat Johnson (David Clarke).

The compassionate way Stoker, who still commands some measure of respect from the younger fighters, protects Gunboat from their catcalls indicates his knowledge that a few more wrong ends of a knockout, and he'll be just like Gunboat. There's also a pathetic hulk of a man peddling boxing programs to the crowd who would seem to be a former fighter himself.

"Well, that's the way it is. You're a fighter, you gotta fight," Stoker reasons.

The cinematography by Milton R. Krasner is simply terrific, a slash of shadow and light that informs and comments upon the characters' various shades of morality. Little Boy, a chilling figure of pure malevolence, wears a startlingly white hat.

I do have to say that the boxing action is the weakest part of the film. Wise stages the bout with a lot of kinetic energy -- although, like most Hollywood depictions of the sport, more punches are landed in a half a round than an entire real match.

Beyond that, Ryan doesn't look or move like a boxer. He's continually dipping his head and lunging forward in an ungainly way. Balance is everything to a fighter, and it doesn't stand to reason that a seasoned pro like Stoker would make such rookie mistakes.

The other notable thing about "The Set-Up" is the extremely negative portrayal of the crowd. They're bloodthirsty, of course, and Wise keeps revisiting a dozen or so particular members of the audience, and always in a harsh light. There's the immensely fat man who's chowing down on a different kind of food every time we see him, smiling at the gladiators spilling blood while he engorges himself.

Most affecting is an older woman who was seen reluctantly entering the coliseum at the beginning of the film, making an audacious display of her ladylike revulsion of boxing. She then becomes the most savage witness, even shouting at Stoker to pull himself off the canvas -- not because she thinks he can win, but so his horrible, bloody beating can go on a little longer.

3 stars