Reeling Backward: "Morituri" (1965)

"Morituri" wasn't very commercially or critically successful. If it wasn't done in by its title -- Latin for "those who are about to die" -- then the clunky plotting in the film's second half did the trick. It starts out as an interesting and cerebral WWII espionage thriller, with Marlon Brando playing a charming scoundrel, and devolves into a confusing tale of mutiny and sexual intrigue aboard a German cargo ship carrying 7,000 tons of rubber.

Why rubber? According to the haughty British colonel played by Trevor Howard -- aren't all cinematic English military men puffed-up prigs? -- that much rubber will keep German army vehicles rolling across Europe for several more months. Without it, their control over Europe slips, so the fate of the entire war rests upon the decks of the aged ship Ingo.

(Have you ever noticed that in most war flicks, "the fate of the entire war" often rests on the people and events depicted in the movie?)

The Allies don't just want to sink the ship as it makes its way from Tokyo to occupied France, but capture it for themselves. To this end they recruit Robert Crain (Brando), a wealthy German military deserter living in luxury in Australia. He's blackmailed into posing as a Gestapo officer ("standard leader") and placed aboard the ship as a passenger. His mission is to disable the explosive charges used to scuttle the ship, so when the Ingo enters into an Allied trap in the middle of the Pacific, the precious cargo won't be lost.

The best and most interesting sequence of the movie is when Crain, now redubbed as Mr. Kyle, first boards the ship and must navigate the various personalities and power intrigues going on. Brando is a treat, playing a sly man of refined manners who must pretend there is a great, evil resolve underneath. Of course, he really is highly motivated, but not to the end anyone thinks.

The captain, Mueller, is played by Yul Brynner, who isn't too keen about having an SS man spying on his operations. Mueller's last cruise ended with his ship getting torpedoed while he was inebriated (medical treatment for an infected jaw, according to the official report). The Ingo represents his last chance to get back in the Third Reich's good graces -- something he desires mostly for the benefit of his family, especially his son, the commander of a destroyer operating in the Atlantic.

Mueller and "Kyle" clash immediately, with the captain restricting the Gestapo man's movements around the ship -- sure to put a crimp in his sabotaging style. So he enlists the aid of the first mate, Kruse (Martin Benrath), a fervid ideologist who believes he should've been given command of the ship anyway.

Things get shakier the further we go. Turns out there are plenty of political prisoners and criminals amongst the crew, who are being shipped back to the Fatherland to face their fate in one of those "all the rotten apples in a single barrel" strategies that only exist in the movies, and always seem to backfire. Soon Kyle is recruiting support from them for a mutiny, including Monkeyman (Hans Christian Blech), a blond tough who has a pet bird.

And then it just gets weird. Just as Kyle has managed to alert a British destroyer to the fact that the Ingo has been disguised to look like one of their own, a German submarine blows it out of the water. The U-boat is commanded by an admiral for some reason -- fleet officers don't generally limit themselves to a single vessel -- who is immediately suspicious of the purported SS agent aboard.

Meanwhile, they drop off the survivors of a passenger ship they previously torpedoed -- which is pretty unlikely; as we know from "Das Boot," there's barely enough room on a WWII submarine for the crew, let alone prisoners -- aboard the Ingo. Among them is a Esther (Janet Margolin), a Jewess and self-described "anti-German" who is none too pleased about her fate.

Captain Mueller offers to help the girl and advises her to hide her Jewish heritage, but instead she throws it in the face of Kyle (thinking him a loyal Gestapo man), Kruse and everyone else. She also offers to sleep with Mueller, tells her loutish fellow Americans she's open to a gang rape, and relates a tale to Kyle about being forced to have sex with her brother while others watch. I have no idea what this material is doing in the movie, but it brings the proceedings to a cold stop.

Director  Bernhard Wicki and screenwriter Daniel Taradash were somewhat limited in adapting the novel by Werner Jörg Lüddecke, which contains this and many other ludicrous elements. (For starters -- why disguise Crain as a high-profile SS agent, instead of just a meathead member of the regular crew?) After the film performed poorly, the studio tried to re-title it as "The Saboteur," but it didn't help things.

When the ship gets to sinking, Wicki -- perhaps limited by his production budget? -- doesn't bother with special effects. He simply tilts his camera so it looks as if the Ingo is listing. But you can clearly see that the waterline of the ship hasn't changed. 

Aside from the chintzy camera tricks, "Morituri" is a nice-looking film -- evidenced by its Oscar nominations for black-and-white cinematography and costume design. And Brando is charismatic and compelling as a man stuck in circumstances he doesn't really want trying to do the best he can. But the cranky plot sinks this cinematic ship.

Reeling Backward: "The Bedford Incident" (1965)

Here's something that occasionally happens, and I'm not sure if it speaks well or ill of me. I'll start watching a movie, usually a classic one, that I think I've never seen. After a while -- sometimes as much as halfway through -- I'll start to realize that I have watched it before, and somehow banished the experience from memory.

Usually, of course, that means that I didn't particularly appreciate the movie the first time around, otherwise it would have stuck in the mind.

That was my experience with "The Bedford Incident," a 1965 Cold War cautionary tale that warns against the dangers of deterrence and mutually assured destruction, the two principles that largely guided U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and its other adversaries. An overly aggressive destroyer captain played by Richard Widmark pushes an enemy sub into a desperate situation where nuclear weapons are eventually unleashed, and everyone on both vessels are killed.

This line of argument is what's known in Latin as reductio ad absurdum, i.e. an attempt to show a line of thinking is faulty by following its implications to an absurd conclusion. It's generally a silly exercise that proves very little, other than presupposing some exceedingly unlikely outcomes.

Captain Eric Finlander (Widmark) clearly is supposed to be a modern Ahab, chasing his white whale with obsessive zeal. Of course, one doesn't generally rise far in the military by repeatedly disobeying orders and bending the rules, but that's exactly the sort of commander Finlander is. Recently passed over for promotion to admiral, we wonder how he ever made it past ensign.

"Bedford" is based on a book by Mark Rascovich, with a screenplay by James Poe. This was the first directorial credit for James B. Harris, who had been Stanley Kubrick's producer for a number of years before they had a falling out. Kubrick would go on to make "Dr. Strangelove" in 1964, an absurdist comedy with similar themes about the Cold War.

If you've never seen "Fail-Safe," you should check it out. It's a virtual carbon copy of the plot of "Strangelove," about a rogue plane erroneously sent on a mission to drop a nuclear bomb on Russia, and the American president must decide whether to shoot down its own plane. Except, of course, it's a straight, dour drama.

"Bedford" is a close cousin to "Fail-Safe," and about as effective in a stodgy sort of way. It's notable for Widmark's performance as a twisted man who sees himself as heroic, a bully who squashes other in the name of duty. In terms of dramatic tension, though, it's something of a bust.

The film starts with the arrival of two people on the U.S.S. Bedord: the new ship's doctor, Chester Potter (Martin Balsam), a long-retired reservist recalled to active duty; and Ben Munceford (Sidney Poitier), a famous newsmagazine journalist. Potter is excited about returning to ship duty, but it's soon quashed by the indifference and contempt of Finlander, who sees no purpose in even having a doctor aboard his ship. After all, his men are too cowed to ever report to sick call, and the aluminum construction of the Bedford makes it unlikely to survive long in a firefight, anyway.

The role of Munceford in the story is hard to fathom. Given the star power of Poitier in 1965, one would think he's set up as the protagonist with Widmark as the heavy. In execution, though, Munceford is a rather passive character who mostly just hangs around in the background, snapping photographs and taking notes. He and Finlander have a couple of blow-ups early in the movie, then an "interview" that's fairly adversarial. But most of the time, he's below decks or out of sight and mind.

Finlander rarely lets his guard down, and rides his men hard. He's particularly brutal toward Ensign Ralston (James MacArthur), a green young officer who was a star athlete. Finlander believes he must be chopped down to size in order to improve, but ends up turning the kid into a quivering mistake waiting to happen. Indeed, Ralston dooms them all while working the weapons control and mistakenly hears Finlander order him to "fire one."

Strangely, the one seaman whom Finlander does appear to coddle is a nerdy, skittish type named Queffle (Wally Cox) who's his best sonarman. Queffle expertly tracks the Russian sub for 24 hours straight, until his brain finally overloads and he has to be taken to sick bay.

Also notable is Eric Portman as Wolfgang Schrepke, a German WWII U-boat commander who's aboard as an adviser to Finlander, who clearly regards him with some level of hero worship. He acts as the captain's Svengali, whispering in his ear and attempting (unsuccessfully) to moderate his thinking and actions.

I'm not sure why "The Bedford Incident" did not make an impression on me the first time I saw it. It's a well-acted drama that's never really dull, even if it feels utterly predictable. Still, Widmark's a treat in his role, so lovably hateable.

2.5 stars out of four