The Night of The Generals [DVD]

Nominally a detective story spanning decades, this story will appeal to all those who enjoy terrific acting and period detail (the period here being WW II, Warsaw 1942 and Paris 1944). However, be warned it takes some stamina to make it through the meandering and overlong plot.

A truly star-studded cast seemingly stolen from the best of David Lean movies (Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Tom Courtenay) complemented by Maurice Jarre's music, make this look like it should be more epic. Truth be told the story is rather more intimate. Sharif is Major Grau in Intelligence, who investigates the murder of a Polish prostitute, killed in a savage manner. The sole witness saw only that it was a German general. Only 3 generals did not have alibis, and Major Grau tries to flush the guilty one out, intent on justice. The story goes on to Paris some years later, where another murder occurs when all 3 generals are in town, and finishes in an overlong coda at the end when the murderer is finally brought to justice. The Generals are equally convincingly played by Charles Gray (Blofeld from `Diamonds are Forever'), Donald Pleasance and of course Peter O'Toole when he was a mesmerising presence on screen.

The theme is evident in Major Grau's ironic observation that `..what is admirable on the large scale is monstrous on the small.' Just because a man kills many as a soldier, does this give him a right to kill one innocent and get away with it? Grau's conviction is that the general is confident his title protects him, and is determined (at risk of his career and in fact life) not just to bring justice, but to show him he is not God. Surely the idea is still topical - when war and killing occur on a large scale, it certainly does not mean that justice should be ignored on even the small scale. Perhaps the idea is a peculiarly European one, as evidenced by this being a Franco-English production, and failure at the time at the box office.

The whodunnit becomes clear fairly early in the movie, and the middle third of the movie overwhelmed by the plot to kill Hitler - a murder which threatens to overshadow the finding of a murderer. So we're left therefore with a long and winding road to the finish line, but worth the stroll to take in some of the finest actors of the 60's in their prime, and a literate and thought provoking script.

Much derided on its initial release despire reuniting the Lawrence of Arabia team of Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif (who share little screen time) and producer Sam Spiegel, Anatole Litvak's The Night of the Generals is a different kind of epic failure, and much more interesting than many a success of its day.

Clumsily ripped off by the Vietnam movie Saigon/Off Limits, it's big-budget WW2 murder-mystery that goes off in all directions and frequently completely forgets its nominal main character, Omar Sharif's wildly miscast Nazi military policeman on the trail of the German general who brutally killed a Polish prostitute. In truth his part is little more than a cameo: he never does any detecting, merely occasionally getting information and a nice dinner from Philippe Noiret's French detective while the plot flashes forward to 1967 or off on a tangent with the plot to assassinate Hitler. The fact that so much screen time is devoted to unlikely Lothario Tom Courtney chauffeuring psychotic General Peter O'Toole around Paris doesn't exactly help the whodunit element, especially with his tendency to come over all epileptic every time he sees Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait in the 'degenerate art' section of the Louvre.

Sharif isn't the only curious casting: it appears that the Wehrmacht did their recruiting almost exclusively at RADA, with their ranks swelled by cockney character players and their general staff by the better spoken staples of the British film industry. Somehow it just doesn't seem right to see John Gregson playing a Nazi...

The film is either too long or too short. As a mystery it needs to be tighter and more focused on the original investigation; as an epic exploration of Nazi opportunism, both during and after the war, it needs to be longer. As it stands, it does neither approach justice. But, sprawling and devoid of suspense that it is, the film still holds the interest, partially out of it's overly elaborate staging (there is one particularly impressive sequence of the razing of a Polish ghetto that highlights Henri Decae's use of color) and it's over-reaching, misdirected ambition. And just when your attention is ready to stray it will throw in some interesting side-note or line of dialogue, such as Noiret's delicious response to Sharif's statement that one of their generals is a murderer: "Only one?" Sadly the raised question of morality being a simple question of scale - that while mass-murder is admirable in war, individual murder remains abhorrent - gets lost along the way.

No extras, but the 2.35:1 transfer does justice to Decae's photography and the price is an absolute bargain.

Germany Army officer Grau, a colonel in Wehrmacht Intelligence, is meeting with a French policeman, Inspector Morand, in Paris. The year is 1944. For two years Grau has been investigating the psychopathic murder of a prostitute that took place in Warsaw. The suspects are three Wehrmacht general officers. Says Inspector Morand to Grau, as he wonders why Grau is so persistent in his investigation. "Murder is the occupation of generals."

"Then let us say," Grau replies, "what is admirable on the large scale is monstrous on the small. Since we must give medals to mass murderers, why not give justice to the small entrepreneur."

The Night of the Generals is a mess. It sprawls all over the place, from Poland to Paris to Germany; from 1942 to 1944 to 1963. We have everything from warfare in cities to the 1944 attempt on Hitler's life to the fiction of Rommel's part in the Fuhrer plot, to the rise of neo-Nazism in post-war Germany, to definitions of decadent art. We see the tenderness of young love and the sexual sleaze of frozen-faced sadism. What on earth makes this two-hour-and-twenty-eight-minute movie...if you use the fast-forward button often enough...so much fun?

For me, it's two things. First, it's the schadenfreude-like satisfaction of watching so many members of the elite about to get theirs, all in the context of the rancid Nazi stew of ambitious senior military officers and the morally corrupt German high society that fed on each other. When you combine that with all those strutting uniforms with red collar tabs and red stripes down the pants, black batons, leather coats, boots up to the knees, it's hard to remember you're watching the leaders of a brutally effective army and not members of a Ruritanian farce. I wonder who the Nazis hired to design their uniforms?

The second thing is the skill of the secondary actors. More about them in a moment.

The three generals the then Major Grau (Omar Sharif) in Warsaw suspects of murder are General Tanz (Peter O'Toole), youngest division general in the Wehrmacht and a brutally effective general; General von Seidlitz-Gabler (Charles Gray), a senior officer in Warsaw who lives well, appreciates his lineage and who doesn't take chances. He has his wife and daughter with him. The wife (Coral Browne) is an even more dedicated Nazi than her husband. And there is Major General Klaus Kahlenberg (Donald Pleasence), von Seidlitz-Gabler's chief of staff. He seems at times to be human, drinks probably too much, and as we learn later, is up to his ears in conspiracy.

There is no doubt as to the killer once one looks even cursorily at the casting of the three generals. But then the murder of the Polish prostitute, repeated by the murder of a Paris prostitute in 1944 when the three generals have been assigned to Paris and meet Grau again, is hardly the point of the movie. The Night of the Generals is designed, I think, simply to let us look at corruption and destiny in high Nazi places. It doesn't succeed because the movie takes on so many things it wants to cover. Still, it's always good to see those who think they are our betters slip into the mud.

As the lead suspect and star of the movie, Peter O'Toole playing General Tanz gives one of the weirdest and poorest performances in a career full of weird performances. O'Toole gives us a fugitive from Madame Tussaud's, complete with waxy face, staring eyes, slightly open mouth and all the subtlety of a sharp knife. The performance is so odd and exotic that I felt nothing for the character, bad or good; only the wonder that the director Anatole Litvak didn't pinch his cheek to see if O'Toole were alive. If it weren't for the inherent morbid fascination with Nazi high doings and the skill of some of the other actors, O'Toole would have, in my opinion, sunk this ship.

But what first-rate actors there are: Donald Pleasence, so insignificant looking and yet so subtle and skilled an actor. The movie becomes interesting every time he shows up. Charles Gray, not yet in the really hammy part of his acting career, does a wonderful job as the self-serving, shrewd fence sitter. Coral Browne excelled in imperious and selfish members of the upper crust and she doesn't let us down as a Nazi. Philippe Noiret as Inspector Morand, who finally in 1965 is able to repay a debt to Grau and bring a psychopath to justice, is just fine. Even Tom Courtenay as a German corporal does an interesting job as a young man who comes into contact with Tanz and pays a price. At first I thought he was miscast, but then I realized he was the only major member of the cast who seemed normal.

Great chunks of the movie could have been edited out with no one noticing...but then two-thirds of the movie would have been on the cutting room floor. The Night of the Generals is like nasty gossip, fun at first, eventually tiresome...but then you wouldn't mind a little more. Just keep your finger on the fast forward button.

Wide screen, yes, but the two sides of the picture have been cut off, at least for the credits. Picture quality is nothing special but adequate. There are no extras. There are chapter stops but no menu index for them.