Le Crabe-Tambour

I saw this film five or six years ago after selecting it at random on the "French" shelf of my local video store. It made quite an impact on me, but I subsequently forgot the title and had to go to quite some lengths to relearn it.

I wish I had the time and patience to write out my thoughts at length and with eloquence. Simply put, this feels like one of Joseph Conrad's sea novels, in particular "Lord Jim." It's gorgeously lit and shot -- in fact, I'd go so far as to call it a photographic masterpiece. Maybe the narrative unfolds a bit too slowly or bogs down here or there, but the film concludes beautifully and has haunted me ever since the one and only time I saw it. This may owe something to the casting of Jacques Perrin in the title role. For once here's someone with enough dash and je ne sais quois to justify an entire film spent in search of a supposedly legendary character. Even Brando somewhat disappointed in this regard in "Apolcaypse Now" (which, come to think of it, was very loosely based on Conrad).

It's inexplicable to me that "Le Crabe-Tambour" has never had, and likely never will, much of a following. For my money, the French have never excelled at "classical" film-making in the key of Hollywood. Nor am I typically a fan of that kind of thing; however, this film is an exception in either case. I just picked up the VHS box on the shelf at the verysame video store last night, which is what prompted my comment. I think I'll rent it again tomorrow.

There are many war movies, but few movies about war. War movies are usually action movies set during a war. Other movies deal about war itself, why the people do it, why they enjoy it and suffer from it. Like Apocalypse Now or the Thin Red Line, The Crabe-Tambour is about war, though, unlike these movies, it shows little of it. It tells the story of Wilsdorf, a.k.a. the "Drummer-Crab", a French officer in the colonial armies, who witnessed (and took part in) the fall of the French empire after WWII. The man himself has become a legend and lives in the memories of fellow soldiers, who tell different tales - fantastic, ironic - about him. Wilsdorf appears as an elusive and shining ghost, a youthful figure of their past, who is still roaming the world as a free man while they grow old and embittered. Some may find there both a dubious fascination for the military (strongly reminiscent of Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese series) and nostalgia for the colonies. However, it's so beautifully filmed that this can be easily forgiven.

Movie is strongly architectured with flashbacks and could be understood at first as the story of a pure and almost mythical officer (Wilsdorf). At that level, it is just a good story. Much more interesting are the other characters (Doctor, Captain, Mechanical officer) that have been all fascinated by Wilsdorf. It is a deep human picture of all our weaknesses and dreams. Everybody may find some points in these lifes while Wilsdorf is more an abastract heroe. For French, debates about colonial period and fidelity is also interesting. On top of that, some scenes at sea are great (I checked on a sister ship during my military duty).

Le Crabe Tambour is like no other movie about soldiers that you will see, being a movie that in some parts resembles Citizen Kane, in other parts Rashomon. The doctor on a ship's final voyage across the Atlantic serves as the connecting link for the episodes that describe the title character, Wilsdorf, nicknamed "Drummer Crab." At one point, the ship's captain says Wilsdorf's two best friends were his black cat and the doctor. From what happens, Wilsdorf had another best friend, the captain, but that friendship ends as a result of events described in the movie.

Wilsdorf's adventures start off as picaresque, but they become grimmer as he takes a role in a military conspiracy, details of which are only vaguely described. You have as characters in this movie older soldiers –the captain, the doctor and the chief, and Wilsdorf, who is not shown as aging. A nurse at the harbor the ship stops at comments that usually ship's doctors are young. But Le Crabe Tambour is about old soldiers fading away, all except Wilsdorf, who is only shown through the memories of others.

Pierre Schoendoerffer also directed La 317e section in 1967, which has the character Lt. Wilsdorf in it, then in a supporting role as a soldier at Dien Bien Phu. Wilsdorf was an Alsatian drafted by the Nazis who then became a French soldier and finally, a fisherman, with a boat off the fishing grounds by Labrador. Being a literary sort, Schoendoerffer does not explain everything at the end like a typical mystery story. Behind the opening and closing credits are images of ships beached on shore, wrecks that have outlived their usefulness, just like the ship's captain. The real French frigate, the Jaureguiberry, filmed for this movie on its last voyage, gets a mention in the last credit. When you see the ship's bow plowing through high waves in the North Atlantic, you also see the sides of the ship, with rust patches on it. The ship, like some of its passengers, has reached the end of the line. Le Crabe Tambour is not about just the adventures of an errant soldier, but is an attempt to put on screen the meaning of life for career military men at the end of their careers, with one, the ship's doctor, having a last chance to find out the truth about Wilsdorf.

I doubt that the French movie industry will finance another movie like Le Crabe Tambour, which is an example of "art for art's sake." I saw the movie on the Image laser disc of the movie, an Interama Video Classic. The LD version had hardcoded English subtitles. The movie was released overseas in 1977, but in 1977 there was almost no distribution anymore of subtitled foreign movies in the United States. Le Crabe Tambour only made it to New York City in 1984 for a short run. There is a DVD version of the movie now on sale in France, but like most French movie DVDs, that DVD has no English subtitles. So, Le Crabe Tambour falls by the wayside, even though its subject, soldiers' fates, is as timely as ever.

A chance remark leads three French naval officers to reminisce, together and privately, about the compelling young commander Willsdorf, nicknamed The Drummer Crab, recalling his exploits from the fog-shrouded rivers of Indochina to an attempted military coup in Algeria to his lonely, anonymous vigil in the North Atlantic fishing lanes nearby. Joseph Conrad would have loved this film, arguably the finest modern seafaring adventure ever made: a thoughtful and thrilling study of man versus the elements, where the past itself becomes an elemental force even more unyielding than the vivid Winter seascapes captured by Raoul Coutard's breathtaking cinematography. In metaphor, Willsdorf's fate is the fate of French colonialism, and only by pursuing his memory, through crashing waves and hissing spindrift, can his three erstwhile companions (a dying captain, a middle-aged medical officer, and a robust, veteran Chief Engineer) confront and endure their collective loss. This is a spellbinding film, rich in history and detail.