victrixix

Don't listen to the nay-sayers below. This was a well made, touching, poignant film. They're just upset that it didn't have human actors with a little dab of makeup crap stuck to the top of their noses and foreheads which convinces them that, "Wow, they look soooo alien! Gee, how'd they do that?", or that it wasn't divided into 10 different parts made over 50 years where part 7 comes first, then part 2, then, etc. in order to intrigue us with its supposed timelessness.

True science fiction is an odyssey of the mind, and is a way of forcing us to question the human condition in a unique way. Unfortunately, it's become light sabers, outrageous special effects makeup, and computer-generated special effects which always look like...computer-generated special effects. Another thing that makes some of the reviewers uncomfortable about this film is that there is no clear division between good and evil. Most seem the need to have this explained to them so that there is no mistake as to who the bad guys really are (I give you Star Bores and the new Star Trek).

In Silent Running, you have no clue as to what is going to happen, even after the rest of the crew is dispatched. You always know the "good guys" are going to win in the more modern blockbusters (read "trash"), and thrilled by special effects "wizadry" (read "it's such expensive stuff, you gotta like it, no matter how bad it really is, or what little it does for the story"). Bruce Dern was fantastic in this movie, and he is excellent in conveying the feelings being felt by the hero (antihero?) of the story. The robots in this film were much better than the R2D2 and C3PO given to us by Lucas (I know, I speak great heresy).

I remember seeing this movie (Attack and Retreat) as a kid back in the seventies. There are many, many images which have stuck in my mind from this film: The young soldier and girl in the vast sunflower field, the lone Russian tank mowing down Italian troops in a Russian town, Soviet cavalry charging over the snow fields, "Stalin's Organs" rocket launchers filling the skies with fire, a good-natured chase to get to a dead snow rabbit in no-man's land, all this after 30 years!

I recently bought the video of this film, and forgot how good it really is. The best thing about it is the subject matter. One-it is a war film Two-it lacks a sappy romance angle Three-it deals with the Russian Front and Four-it deals with the Italian Army on that front.

Strikes against it (only from a modern film viewers point of view, not mine) One-it was done in Italian, then over-dubbed in English Two-it is, after all, a war film without sappy romance and Three-it is in black and white.

The feeling of loneliness, fear, panic, and desolation come out well in this movie. I can easily imagine the story of these men on the Russian front as having been real...it was as if the director himself had been there (not sure if he was). No character is expendable in this film (as it should be in a war film), so the fear of danger for each character is always there (much like Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front). The viewer is made to feel close to these men, because they are shown as being good, decent men caught in a huge man-destroying machine called the Eastern Front. The director shows much disdain for the German allies, portrays the Spanish allies as being rather silly running around with their banner even when the Earth was crashing down around them, and shows much respect for the Soviet soldiers, almost admiration. Pro-communist sympathy from a 1960's Italian director should be far from surprising. Even the characters liked the Internationale. One soldier liked to play it on his harmonica, and near the end two of them are whistling it. The Black Shirt "elite troops" were shown as thieves, cowards, and rapists. The average Italian soldiers were portrayed as victims along with the Russians.

One interesting thing about the film was the appearance of Peter Falk as an Italian Army surgeon/playboy, about ten years before he became better known as the TV character Columbo.