Le Crabe-Tambour

CRABE-TAMBOUR's base-camp story is simple-- the antiquated officers of a functionless army spend a voyage home on rough North Atlantic seas recounting stories of a cavalier-soldier whose busted military career spanned France's last years of colonial globalism. This beautiful film (master Raoul Coutard's sea-footage is a film unto itself) is rich, ironically resonant, and in a wrenching last scene, comparable to Peckinpah in its regard for its stoic heroes, the last-men-standing at the sorry end of empire.

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.

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.

Reviewer "gerrythree" in 2006 wrote something that I will build on, which is:

"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"

My father, a career U.S. Navy officer, commander of nuclear submarines, followed his Navy sea career by becoming U.S. Naval Attache to France - so of course he knew zFrench and French culture, and many French navy officers.

One day years after his retirement (1984) he pulled out a VHS and said "watch this with me." The movie was "The Drummer Crab." He knew French, but I did not, and the movie has no subtitles, so he explained it to me as the movie went on.

It was a very important film to him. When reviewer "gerrythree" said that "The Drummer Crab" "is an attempt to put on screen the meaning of life for career military men at the end of their careers," he is absolutely correct. I was never in the military, but anyone who was, and everyone who has a career-military person in his or her family - especially career Navy - will benefit by watching this film (though most Americans will need to watch it with a French-speaker).

One thing that especially struck me was my father's response to the very end of the film, when the frigate captain brings the warship to the pier for the last time. The captain (skipper) knows that this is the last time he will ever do this. The captain gives very precise commands to rudder and engines, to bring the ship alongside the pier without a tug-boat, and - this is what matters - with the very fewest number of commands. My father explained that among ship-skippers, one of the master-arts is to know how to bring the ship to a dead-stop right on position along the pier, with the fewest number of commands. It is how they test and evaluate each other, and know who is the very best. He had done it himself many times, bringing his submarine alongside the submarine tender-ships after his two-month missile deterrent patrols. His last time was in 1972, in Holy Loch, Scotland - after which he transferred to shore duty for the rest of his career.

I think the feeling must be like a major-league football or baseball player, who knows he is playing in his last game in the big leagues - and the game ends, and the player walks off the field for the last time, never to step-out again in uniform, ready to play. A very bitter-sweet moment - which this film captures for real-life Navy ship-captains, like my father.