El emperador del norte

Robert Aldrich was one of the most interesting American directors of the last 40 years. He moved with relative ease between genres and told his stories in a direct, honest style. This film is one of the unsung gems of the seventies, part adventure film, part social drama, part road movie.

Set during the depression when riding the rails was a way of life for desperate men (and women), the film follows three characters - Lee Marvin, as Number One, a legend among the grizzled hobos congregating along the rail lines; Ernest Borgnine as Shack, the sadistic conductor perfectly willing to do whatever necessary to keep free loaders off his trains; and a young Keith Carradine as Two-Bit, a novice full of bluster and false bravado out to make a name for himself. Marvin takes the kid under his wing; their relationship is part adversarial, as the weary elder tries to educate the fool how to survive on the line. Looming in the background is Borgnine, out to do his job at any cost. Ultimately a wager is made, and Marvin will put his life on the line to best Borgnine and show he is the Emperor of the North.

At times it's a very brutal film - the final confrontation between Marvin & Borgnine is one of the toughest, nastiest fights ever photographed - but it is splendidly made and endlessly fascinating.

When I first saw this movie, it was released as "Emperor of the North", although some of the early promos added "Pole' to the title. Since the top hobo of the old days was "Emperor of the North Pole", I assumed the studio wasn't sure if the average viewer would get the title. The literary character of A-number One, is based on a legendary hobo from the turn of the century, who was possibly real, as his graffiti 'A-1', or A-No-1, appeared regularly on water towers and bridges along the rails all over the USA. This film really gets the feel of a depression-era USA, and the conflict between Marvin and Borgnine is visceral and cunning, and the scene with the near-miss of the oncoming train has great tension. Carridine is great as a blowhard punk who might grow up to be something. This flick has an almost religious overtone of good versus evil. It also has a good feel for railroading, kinda like ""The Train"

There were just so many great B movies made in the 70s and this is one of the best. Stark and cruel but completely watchable and with two excellent male leads, this brutal hobo railroad drama remains fixed in most viewers minds forever. It is also part of two great sub genres...the depression years drama and the railroad thriller. So many films to choose from in either genre and practically all watchable and enjoyable. EMPEROR was released for about 10 days and never surfaced again. I used to add it in as a double feature in my cinema right up until about 1980 and it always commanded major discovery status. The problem is the title: and like DAY OF THE LOCUST or EMPIRE OF THE SUN or other confusing titles the pubic never found it themselves. It failed on first release and was only repeatedly discovered when the public went to a double feature as described above. In Oz it was released only as EMPEROR OF THE NORTH. You could almost mix'n'match films in those days; THE STREETFIGHTER, BUSTER AND BILLIE, THE SPIKES GANG, FROM NOON TILL THREE, WHATS THE MATTER WITH HELEN, BLOODY MAMA, all interchangeable in any programme. Others here can tell you the story, but I will tell you to find it yourself and have a major discovery film enter your library.

This is the kind of story that Tom Wolfe might have written. It's about what he would have called a "status-sphere" and ordinary sociologists would have called a subculture. It's about competition within a limited environment, about acquiring status, about working your way up the ladder of prestige within a particular specialized structure by means of courage, skill, and strategy. Only instead of the wild blue yonder, or landing on the heaving deck of an aircraft carrier, or NASCAR racing, the thing to be conquered here is Ernest Borgnine, the sadistic conductor who chuckles as he throws hobos off his train, sometimes to their deaths, kind of redoing his Fatso Judson number, so evil that if he did not exist it would be necessary to prevent him.

It's a classical subculture in that it has all the features of a closed world with its own values. Everyone seems to know everyone else. And, as in most subcultures, including those that used to be called "primitive societies," the initiate is given a new name. In other movies exploring such subcultures they may have names like "Fast Eddy," "Minnesota Fats," "Maverick," "Dragstrip," "Charlie the Gent." Here they have names like "A Number 1" (Lee Marvin), "Cigaret" (Keith Carradine), and "Shack" (Borgnine). They even had their own written language, a set of pictographs scratched into rocks or written in dirt, conveying messages like, "This family good for a free meal," or , "Work for a meal," or, "Stay away. Cops." There were small communities of hobos, often carved out of track-side garbage dumps.

Interesting cast, by the way, a lot of familiar faces in bit parts -- Simon Oakland, Elija Cook Jr.

Makeup and Wardrobe Departments have done a fine job of turning them into 'Bos. They don't look Hollywood dirty, with a few smears of mud. They just look dirty. Their clothing is filthy. All in all, a good delousing looks called for. Marvin's face, by the time this was released, looked just beat-up enough, and from life, not booze. And check out his decaying lower incisors.

The plot has to do with a duel of wits between Marvin, who is determined to demonstrate his skill at the top of the status ziggurat by riding Borgnine's train to Porland, OR. Borgnine, much to the puzzlement of the rest of the train crew, is obsessed with keeping his freight train clean of hitch-hikers. He's fiendishly clever in smoking out and hurting riders. Carradine is the kind of youth often called "callow." He brags a lot and is brave but, alas, is unable to absorb the rules of the game because he plays for reasons of self aggrandizement, not for the team. He winds up in the drink.

There's something else about this movie that may keep a viewer interested. It takes place during the depression. The trains are slow, fed by coal, and powered by steam. They rock back and forth gently, as if trying to put a passenger or a stowaway to sleep. And they travel through a sunny evergreen wilderness in the Northwest. It's the kind of scenic journey you now have to pay for if you want to make a round trip to San Juan, CO. What was in the 1930s essential to a certain kind of existence has now been vulgarized and turned into a tourist's delight.

It's a small story about small people. There is nothing epic about it. The score seems to owe something to Burt Bacharach, who was so successful a few years earlier with "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." And, for my taste, there are one or two too many choker close-ups filling the screen with monstrous teeth and sweaty flesh. But it's hard to ignore the movie. You'll probably want to find out what happens next.

The credits of Aldrich's Emperor of the North don't mention the fact that it is an adaptation of Jack London's story 'The Road'.

The Road is a long short story/short novel, based on London's own experiences as a young man, riding the rails as a hobo. Most importantly, the central conflict between Borgnine's Shack and Marvin's A Number One, and the methods both use to overcome their enemy are very closely based on the Jack London story, in which a group of hobo's set out to ride the train on which a particularly brutal shack, or railway guard works.