Cerveau d'acier

A lot has already been said about this compelling, oft-overlooked film, virtually all of which hits the proverbial nail on the head. While Eric Braeden delivers a superb, understated performance as Dr. Charles Forbin, the fact is that the real star of the film is the vast, omnipotent machine he has created. Even before it begins to speak with the chilling Cylonesque voice it has ordered designed for itself (the great Paul Frees like you've never heard him before), you'll find yourself glued to the screen watching Colossus "talk" to its supposed masters over its huge monitors.

A word about Frees' contribution to the film: In "War Games," for example, the computer has a curious sort of empathetic communication style ("Wouldn't you rather play a nice game of chess?") presented in a voice that sounds like E.T. filtered through a synthesizer. Frees gives Colossus an emotionless yet fearful quality of speech that seems to belie its implacable drive to dominate human destiny.

My favorite part of this film has always been, and will always be, the climactic monologue Colossus announces to the listening masses of humanity. From its opening line -- "This is the voice of world control," an identity neither Colossus nor its counterpart, Guardian, had used to that point -- you know this isn't going to be a happy speech if you are a sentient, flesh & blood resident of the Earth. What is particularly creepy about the speech is that, for all of its strangely optimistic sermonizing about how "the human millennium will be fact" and how the computer will set about the task of "solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man" -- outwardly the Utopian dream -- the message Colossus is presenting is set against the dreadful backdrop of "disobey (me) and die." As Colossus intones, "You say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride." In the end, unlike other supercomputer-run-amok films such as "War Games" or "Tron," "Colossus" is an end-of-the-world story without the nuclear or viral holocaust. In this film, it is the human spirit that is the casualty while the human biology lingers on. Unlike the rest of the doomsday genre, our end comes not so much with a bang as it does with a whimper.

It's interesting reading the comments of those who dislike this movie; they either call it "dated" and so disregard it, or "ludicrous" in that it could never happen; that way they don't have to take the concept seriously and so aren't threatened by it.

Well, History is dated. That's why it's history. And we learn history supposedly so that we won't repeat the mistakes of the past (I wonder if that's ever worked?).

Science Fiction, if done well, is like watching future history. Star Wars begins with "Long, Long Ago..." and yet the world it presented was thousands of years ahead of ours. Science Fiction's best use is often in producing cautionary tales so that "We Don't Go There", or at least make us think before we do. Yes, the idea of a computer taking over the world through control of nuclear technology is ludicrous; very ludicrous. Until it happens. Then it is already too late. That's the point of science fiction and other cautionary tales.

So Collosus is about a dated computer that becomes sentient and starts asserting ruthless control for what it sees as the "betterment of mankind". What does it matter if the technology is dated? Our technology will seem hopelessly dated 100 years from now. This movie is very much like Terry Gilliam's dark movie, "Brazil", in a strange way. Gilliam has said his movie was a cautionary tale, that the only escape from the world is in your imagination. Both movies make the same point: that if a certain process (government, or technological) is allowed to continue without safeguards, we will reach a point where there is no escape. The time of quaint tales of Robin Hood and other rebels has passed: No "rebel band" is going to stop it, no revolution is going to succeed, because the stranglehold granted by modern weapons is so pervasive we can't fight it without dying. So instead of relying on comicbook fantasies of "fighting the Power", we should make sure we never get to the point of no return. In this movie's case, the fatal error was trusting in technology to run itself, without understanding it or taking precautions to install safeguards of overriding its commands and shutting it down if necessary.

In our country, if our government suddenly decided to become a dictatorship, there would be no revolution or rebellion. Our little handguns and rifles aren't going to match cluster bombs, missiles and chemical weapons. We're at the mercy of our leaders, and the chance for rebellion by force in countries around the world (such as Zimbabwe) has past.

The cautionary tale that Collosus tells is very old, and considered dated and clichéd by many. And because of that, its lesson is lost on those too "clever" to learn from it. Let's hope these people too clever to learn from dated clichés don't come into positions governing things like Collosus.

This movie reflects a major fear in the era before PCs (or microcomputers as they then were called). Few people (not even IBM as Bill Gates can attest) anticipated the rise of personal computing, thinking instead that large mainframes were the wave of the future. The logical extrapolation of this path leads to the mainframe brain represented here by Colosus and Guardian. Dated though the threat may seem, the movie still works well. A must see for all those interested in science and technology!

P.S. In the "Goofs" section of this listing, there is a paragraph entitled "Revealing Mistakes" which reports an error when Dr. Forbin blows out two candles with one breath. There is, in fact no goof. If you look at the scene prior to this when Dr. Forbin and Dr. Markham are eating dinner, there are FOUR lit candles on the table. When he blows out two candles with one breath, the lights dim after which he blows again, presumably to extinguish the remaining two candles which are off screen. The lights then dim again, as they should.

I suspect this would be more obvious if the movie was available in Widescreen rather than the Fullscreen version we've all gotten used to over the years. Hopefully, a future release of this classic movie will restore the fullness of the directors original vision.

Thinking this will prevent war, the US government gives an impenetrable supercomputer total control over launching nuclear missiles. But what the computer does with the power is unimaginable to its creators.

Tom Weaver noted, "Early on, they had either Charlton Heston or Gregory Peck in mind, but then they changed their mind about that. Stanley Chase insisted on a relative unknown. That's when Eric Braeden came into the picture." When he was cast, Braeden was still using his birth name, Hans Gudegast. Universal Pictures executive Lew Wasserman told him that no one would be allowed to star in an American film if they had a German name. As strange as that sounds, it is apparently true.

How many people today (2017) have heard of this film? I suspect very few. Even being familiar with science fiction, it was new to me. Which is a shame, because as far as the "sentient computer" subgenre goes, this is a really strong film and ought to be used to influence future writing. I am not suggesting a remake, but clearly they had thought it through by the 1960s -- a film could be made today with virtually no change.

This is one rare movie. It deals intelligently with complex scientific issues and does so without dumbing down the concepts, nor making any painful errors in trying to keep up with its own topic. I found it convincing when I was a kid hacker in the mid-70's (when "hacker" meant "person who writes programs for fun"), and it is just as persuasive to me now (after I have acquired a computer science grad degree, and 25 years of experience in the field).

Spooky score takes it up a rung on the ladder, too. See it.