The Blockhouse

Clive Rees has made a wonderful "dark" film based on Jean-Paul Clebert's book which describes a WWII story that one can hardly believe, yet true! The film was ahead of its time and the production suffered from financial problems and lack of faith in the film. This caused in cutting down scenes, and finally in never releasing the film, despite the great stars involved in it (Peter Sellers, Jeremy Kemp, Peter Vaughan, Charles Aznavour and others)! Since then, the film has appeared a handful of times in festivals & retrospectives and was released as a VHS in USA (1984). Yet, the VHS version is a vulgarly abridged one where entire scenes are missing... I was happy to help the film be part of a Peter Sellers retrospective in the annual Athens International Film festival (September 2000), held by Sinema magazine. Clive Rees attended the screenings and brought with him the directors' cut version of the film, which runs about 15 more minutes. The result is a totally different film, a poetic creation, a really great drama, with wonderful performances of the participating actors! The audience gave 95,3% positive votes for the film and gave a long, spontaneous applause, which I think was, at last some reward to Clive Rees' unlucky film. If only had the film been released nowadays, I am pretty sure it would have had a completely different chance. Now, at least it deserves a great DVD version and I hope it soon will (but of course it would have to be the director's cut and hopefully a making of documentary). Does anyone listen???

Talking Pictures TV does it again, they unearth a lost obscurity from the dusty cabinet of film. This time it's The Blockhouse, from 1973 starring Peter Sellers, I use that term loosely because it's a wonderful ensemble piece, in which actors share the screen, dialogue and drama the same. The premise of the movie is a work party of 7 POWs, country of origin indeterminate in occupied Europe. Flee the onslaught of allied bombing on D Day and their German guards by hiding in an underground bunker, on the entrance being bomb and blocked they have to hide further in the catacombs, with no way out they have to live on the contents of the cellar, which is wines, canned foods, cigars, etc etc in fact everything you could possibly want....over the hour and half we watch the men slow descent into madness and their long lingering death, due to the lack of fresh food, fresh air and light. It is so bleak, Sellers, Charles Aznavour, Jeremy Kemp and all are stunning and when you see the outcome and realise it's a true story it will leave a lasting impression.

This extraordinary curiosity unearthed by Talking Pictures is a definite exception to the detritus of Peter Sellars' output of the early seventies, free from his usual sin of caring only about his own role at the expense of the overall production.

The passage of time charted by the growth of his beard, Sellars' performance is easily the equal of his Chauncey Gardener in 'Being There' (although his French accent remains rather goonish). Jeremy Kemp as usual is excellent.

Reminiscent of a play by Sartre, the cast have plenty to eat and drink - as one of them observes "All I need is a woman!" - but sorely short of fresh air and decent lighting, the confinement eventually driving them all off their rockers as one by one they succumb to cabin fever.

We're told in the opening credits that this is a true story and only two out of seven survive. We then move into a superb opening sequence of Allied bombing, which takes us neatly into the central story of trapped men.

The cast is excellent and the dark, gloomy and claustrophobic atmosphere is well done but, for me, the characters are insufficiently well-drawn. We are told very little about their background and how they arrived at this place. The sound recording leaves something to be desired and the dialogue is often unclear.

Having said that, this is a film which will stay with you, if you make the substantial effort required to watch it. As Sellers has said. "It's a film for connoisseurs of cinema. A very heavy movie, which could easily put you on a downer". My advice though is to make that effort.

One point of fact: the true story was actually one of seven German soldiers trapped in a food depot in Poland, blocked in, unknowingly, by their retreating comrades who dynamite the entrance.

A film that seems intended to drive its audience to mass suicide, "The Blockhouse" is more likely to inspire tedium and finally relief when it limps to its unsatisfying conclusion.

The film features seven slave laborers in World War II France who find themselves trapped deep in an underground chamber when their German position is bombed and shelled in preparation for D-Day. There is no escape for these men; they must bide their time eating and drinking from the ample provisions left by the German Army, do their best not to get on each other's nerves, and hope for a miracle.

The film stars Peter Sellers, though he is only a first among equals here and certainly not to be watched for his comic prowess. Playing a teacher named Rouquet, he has a light moment trying to teach dominos to the others, but for the most part stares bleakly at the walls as a heavy beard grows on his face. Sellers is completely convincing in his part, but it is less a character than a construct. Rouquet is the voice of hope whose point in the story is being stilled.

The other main character, and the only one that catches your notice, is Jeremy Kemp's Grabinski, a rational man who realizes before anyone else the hopelessness of the situation but who tries to make things bearable for his comrades. His exchanges with Rouquet playing games reflects the hope/no hope dichotomy.

"I think you'll lose," Grabinski tells Roquet during the dominos demonstration.

"How can you possibly tell I'll lose when I'm teaching you this game?" Roquet replies.

"Never mind," Grabinski shrugs.

The whole movie is like that, unconnected vignettes between the trapped men that strive at some greater purpose without advancing anything resembling a plot. Director/co-writer Clive Rees seems to be trying to go for a Pinder or Beckett thing with the sparse dialogue and hopeless situation. But too much bleakness keeps us distant from the characters and their situation.

As calamities pile up, like the suicide of one of the men and the arrival of winter, it's all you can do to register their pain. You don't have any sense of who these people might be, however good a job Kemp, Sellers, and the other actors do. And they do good work all around, including the legendary French singer Charles Aznavour as a tough scrapper named Visconti and Swedish notable Per Oscarsson as the brooding Lund. With their beards and grimy faces, and their believable, seemingly improvised acting, they pull you into their horrible situation easily enough. But the film lets them down in terms of having anything more to say than life is hell.

Don't be fooled by the 90-minute running time: This is a long movie to sit through, tough to follow with choppy editing that seems to kill off one character twice while two others disappear without explanation. Characters say little to one another, and when they do speak it is often pitched so low one can barely hear it. The visual design leans heavily on the dark surroundings to the point where the only print available today screens like an oil spill.

This is a movie I wouldn't watch once if it wasn't for Sellers, and can't recommend even to his fans. If you like bleak movies, you may feel otherwise, but whatever your mindset I doubt you will have any more success figuring out what is happening than I did.