Le Crabe-Tambour

I'm not the smartest puppy in the litter, and I am often lost in a movie. So I just have some vague conception of what actually was going on here. But unlike most movies today, it has an unusually forlorn and mysterious feel to it that makes it appealing. Its characters are also people who get little notice today, which for an American audience would include French officers engaged in postwar colonial action at the end of French colonial rule. There's a lot of great photography too. So, even if the characters are remote and the storyline, bouncing around different time periods and places, is perplexing, the movie was moderately pleasing.

This was an amazing movie to look at--the footage of the North Atlantic was gorgeous and breathtaking. I can really appreciate all the trouble everyone went to making this film. However, apart from the great cinematography, I found the movie not particularly interesting. I think that is because the film is told in the form of flashbacks from several different people--it tends to bounce around a bit and can lose the viewer in the process. Getting lost was not as big an issue for me, as I am a history teacher. However, many non-French viewers will not understand the context for what occurs in the movie and the flashbacks will leave them baffled.

FYI to anyone wanting more background info--Following WWII, the French were trying desperately to hold on to the colonies it controlled before the war. The movie begins with the French in Indochina (Vietnam). They are continuing a war that had actually begun before the Japanese took over Vietnam. In essence, when the Japanese left, the war between the French and Nationalists resumed. The French lost this war in the mid-1950s and the United States entered this fray about a decade later.

Although there were some other small skirmishes along the way that were not mentioned in the film (such as the joint British-Israeli-French invasion of the Suez region), the movie picks up AFTER an abortive coup in the early 1960s. That's because Nationalists in Tunisia and Algeria had been pressing the French for independence (though many saw this land as an extension of France--not merely colonies--and losing it was unthinkable to them). This seriously undermined the French government and the military made attempts on deGaulle's life as well as attempts at a military coup. The officers involved were in some cases executed, imprisoned or fled the country. All this occurred because deGaulle's government reluctantly agreed to give up North Africa and the military felt this was a betrayal of France. The lead in the movie Drummer Crab was apparently one of those involved in these coup attempts. Another film that briefly discusses this same topic is the incredibly great film, Day of the Jackal (not to be confused with the supposed remake).

I saw this film five or six years ago after selecting it at random on the "French" shelf of my local video store. It made quite an impact on me, but I subsequently forgot the title and had to go to quite some lengths to relearn it.

I wish I had the time and patience to write out my thoughts at length and with eloquence. Simply put, this feels like one of Joseph Conrad's sea novels, in particular "Lord Jim." It's gorgeously lit and shot -- in fact, I'd go so far as to call it a photographic masterpiece. Maybe the narrative unfolds a bit too slowly or bogs down here or there, but the film concludes beautifully and has haunted me ever since the one and only time I saw it. This may owe something to the casting of Jacques Perrin in the title role. For once here's someone with enough dash and je ne sais quois to justify an entire film spent in search of a supposedly legendary character. Even Brando somewhat disappointed in this regard in "Apolcaypse Now" (which, come to think of it, was very loosely based on Conrad).

It's inexplicable to me that "Le Crabe-Tambour" has never had, and likely never will, much of a following. For my money, the French have never excelled at "classical" film-making in the key of Hollywood. Nor am I typically a fan of that kind of thing; however, this film is an exception in either case. I just picked up the VHS box on the shelf at the verysame video store last night, which is what prompted my comment. I think I'll rent it again tomorrow.

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.

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.