I maledetti

This is director René Clément's third full-length film and already we are aware that he is a great 'film technician' with an eye for detail.

It takes place in a German U-471, a wooden replica of which Clément had built at the Victorine studios. His production designer, Paul Bertrand, has done a wonderful job in recreating the interior and the tracking shots through the vessel by Henri Alekan are impressive. Apparently Clément installed a tilting mechanism to reproduce as much as possible the movements of the submarine.

Essentially dealing with the wages of political sin, the characters almost without exception are a thoroughly unsavoury and ignoble bunch with no redeeming features which naturally makes them horribly fascinating. The only decent character is the doctor of Henri Vidal and therefore infinitely less interesting! I have no doubt that Paul Bernard, Jo Dest and Florence Marly enjoyed their roles immensely. Marcel Dalio gets top billing here and plays 'une crapule' with his usual aplomb.

The film is not without its weaknesses. The punch-ups on board are far from convincing and the various deaths of the protagonists are handled in a very cold, clinical manner. An undeniable strength is the dialogue by renowned Henri Jeanson.

Clément's powerful first feature 'La Bataille du Rail' was filmed in a semi-documentary style whilst this one seems to fall between two stools, those of fact and fiction, with varying results.

This director made fifteen films in twenty-five years a few of which are undisputed masterpieces. 'Les Maudits' is alas not one of them but did in fact beat off some pretty stiff competition to win Best Film at Cannes. Devotees of 'Psycho' please note the scene where a murdered man pulls down the curtain rail from the rod!

The history of French cinema, for better or worse, is largely tethered to two boad-sweeping movements; the Poetic Realism movement and the Nouvelle Vogue. Both periods expanded the limitations of film technique while constantly calling into question grammar and form. Populated with names like Godard, Varda, Renoir and Carne, these movement most importantly laid the foundation for auteur theory (the notion that a film is a product of the director like a novella to an author).

Rene Clement is not a member of either of these movements. Considered too young for the poetic realism and too old for the French New Wave, Clement was dismissed by Francois Truffaut as part of the Cinema du papa (Your dad's cinema); a blanket term for French filmmakers who try to mimic the bloated spectacle of Hollywood. Yet anyone who gives Forbidden Games (1952) or Purple Noon (1960) a chance can clearly see a talented filmmaker with a flair for docudrama and a taste for good-old-fashioned storytelling.

Now granted The Damned does not reach the feverish heights of Purple Noon but it nevertheless oozes with the spirit of Americanized suspense while telling a story that's uniquely French. Set during the last months of the Third Reich, a group of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers have planned a daring escape from Europe via U-boat. Things however hit a snag after a close encounter with a Allied ship, forcing the boat to dock and kidnap a French doctor (Vidal). The doctor then bares witness to the escalating fanaticism of the U-boat's crew and occupants as they come to terms with the war ending.

Filled with potboiler intrigue, calculating villains and frenetic action, The Damned brings to mind Hitchcock's slim but suspenseful war-period films like Lifeboat (1944) and Foreign Correspondent (1940). Yet unlike those films which played on the uncertainty of a wartime audience, The Damned has a foreboding sense of ennui. The narration provided by Henri Vidal puts you into the mind of the Doctor and his multiple attempts to escape from the clutches of the U-boat's occupants, which include fanatical SS Officer Forster (Dest), Wehrmacht General Von Hauser (Kronefeld), Italian industrialist Garosi (Giachetti) and his wife (Marly). His main motive is concentrated to that of sheer survival. He knows full well that the moment the wife's injuries are cared for, he's a dead man, so he cleverly uses any excuse to stay on as the resident doctor until better options arrive.

Yet while the doctor may be absolved in his complicity to the Nazi cause, the film shades in the rest of the characters in sometimes quixotic ways. By virtue of being connected to the virginal Ingrid (Campion), Scandinavian physicist Eriksen (Hector) is absolved of his motivation to sell nuclear secrets to the highest bidder. The majority of the Nazi U-boat crew are seen in a positive and simplistic light; a cadre of men just wanting to go home. Meanwhile Florence Marly's Hilde is savaged by the events of the story, not merely because she's a sympathizer but because she is also the mistress to the General. Paul Bernard plays Couturier a French newspaper editor (and the only representative of Vichy France) who is quietly kept under the rug until his final curtain call. One can't help but think that if Couturier's death wasn't so senseless, Clement was trying to build a story around justifying culpability.

Regardless, The Damned is still a brilliantly shot film full of nail-biting suspense and claustrophobic mis en scene. Those who saw Das Boot (1981) or Run Silent, Run Deep (1956) will no doubt see similar visual cues which, I won't go far enough to say were inspired by The Damned but are strongly reminiscent of it. Rene Clement may not be one of the names immediately conjured up when thinking of French filmmakers but with quality films under his belt, he certainly doesn't deserve the Cinema du papa moniker.

A group of Nazi sympathizers of various nationalities board a submarine at Oslo on a secret mission to land in South America where it is planned that Hitler and the Third Reich will rise up once again. On navigating the English Channel, one of the party gets injured – Florence Marly (Mdm Garosi). She needs a doctor and it's the one thing that has been overlooked on this journey. So, they stop over in France and kidnap one – Henri Vidal (Guilbert). They resume their journey with the new arrival who realizes that his life is in danger as he now knows too much – he has to survive by making himself indispensable to the gang.

The whole story is pretty much set aboard the submarine. It's a novel setting and provides the necessary claustrophobic atmosphere as we wonder how and when our doctor hero is going to make his escape. Other characters don't fare too well when deciding to break free from the clutches of evil Jo Dest (Forster). By the way, this Dest character is a cartoon character Nazi who has a blatant homosexual arrangement with his young muscleman as played by Michel Auclair (Willy). Dest's male bitch is even given the name 'Willy' so that you are under no doubt that they like playing with each other's willies.

(1947) Les Maudits/ The Damned (In French with English subtitles) WAR DRAMA

Co-written and directed by René Clément, with the setting takes place just during the end of the second World War, with a U-boat full of Nazi sympathizers, including French and Italian passengers planning to settle in South America for a possible industrialization to support Hitler's cause. All is well until one of the female passengers injures herself with a bad head concussion, forcing them to go undercover to kidnap a French doctor, who eventually takes over to narrate his incredible voyage. Sometimes slow, but still fascinating that has never been done before.

With the Nazi occupation still fresh in everyone's minds, it was no surprise that France made a movie about the Nazis. To be certain, René Clément's movie is one of the all-time masterpieces. "Les maudits" ("The Damned" in English) is about a group of Nazis and their sympathizers who board a submarine to South America towards the end of WWII, hoping to escape the consequences of Germany's defeat. But when an accident forces them to make a stop and pick up a doctor, things take a different turn.

This is one of the most claustrophobic movies that I've ever seen. Other reviewers have noted the similarities to "Das Boot". Whatever the case, the movie brings up the issue of responsibility. One could make the argument that the doctor has enabled these Nazis' crimes, even if he acted unwillingly. After all, the people aboard this submarine were very much committed to fascism.

Anyway, a fine piece of work. I intend to see more of Clément's movies now.