Il pedone

This film is about a man who committed a terrible crime during war and is now old and somehow sorry for what he did. The story about the preparations for his trial are described from different points of view, also from his.

It's interesting to experience Maximilian Schell mainly as a director. (The role he plays in the film is quite small.) Shades of grey dominate the film. It looks like made with a low budget in a studio with minimum scenery. Although the story is really interesting and the topic is controversial – shall an old, harmless man still be called to account for the crimes he committed a long time ago in war? – somehow the film doesn't keep awake. There are some surprising takes here and charming guest appearances there – there seems to be no continuity, no concept. The film seems „undirected`, uncoordinated. I guess, that's a common problem, when actors, who believe they know their way around, try and direct a movie.

The movie ends abruptly, after changing into a TV discussion. I got the impression that the film had been over for minutes and I was watching that discussion. Really weird.

Initially it was my intention to dedicate my month-long Oscar marathon to catching up solely with winners but the sudden passing of Austrian actor/writer/director Maximilian Schell on its very first day soon dispelled those plans! Schell, already an acting Oscar winner at the start of the 1960s, went behind the camera towards the end of that same decade and his directorial debut – FIRST LOVE (1970) which, sadly, is unavailable for viewing at this juncture – immediately earned him a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination; the film under review is his sophomore effort and it was equally recognized by the Academy and, even though it lost out to François Truffaut's delightful film-making classic DAY FOR NIGHT (1973) on this occasion, it emerged victorious at the Golden Globes.

Bringing former Nazi officials to justice has been an ongoing worldwide quest ever since the 1947 Nuremberg trials; it is perhaps not coincidental that Maximilian Schell not only won his sole acting Oscar for a fictional, star-studded reenactment of that infamous event but that he tackled the subject again when he became a director. Curiously enough, while he does appear as an actor in THE PEDESTRIAN, his is only a star cameo as the dead son of a German industrialist targeted by his surviving Greek subjects 30 years after the retaliatory massacre of their village populace. However, Schell did appear as hunted ex-Nazis in such Hollywood indictments as THE ODESSA FILE (1974) and THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH (1975; which garnered him another Best Actor nod and a viewing of which will follow presently) before essaying yet another proud Nazi officer in Sam Peckinpah's CROSS OF IRON (1977).

The central character of THE PEDESTRIAN – so called because his reckless steering costs him his driving license and the life of his son (Schell) – is played by Gustav Rudolf Sellner and, although it is the first time I have heard of him or seen his work (in fact, this was his screen debut in that capacity as he is also a director of TV movies), his sensitive portrayal is a quietly impressive one that was recognized at that year's German Film Awards; typically, he is shown leading a double life even on a personal level by keeping a much-younger mistress! Amusingly, at one point, Sellner's younger, rebellious, hippie son is also shown catching a TV screening of the classic Bolivian film BLOOD OF THE CONDOR (1969). Schell's treatment of the somber material (including potentially disturbing footage of road accident victims which the felonious drivers are forced to watch as part of their 'rehabilitation' process!) is predictably heavy-going if occasionally brilliant, relying on several flashbacks to the all- important WWII and car crash episodes. Even so, the unexpected highlight of the film turns out to be a couple of sequences set in an old people's home where Sellner's wife reminisces with her elderly friends that are (unaccountably but delightfully) played by such acting veterans as Peggy Ashcroft, Elizabeth Bergner, Lil Dagover and Françoise Rosay! ...

The Nazi wartime past of a prominent German industrialist is uncovered by a tabloid newspaper hungry for another exposé, and the investigation prompts a second look into the auto accident which killed the man's oldest son. Director Maximillian Schell, who appears briefly on screen (in flashback) as the deceased son, uses the story to examine the skeletons in his country's closet, and to scratch once again the collective guilt of the German people. The film's major liability is its European-style post-dubbed English soundtrack, and to a lesser degree the outdated cut-and-splice collage editing, a smokescreen technique often used to give a film more 'meaning'. Otherwise it's an engrossing study of national responsibility, and on an even more intimate scale of a man haunted by the ghosts of his criminal past.