Orgulho e Paixão

The Peninsular War has not been a frequent subject for Hollywood, but this is one of the few exceptions. At its heart is a huge cannon which has been abandoned by the defeated Spanish army but which has fallen into the hands of a group of guerrillas who are fighting to keep alive Spanish resistance to Napoleon. Their plan is to use the cannon in an assault on the French-occupied city of Avila. They are assisted by Anthony, a British naval officer and the only man among them who is able to operate the cannon. Much of the drama concerns the rivalry that develops between Anthony and Miguel, the guerrilla leader, for the affections of a young woman, Juana.

The basic premise of this film seems an odd one. Guerrilla warriors, after all, specialise in lightning hit-and-run raids with the aim of taking the enemy by surprise. In order to do this they need to travel light. Huge cannons like the one featured in this film are designed to be pulled by teams of horses into a conventional battle or to be used as siege weapons. For a band of guerrillas to take such a weapon with them would seem to negate the whole purpose of guerrilla war. The large number of people needed to drag the cannon would effectively make them into a conventional army which could be tracked down, attacked and destroyed by the enemy in a pitched battle.

Besides the film's basic implausibility, the acting is not very distinguished. A word that that I have frequently seen used about this film, both on this board and elsewhere, is `miscast'. In my view, in fact, only one of the three main roles is an obvious example of miscasting: that of the passionate Spanish patriot Miguel. Frank Sinatra, more at home playing cynical, worldly-wise Americans, is quite unable to convey his character's courage, idealism and intensity. It was also a mistake to have Miguel speaking in a bizarre foreign accent. Quite apart from the fact that this at times makes his lines difficult to understand, we are presumably to understand that the characters actually speak Spanish to one another rather than English. Anthony states that he has been chosen for the mission because of his fluent Spanish, and Miguel, an illiterate peasant, would have had little or no opportunity to acquire a knowledge of foreign languages. To have Miguel speak English like a native speaker would have been quite acceptable as a way of representing his use of his native tongue.

Although the other two main roles are not so obviously miscast, neither is entirely satisfactory. Although Cary Grant is not normally associated with period dramas, one would have thought that a gentlemanly British officer would be well within his compass. Unfortunately, this is not one of his better performances, and I would agree the reviewer who said that he looked bored. Sophia Loren was by no means out of her depth as a Spanish peasant girl, but the part was not well enough written to enable her to do much with it. Juana is not so much a character as a cliché, the embodiment of the Anglo-Saxon stereotype of the proud, fiery, temperamental Spanish woman. (Or, for that matter, of the, proud, fiery, temperamental `Latin' woman in general. As it is a widely-held belief in both America and Britain that all speakers of Romance languages share the same temperament, the casting of an Italian actress in the part must have made perfect sense to the filmmakers). At least Miss Loren looked less uncomfortable than did Ingrid Bergman in a similar role in `For Whom the Bell Tolls'.

Seen as an action drama rather than a character study, however, the film has its good points. The photography of the wild Spanish landscapes is magnificent, and many of the individual scenes generate a sense of excitement. Particularly notable are the scene where the guerrillas have to manoeuvre the cannon up, and then down, a mountainside, nearly ending in disaster, and that where they manage to hide it in Avila cathedral under the noses of the French. Despite the length of the film, the action does not drag, and tension is maintained to the end. For all its weaknesses, this is a watchable epic war film. 6/10

Direct from the What Were They Thinking files comes this bloated pageant of staggeringly foolish proportions. All about getting a cannon through battles and assorted other nonsensical issues this overripe piece of twaddle has a few things in its favor, nice scenery and beautiful color photography. They are outweighed however by the inert direction of the usually competent Kramer and even more by the complete miscasting of the principle actors. Sophia is gorgeous and was just starting in American films so her being shoved into whatever was available at the moment no matter how unsuitable can at least explain her presence here. Cary Grant who would seem a natural in period films actually looks rather absurd and is stiff as a board, he apparently felt the same way and after this often referred to this film with mocking scorn. He and Sophia, who became involved during the making of this stinker, would be much more properly and happily paired the next year in Houseboat a delightful comedy which is the place to see them together, not here. Worst of all is Frank Sinatra preposterously cast as a Spanish freedom fighter with both an atrocious accent and wig. He is simply dreadful. Worth watching only to see how an A level film with major stars and a respected director can go wrong in pretty much every aspect.

The good news is the beautiful photography, and the beauty of Sophia Loren. A bit like Raquel Welch but in an earlier era, she doesn't have to be that great at acting to be eminently watchable. Learning she made $200,000 for this movie is completely believable. But the most outstanding aspect of this movie is in the negative - how patently ridiculous Sinatra's absurd Spanish affect and wig are. He doesn't bring it off in the slightest. He brings a rather farcical component to the project. One almost wonders why the director accepted some of the scenes as the final print. He may have been running out of daylight and had to move on, and couldn't afford to be too much of a perfectionist.

This 1950s movie epic was not a hit, but had a particularly superduper superstar set of headliners, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren. Sinatra was seriously miscast as a firebrand Spaniard fighting valiantly against Napoleon's armies in 1810, and Grant also seems out of place, but otherwise it is still an impressive big-budget production for its day.

For me, Sophia's sexy flamenco dance showcase early in the film easily upstages the huge gun our heroes are dragging along 1,000 kilometers of Spain to do battle at Avila. The movie was obviously the inspiration for the 1966 "Combat!" episode titled "The Gun".

Main problem here is that the screenplay by Edward Anhalt, working with his wife Edna Anhalt, is simply not compelling, especially considering his work on many great movies ranging from "Becket" to "Hour of the Gun".

Producer-director Stanley Kramer has become, in recent decades, demoted to relative obscurity. Currently his major works, movies with serious messages, are of no interest, while his contemporary Kubrick is often considered the greatest of all time, and the work of his current counterpart Ridley Scott is laughably overrated. I chalk it up to the preference by both critics and audiences for style over substance.

Here was Kramer's first chance to make a great motion picture and as a big classic-Hollywood-studio-epic-period-adventure he does a fine job: big, good looking, complicated crowd and action scenes. But...(Confidential!) The studio gave him Sinatra, who had no business being cast as a Spanish peasant and who only took the job (from a real actor) to be able to keep track of Ava Gardener while she was filming in Spain. In the meantime, Grant was distracted by heavy Sophia lust...(She says he never got any!) If you like the stars, if you like old fashioned Hollywood, if you like Napoleonic adventures, it entertains.