Un château en enfer

Thanks to this film, I can never entirely think of "Private Benjamin" as a comedy about a society girl in the army (not that this one doesn't have a lot of funny moments, of the very strange kind). "Hessian" is right - it's so strange, you almost have to either love or hate it, and I'm completely attached to it. With the kinds of actors in it, it's really hard to think of anyone as especially standing out, but (as attached as I've always been to Burt Lancaster) the answer would almost have to be Patrick O'Neal as Beckman. It took me a long while to think of it, but he's almost like the Eleanor character in The Haunting, because of the way he's taken over by the castle completely, and his "private war" with the major because of it. One of the best scenes was between him and Private Benjamin (played by Al Freeman Jr.), who was pictured as his "soulmate" in a way. Beckman admitted that he'd been a war hero (before the beginning of the story), but he wrote it off as being temporarily crazy. Benjamin said, "But you'd fight to save this castle." Beckman said, "Yes - but I don't know who. Which side."

One of the best funny lines was one of Peter Falk's - "Swim the moat? What the hell war is this?"

Jean-Pierre Aumont offers us the ultimate in hope over expectation in this wartime drama. He is the "Count" who offers shelter to "Maj. Falconer" (Burt Lancaster) and his battle-weary squad of soldiers in his beautiful 10th century castle. They set up some defensive positions knowing that these ancient battlements will be no match for the Nazi war machine that they are soon to be facing. Perhaps naively, the "Count" and the "Falconer" hope that they will decide against desecrating and/or decimating his ancestral home. Well, the writing is on the wall (or, more accurately, bits of it) but meantime the Major has an affair with the "Countess" and the assembled soldiers get up to all sorts of mischief before being called up to deal with their foe. Peter Falk stands out as the sergeant "Rossi" - who likes his bread, and Bruce Dern pops up too as "Lt. Bix" who seems to have found God - a bit late in the day, maybe? The whole thing is vaguely surreal as some of the platoon care about the artworks (like Paul Schofield in "The Train" - another Lancaster film from 1964) whilst others are very much living for the moment, but as the inevitability of it all sinks in it becomes rather a sad siege story that resembled the three little piggies and the wolf - in the straw version of their house. This is a curious film that I think would have worked better in black and white, somehow colour sanitises it just a bit too much - but it is worth watching.

Burt Lancaster leads the able cast assembled here for a WWII tale of an eyepatch wearing Major and his team of quirky characters, who take over the isolated Belgian castle of a Count played by Jean-Pierre Aumont. They are determined to defend it from the Germans, even as the war is starting to move towards a conclusion. The Captain on the team, a man named Beckman (Patrick O'Neal), knows that he would rather the Nazis not get their hands on the vast treasures taking up space inside this castle.

"Castle Keep" is based on a novel by William Eastlake, and is directed by Sydney Pollack, the latter making one of his more intriguing films. It does come off as a bit pretentious and self-consciously "arty" at times, but at the same time does make some interesting parallels between art and war. Beckman, in fact, tries to drive this idea home to a rather disinterested bunch of soldiers, as he gives them a lecture on art history.

This picture does become more conventional as it goes along, delivering some genuinely intense battle scenes that are pretty exciting. Overall, it's still more of a war drama "for the thinking person", albeit with some memorable absurdist humour. (Scott Wilson plays a Private named Clearboy who becomes enamoured of a Volkswagen, and saves it from receiving a death sentence.)

Lancaster is efficient as always, in a rather unsympathetic role, but concedes the major acting showcases to under-rated actors such as O'Neal and Al Freeman Jr. (as the Private with literary aspirations), and the typically amusing Peter Falk as a Sergeant who temporarily puts fighting on hold to pursue his more valued vocation of baker. The excellent ensemble also includes the gorgeous Astrid Heeren as the Countess, Tony Bill as the serious-minded Lieutenant, James Patterson as the "Indian" soldier Elk, Bruce Dern as a conscientious objector who's found religion, and Michael Conrad as Sergeant DeVaca.

This viewer would agree that "Castle Keep" is not for all tastes. However, it does provide a striking and surreal alternative to the traditional war film.

Seven out of 10.

I remember watching Castle Keep many times as a youngster. The film was a staple on local TV and showed up several times a year. I loved it then and recently saw it again, for the first time in 20 years, on TCM. The film has lost none of its lustre and in its widescreen format is even better than before. Cinematographer Henri Decae (The 400 Blows) creates a surreal fairytale atmosphere without sacrificing wartime realism in this tale of stranded GIs in the Ardennes at the end of World War II. The squad, led by an eye-patched Burt Lancaster, try to halt the German advance by hunkering down in a medieval castle that has been miraculously unaffected by the tribulations of the war. The film has echoes of Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast and it's stylistic contemporary, King of Hearts, but stands on it's own as a superb philosophical exploration of warfare and violence. If you enjoyed A Midnight Clear, you will enjoy Castle Keep.

I had been wanting to check this one out for over 20 years (it used to be available as a VHS rental at the local outlet but I never got around to it) but especially after reading up on the film on the internet since its 2004 DVD release(s) where its unusual "artiness" a'-la Alain Resnais' LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD (1961) was played up. Now that I've watched CASTLE KEEP for myself, all I can say is that it's arguably the strangest mainstream war movie ever and decidedly not for all tastes!

The relatively large cast (for what turns out to be an introspective film) is uniformly excellent and is well up to the requirements of the brilliantly surreal, funny and literate script; Burt Lancaster, wearing an eye-patch throughout, has an unsympathetic role as the formidable leader of a group of misfit soldiers taking over a Belgian castle against unseen invading German troops. He is skillfully abetted by Peter Falk (as a soldier who abandons his post to indulge in his vocation as a baker), Jean-Pierre Aumont (as the "degenerate" owner of the titular castle), Patrick O'Neal (as a celebrated art historian all at sea on the battleground but well in his element surrounded by the castle's objets d' art), Scott Wilson (as a soldier who gets into quite a unique relationship – more on this later), Tony Bill (as the most spiritual of the men) and, the other side of the coin, Bruce Dern as a Bible-thumping conscientious objector who walks the Belgian rubbles with his ragged band of revivalist deserters-followers. The terrific cinematography of the awesome European locations – courtesy of Henri Decae – is complimented by a fine Michel Legrand score and, when they finally come, spectacular battle sequences.

But it's the odd, surreal touches – including Scott Wilson falling in love with a Volkswagen, the same car rising from the sea after it has been drowned by his envious companions and floating ashore all by itself, the moving sequence between Tony Bill and an unseen German soldier (subsequently needlessly shot by Peter Falk) where the latter teaches the former how to play the flute correctly, the unusually realistic talk of fornication, sexual organs, impotence, the ambiguous (perhaps ghostly) nature of the characters involved and the events being enacted, etc. – which really make this show stand out from the crowd of WWII spectaculars and stick in one's memory – not to mention endear it to its legion of fans (who have famously decried online its original abominable pan-and-scan DVD incarnation, forcing Sony to re-release it in the correct Widescreen aspect ratio a mere four months later). The theme of the relevance of art in times of war brings forth comparisons to John Frankenheimer's THE TRAIN (1964), also starring Burt Lancaster, whose third (and final) collaboration with director Sydney Pollack – after the previous year's THE SCALPHUNTERS and THE SWIMMER (where Pollack replaced original director Frank Perry but goes uncredited) – this proved to be…perhaps as a result of the critical beating the film received upon its original release!