warfilmman
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Registered: 02-2005
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The Blockhouse
The Blockhouse - 1974
A fascinating true story, that doesn’t quite make it to the screen in a memorable fashion. The film was the labour of love of director Clive Rees, who took the French book and turned it into a film. The film was dogged by bad luck, and both artists and crew lacked confidence in the final result.
In June 1944 Todt workers in France take shelter in an underground Blockhouse, part of the Atantic Wall, during an attack by a British Spitfire. During the raid the top part of the bunker collapses and the 7 men of different nationalities make their way down a 30 metre shaft to get away from the bombs. The raid continues and the entrance to the lower part is totally sealed by rubble, killing one of the 7 (losing Alfred Lynch’s character in the process). The remaining 6 then face the prospect of dying in the darkness below, until they find huge German stocks of food and wine. Forgotten by the rest of the world, they live in this way for nearly 7 years, until freed by workers dismantling the defences. You are told at the beginning of the film that only 2 men will survive, and during the 90 odd minutes of the film the 4 other succumb to madness, suicide and hopelessness in the concrete labyrinth of their world.
The cast is exceptional, Peter Sellers excels in a straight role, matched by Jeremy Kemp, Peter Vaughn, Nicolas Jones and Charles Aznavour every step of the way. The film was shot on location in actual German positions in Guernsey, giving an incredibly realistic claustrophobic ambience, but at the same time making problems for the sound department. In fact the film is hard to watch and understand, even with the volume whacked up. Its understandable given the nature of the plot to have all the scenes lit by candles, but to have muffled almost undecipherable sound too is unforgivable. Also I am stuck with the 1980s US video release (the film scarcely made it to the big screen), which according to users of the IMdb is missing a good 15 minutes of footage, including the cause of death of one of the men. Nevertheless I would consider this worthy of the phrase “flawed masterpiece”. Certainly it’s a pleasure in seeing Peter Sellers restrained for while, and also to see Jeremy Kemp’s considerable talents, an actor who despite a string of mid-sixties co-starring roles, notably Operation Crossbow and The Blue Max with George Peppard is not in the ranks of Richard Harris, Michael Caine and Albert Finney today.
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2/12/2005, 3:17 am
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