Gillo Pontecorvo – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: United Artists’ Mea Culpa: Why Flops Flopped, 1969-1971, Part Three

Box office hits like Never on Sunday (1960), La Dolce Vita (1960), Zorba the Greek (1964), A Man and a Woman (1966) and Z (1969) gave Hollywood the wrong idea. Studios believed they could take advantage of the cheaper costs of shooting in Europe, set up alliances with critically acclaimed French, Italian, Greek, German and Swedish directors as well as several top overseas marquee names, and create a pipeline of product to fill out release schedules with pictures that were as acceptable to neighborhood cinemas as to arthouses.

The reliance of United Artists on this source was as much to blame for the box office crisis it endured as the other films covered in the first two articles in this series. In many cases, the studio gave directors their head, not reining them in on budgets, allowing several final cut, and assuming that critics and awards at festivals like Cannes, Berlin and Venice would do the job of selling the product to the domestic market.

On the basis of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski winning the Golden Bear at Berlin for Le Depart / The Departure (1967) starring Jean-Luc Godard protege Jean-Pierre Leaud – and its subsequent arthouse success – UA bequeathed him big-budget The Adventures of Gerard (1970), set during the Napoleonic War, based on a book by Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, and headlined by rising British star Peter McEnery (Negatives, 1968) and established Italian import Claudia Cardinale (The Professionals, 1966) and a supporting cast including Jack Hawkins and Eli Wallach.

“The picture turned out to be one of the worst disasters in the history of the company,” the company directors told the shareholders. “It was the result of reliance on one of the new fashionable foreign film directors. The picture was beset by problems due to the unprofessional excesses…indulged in by the director.” The outcome was a movie that could not be reshaped into a “more acceptable form” and that ending up occupying “a limbo area between adventure and farce.” Prospects were so poor, the studio doubted if it would even recoup marketing and advertising costs never mind any of the production costs.

Theoretically, Burn! / Quiemada (1969) should have fared better. At least it had a proper star in Marlon Brando, even though his marquee value was being questioned. This had been placed in the hands of Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo whose The Battle of Algiers (1966) had been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. The studio had hoped to “combine interesting message with entertainment values.” However, personality conflict between director and star saw the picture to go “way over budget.” Prospects remained dim because “despite all efforts to persuade the director to reduce it to realistic length,” it was deemed overlong and “badly cut.” It fell between the stools of the arthouse audience who would have appreciated the message and the action audience who would have welcomed the more commercial elements. It was marked down for “a substantial loss.”

On the strength of a nomination for the Palme D’Or at Cannes for The Shop on Main Street (1965), the studio backed a project by its Hungarian director Jan Kadar. The Angel Levine (1970) attracted investment because the director had achieved “a certain cult,” the recording career of star Harry Belafonte had reached new heights, and the story was supposed to have a special appeal to ethnic groups. “Everything went wrong. The direction and performance came out slow and leaden. The story…didn’t work.” The picture was over budget and overlong. “The director could not be persuaded to make the necessary cuts” resulting in expectation of another “substantial loss.”

Italian director Elio Petri had enjoyed cult success with the offbeat sci fi The 10^th Victim (1965) starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. For A Quiet Place in the Country (1968) he had lined up top British Oscar-nominated actress Vanessa Redgrave and rising Italian star Franco Nero who had played lovers in Camelot (1967). It was greenlit at a time when the studio believed there was a wider market among discriminating audiences for foreign films previously restricted to arthouses. But it had become clear that films in this category faced “inevitable loss.”

You probably haven’t heard of That Splendid November (1969), greenlit to “fulfill a pay-or-play commitment to Italian star Gina Lollobrigida” (Strange Bedfellows, 1965). While targeting the European market, it was hoped it would do additional business in America. It didn’t. Once again, the director (Mauro Bolognini) was allowed too much leeway. He had not been “persuaded to make the changes that would improve its chances” while the studio discovered that La Lollo had lost her marquee luster.

However, United Artists had also committed to potential “breakout” pictures, foreign movies aimed at American arthouses. The bulk of the overseas pictures that had thrived in the U.S. had done so via the arthouse circuit after being favorably reviewed by critics. These were considered relatively low-cost and low-risk investments. But, as events proved, these were as big a gamble as more high-budget projects.

Red, White and Zero / The White Bus (1967) proved “an utter failure” despite the presence of three top British directors, Lindsay Anderson (This Sporting Life, 1963), Oscar-winner Tony Richardson (Tom Jones, 1963) and Peter Brook. Although made for the arthouse market, these proved fewer in number than anticipated when the film was greenlit.

A French heist film entitled Score “would not be made today,” admitted the UA executives. Hoping to capitalize on the caper genre, the studio discovered no one was interested. Three French pictures, Philippe de Broca’s Give Her the Moon (1970) starring Philippe Noiret, The American and Lent in the Month of March (1968), were written off due to the softening of the arthouse market, as was Yugoslavian number It Rains in My village (1968) starring Annie Girardot. French/Brazilian Pour Un Amour Lointain (1968), “one of the poorer foreign pictures,” had such dismal prospects it was denied U.S. distribution. German picture Gentlemen in White Vests (1970) lacked appeal even its home market.

SOURCE: “Comments supplementing notes to Balance Sheet and Statement of Operations of United Artists Corporation for 1970,” United Artists Archive, Box 1 Folder 12 (Wisconsin Center for Theater and Film Research).

Burn / Quiemada (1969) *****

May have lost its allegorical power now that Vietnam is no longer a cause but even more compelling for standing as a generic condemnation of imperialism. The Vietnam connection is invoked immediately as Englishman Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando) on arrival is told that the Portuguese conquered the island hundreds of years before simply by setting fire to it until all the natives had perished or fled and restocking it with slaves from elsewhere. For a 1960s audience, that summoned up images of U.S. military use of napalm and carpet bombing.

The idea must have stuck in Walker’s head because that’s exactly the strategy he devises towards the end of the movie. Beyond his title, and the fact that he looks and talks like an upper-class Englishman of the mid 1800s, Walker is one of these shady characters you often found in the Colonies doing shady work for the British government. While this island is ruled by the Portuguese rather than the British, that’s about to change since the British find Portuguese attitudes to free trade too restrictive.

So Walker sets about creating the spark for an explosion. Having earmarked the local bank for an easy heist, he recruits Jose Dolores (Evaristo Marquez) to head a team of locals. Of course, such a large-scale robbery ensures pursuit. Capture is evaded when Walker produces a cache of rifles aware that in defending themselves the natives will trigger revolution. Walker then goes to work on the upper-classes, explaining how much better off they would be if they could side with the rebellion and overthrow the Portuguese.

Mission accomplished, he scoots off home, only to return when corruption has so destroyed the island, now a British colony, that Jose Dolores is back creating rebellion. Old friend becomes foe and is ruthlessly hunted down.

You can’t help but admire Walker’s guile. To create a large enough distraction to pull off the robbery he simply gets the entire town population drunk on free booze, giving soldiers more than enough rioting to cope with. To provide the circumstances to assassinate the President, he takes advantage of the costuming for a festival, allowing people to sneak past guards in any disguise. But when cunning doesn’t work, it’s down to brute force. The group with the biggest army, more weapons and the greater degree of ruthlessness will always win.

This isn’t one of those movies that sets out to idolise a rebel leader or where a small band of outlaws outwit the ruling power with clever ruses or filled with duels or ambushes or full-on battles. This is about the puppeteers, the men who use violence for their own commercial ends.

Like General Custer, Walker is a man with a job to do, even while he might despise it and certainly is filled with disgust at the ruling party. He claims he is not the author of either group’s misfortune but merely “the instrument.” On his return, he argues, “I didn’t start it; when I arrived you were already butchering each other.” In other words, blameless, just following the orders of either government or employer. But he takes pride in doing his job “well,” no matter the cost.

Every action has consequence. Even attempting to save Jose Dolores’s life, it is with consequence in mind. Let him live and set him free elsewhere and he will be viewed as a traitor. Kill him and he will be seen as a martyr, the most dangerous currency for incipient rebellion.

He knows exactly what buttons to press. In order to convince the ruling band of natives to support revolution in the first place, he makes a comparison with prostitution. You hire a sex worker by the hour to fulfil a need, you are not required, as with a wife, to dress her and feed her and look after her for her entire life. Should the employers free their slaves, that would eliminate the need for a lifetime of care (no matter how little) but could hire them as required.

The brutality is not dwelt upon, no The Wild Bunch-style bloody carnage, just a growing number of corpses on either side depending which group has the upper hand. The difference between the brutal Portuguese and the sedate English is in their approach to execution. The Portuguese rely on the garotte, by which a steel band fixed round the neck is slowly twisted until life is extinguished. The English prefer the speed of the gallows.

Marlon Brando considered this one of his finest performances and I am inclined to agree. There is no showboating either way, neither inflating a character nor deflating him, as the actor was apt to do when playing a loser. Instead, Walker never loses a grip on his emotions, no temper, no tears, just saying whatever someone wanted to hear, guiding with a hidden hand, a man who might have invented the term “results-based.” It is the calmest you will ever see Brando, and you might catch elements of this portrayal in his Godfather pushing pawns into place. But you won’t see here a single explosion of anger. For a non-actor, Evaristo Marquez gives a superb performance, though mostly he is also restrained, as if he was learning from a master.

Director Gillo Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers, 1966) takes a semi-documentary approach to the subject, concentrating on the machinations, no attempt to pull audience heartstrings with images of poverty. The garotte death does the work of explaining the brutality to come.

But there are three brilliant scenes that showcase the unstoppable character of war. In the best, the rebels, trying to escape an island ablaze, seek shelter on the higher ground. But this arid region is also exposed, no jungle here to provide cover, and scrambling up the naked slopes they are picked off, in long shot, one by one.

In the second example, the closest Walker comes to emotion is waking up one morning to the sound of a gallows being built. He takes a moment, listening, aware perhaps, though unwilling to admit it, that the harvest of a seed sown is about to be reaped. Brando is such a good actor that sadness only appears as a flicker of regret that the rebellion he began took a wrong turn once it was taken over by the wrong hands.

And, technically, his hands are clean. He is never seen firing a weapon. In the last of this trio of scenes, the English introduce hanging to the island. But since no one possesses the expertise to make a noose strong enough to support a head, Walker shows how.

There are two versions of this movie. It was filmed as Quiemada and this version is 17 minutes longer than the one released as Burn! I would urge you to see the far more atmospheric former. Editing down the picture, the distributors took out much of the background material. As a plus, there is a score by Ennio Morricone.

One of the best films ever made about the politics of war and the destructive force of commerce.