Year:
1981
Rating: 7.0This Nazi WW II spy film jumps around for
the first hour without creating much tension or narrative cohesion and then
bang, throws us into a hell storm of emotion and suspense. Beautifully acted
by Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan, it is based on a book by Ken Follett.
I am not sure how well Follett is remembered now but he was an enormously
popular author in the 1980s and actually mentions my father in one of his
non-fiction books. So I have a soft spot for him. This is an intriguing film
to follow. The main protagonist is a Nazi spy who has come to England to
help Germany win the war. He is ruthless and dedicated and it is hard to
know how we are supposed to feel about him. If it was an American in Germany
doing the same, we would be rooting for him. But he is a Nazi and has information
as to where the Allied invasion is going to land.
Sutherland is chameleon like as he can charm
you one moment and stick a blade in you the next as his eyes go cold and
empty. This has allowed him to stay ahead of the authorities for four years
as he gathers information on the war effort and transmits it back to Germany
on his portable radio. Anyone who gets in his way meets his stiletto up close
and personal. Landlady, friend, stranger. It doesn't matter. He has a job
to do. We get no sense of who he is beyond the personality he wishes to project.
Till perhaps the end.
In the other eventually connecting thread,
Nelligan has just married a RAF pilot (Christopher Cazenove) and on their
honeymoon there is a car accident and his legs are crippled. They move to
as isolated a Scottish island as one can get to raise sheep. They have one
old neighbor, are supplied once a month but have a transmitter radio. And
a young son who I wanted to kick. It almost feels like a D.H. Lawrence novel.
The continuous rain just adds to the misery.
On to this island comes a shipwrecked bedraggled
Sutherland who had been trying to reach a German sub with his information
that Normandy was the landing area. The scenes of him battling the storm
are brilliantly shot. Once he and Nelligan meet up, the film takes on a completely
different character - slow, lyrical, sexual and then frantic and incredibly
intense. He has to contact the sub. She needs to stop him. This was directed
by Richard Marquand who until this time had very little on his resume (The
Legacy), but George Lucas was so impressed by this film that he offered him
Return of the Jedi.
