Review by Gary Tooze

Production:

Disc:

Video:

Audio:

• Commentary with Judith Mayne and John E. Davidson

• 8-page liner notes leaflet with chapters, cast, crew and photos

Bitrate:

 

Description: Set during the closing days of WWII this gritty, claustrophobic mix of Film Noir and psychological suspense follows the doomed escape of a group of Nazi's as they flee for South America aboard a submarine hoping to evade their fate in Europe. Cannnes winner for Best Adventure Film and Crime Film.

This classic film is being fully restored and re-mastered and will be offered on Blu-ray for the first time. Includes a bonus documentary and feature length audio commentary/conversation between French and German film scholars.

 

 

***

Having had more than a casual acquaintance with the heel of the oppressor during the war years, the French have been able to observe his mind with clarity if not with philosophical detachment. And in "The Damned" (Les Maudits), a melodrama with pronounced psychological overtones, which began a stand at the Rialto on Saturday, director René Clement and an excellent cast microscopically dissect the oppressor and collaborator under the harrowing duress of fear of impending retribution after the end of the conflict. The view is realistic—not pretty—but the end result is a film, which except for a somewhat flamboyant finish, is a taut, wholly believable and absorbing adventure.

The producers, apparently taking literally the old saw having to do with rats on a sinking ship, have set the tale moving in April of 1945 when a Nazi general, a high-ranking gauleiter and his aide board a U-boat in a pen at Oslo. Already aboard are an Italian Fascist industrialist, his wife, who also happens to be the general's mistress, a renegade French newspaper man and a timorous Scandinavian scientist and his 'teen-aged daughter. The voyage toward South America is halted at the outset by a depth-bomb attack which wounds the industrialist's wife and necessitates surreptitiously landing in France and kidnapping a doctor. The latter, cognizant that he is not long for this world, uses the only weapon at his command, his medical knowledge, to spread a false "psychosis of contagion" among the tense members of what he terms a "veritable Noah's Ark."

Alekan’s skill is not, alas, at full maturity in every frame of this often crudely lit, excessively shadowy production, but there’s an excellent, viscerally wobbly, Paths-of-Glory-trench-cam reverse tracking shot as Guilbert is lured down the full length of the sub to attend to Marly's flaky diva, little realising that the boat will pull away before he has the chance to disembark; he's thereby held captive for his continued medical expertise before the assembled fugitives grasp that his presence is potentially treacherous, if not disastrous. The other visual highlight is an on-shore episode involving negotiations with a turncoat agent (Marcel Dalio, top-billed for a virtual cameo) who plans to sell them all downriver now that Hitler’s death in the bunker has hit the airwaves: a wily young German adjutant (Michel Auclair) tries to strike a deal to make his getaway, hiding in a warehouse full of coffee-bean sacks which Alekan treats to a welcome touch of overhead expressionism. Otherwise, functional claustrophobia is the order of the day, with as many talking heads crammed into the average frame as possible, while morale frays and the less fervent buddies of the Führer start panicking about when to desert this figuratively sinking ship, and how.

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Stock Naval Footage sample

 

Audio :

Cohen offer a new, and excellent commentary with Judith Mayne (author of Cinema and Spectatorship - Sightlines) and John E. Davidson. It covers quite a lot of the narrative with many fine interpretations. It is in English via a linear PCM stereo track. We also get The Cinema of Sketches - Dominique Mallet's 2010 documentary running close to an hour plus a 2013 re-release trailer. The package contains an 8-page liner notes leaflet with chapters, cast, crew and photos.

BOTTOM LINE:
Highly interesting premise (Nazis and supporters are escaping from Germany) and, although I knew very little of the film, was surprised and enjoyed by the claustrophobic submarine atmosphere. There is a lot going on here - quite a different film from Clement's Forbidden Games. The Cohen Blu-ray of The Damned adds does its job in allowing us to see the film, in its best possible presentation, and with the commentary and hour-long documentary add a lot of value to the experience. This is a great package and for those students of world cinema - we, absolutely, recommended! 

Gary Tooze

August 2nd, 2013