The Night of the Generals

1967 UK
Dir: Anatole Litvak
Str: Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Tom Courtenay, Donald Pleasence

Is this movie really a bomb? What do you think about Peter
O'Toole's expressionless expression.
According to some reviewers, this movie is a bomb, or a turkey, or whatever they say of disastrous movies. One reason why they say so seems to be derived from the fact that Peter O'Toole's performance is lifeless. But I think this remark is slightly pointless, for he is actually acting such a lifeless person as exactly depicted in the movie. It is true his performance of convulsing his cheeks in front of the Gogh's self-portrait looks phony. But, anyway, his expressionless face makes even the slightest mechanical movement on his face noticeable. And, at the same time, all these mechanical aspects of his physical feature are well reflecting his internal hollowness and total madness.
What is Omar Sharif doing in Eastern Front?
On the other hand, the movie depicts completely an opposite person in showing passion and humanity. He, Omar Sharif, performs an investigator of murders committed by Peter O'Toole. He shows his passion for justice all the time. In spite of total destruction of civilian lives of Warsaw citizens, he persistently pursues the culprit of the murder of a prostitute. In a scene, he says to his friend Philip Noiret that what is admirable on the large scale is monstrous on the small scale. Furthermore, he says he doesn't want to have the murderer think himself a god or something like that. This view might sound quite normal in peace time, or rather for viewers. But, in the movie, his passion seems to be a little bit out of proportion considering the situation. As a proof of this, Donald Pleasance afterwards tells Philip Noiret who himself has become an inspector by then that he acted very strangely, for, when all the people at that time cared about the incident that could have drastically changed the course of the war (the assassination of Hitler), he alone was pursuing just a murderer of a prostitute. Probably it must have been very difficult to continue such an investigation, especially when the fate of the Third Reich was about to crumble down. Even it might be very dangerous behavior under the totalitarian dominion. Considering all of this, we can say his passion represents opposite extremity to Peter O'Toole, and no matter how genuine his intention seems to be, or rather the more genuine and passionate he is, paradoxically the more peculiar he looks.
Our evaluation process might not be able to be applied to the era
chaos dominates. Therefore, we must be careful when we evaluate
something that doesn't belong to our age.
By the way, the movie is also supposed to be a murder mystery. In this regard, I must admit that, when I saw this movie first time, I thought the murderer had to be none other than Donald Pleasance. Probably it is true he acted a weird person so many times that I felt he had to be the murderer this time again, which is not true in this movie's case. Afterwards I noticed some aspects of the film had fooled me into considering so. Usually we are inclined to suppose those who always are slaughtering people by mass unit wouldn't dare to commit a personal crime. Even Omar Sharif himself expresses a similar opinion in his monologue. But it suddenly becomes clear when the real murderer is rather prematurely revealed that it is completely wrong. Aforementioned evaluation is rather based upon the peace time point of view, and could be said retrospective. In the time chaos dominates, such kind of evaluation becomes useless. Because the essential aspect of chaos resides in total equalization of everything. You might think the essence of chaos should be violence. But it is not true, for violence is beginning of order, even if it could be a cause of chaos. I heard Japanese famous novelist Osamu Dazai prolonged his decision of killing himself further a year because he had found a kimono which he had never wore. Though there might be several meanings to be salvaged from this episode, it states his mental chaos very clearly. For him, the serious decision such as whether he should be alive or not could be easily juxtaposed with such mundane things like clothes or foods. Probably such is the case with Peter O'Toole's in the movie. For him, the killing of a prostitute has the significance of as much as the destruction of an entire city, or rather as little as the destruction of an entire city, and vice versa. As I am afraid some misunderstandings might come into, I must say I am not saying the killing of a prostitute should not be treated the same degree as the destruction of an entire city. From first, such a comparison is impossible and therefore meaningless. The point is, by such an equalization proccess caused by chaos, there might happen even the strangest thing we, who live in the era when all things are fully controlled and structured at least ostensibly, have never thought of.