Take One (Jul 1978)

FILM REVIEWS LE DESERT DB FART ARES Directed by Valerio Zurlini A French / German / Italian / Iranian coproduction. Director: Valerio Zurlini. Producers: Jacques Perrin, Michelle de Broca. Screenplay: André G. Brunelin, Jean-Louis Bertucelli, from the novel by Dino Buzzatt. Photography: Luciano Tovoft. Music: Ennio Morricone. Sets and Costumes: Giancarlo Salimbeni. Cast: Max von Sydow, Jacques Perrin, Fernando Rey, Helmut Griem, Vittoria Gassman, Guiliano Gemma, Francisco Rabal, Phillipe Notret, Laurent Terzieff, Jean-Louis Trintignant. Let me begin with a couple of confessions of ignorance. I knew nothing about Dino Buzzati’s novel before seeing this movie version, and I had never seen any of Valerio Zurlini’s many renowned movies before, either. Consequently, Le Désert des Tartares held my interest, not as an adaptation or an auteur piece, but as an intriguing addition to the quintessential 1970s genre, the Paranoia Movie. It’s Beau Geste Meets Kafka, or Alan Pakula’s Parallax people loose in the world of Fort Apache; it’s an expensive, even epic piece of wierdness. Young Lt. Drogo (Jacques Perrin, the Michael York of France) rides to distant Fort Bastiano, on the fringes of the desert. Quickly he encounters some familiar types—the aristocratic, but fairminded commandant (Vittorio Gassman), the would-be-aristocratic-but-far-from-fairminded born-killer major (Guiliano Gemma), the quirky seen-it-all doctor (JeanLouis Trintignant), the dourly efficient proletarian sergeant (Francisco Rabal) and, most importantly, the aloofly enigmatic Captain Hortiz (Max von Sydow). The latter’s cryptic remarks gradually reveal a terrible secret under the fortress’s order and discipline. But what the hell is the secret? Once, long ago, Captain Hortiz was on duty at the outpost on the very edge of the desert wastes, a mile or two from the actual fort. He saw something; not quite knowing what, but suspecting an attack from the never-seen tribesmen said to be living in the desert, he sounded the alarm, but nothing—no attack, no people, even— materialized. Did he imagine the danger? Is he a paranoiac? Or is there a real danger lurking still out there somewhere? No one really seems to know, but everyone seems at the very least wary. Only one soldier in the entire fort, the elderly Lt.-Col. Nathanson (Fernando Rey), has ever actually participated in combat. Racked by wounds, clad in a permanent iron corset, Nathanson utters not a single word to a soul. One day, on outpost duty, Drogo spots a strange white horse. ‘‘It is a Tartar horse!’’, the sergeant tells him, with an ill-disguised, unexplained terror. Tartars? Tartars? But no attack comes. One of the fort’s own privates is accidentally killed, much to the delight of the sadistic major. A troop rebels against him, and undergoes punishment. The major, to our surprise, is transferred. Drogo sees something—a track of some sort? a guideline for a possible attack?—in the desert, and so does Hortiz, but the latter denies it. No attack comes. The commandant is transferred. No attack again. Hortiz is now in charge. Now, surely, his destiny, as he sees it, will be fulfilled—now +shey, whoever they are, will attack, especially as Hortiz now admits to seeing the track he’d denied before. But no attack comes. Time passes. Finally, even Hortiz has to leave. He kills himself in the desert, finding no signs of life. Drogo is left as second-in-command to the scarcely more experienced Lt. Siméon (Helmut Griem). The alarm is sounded; Destiny? Madness? The collective unconscious? Certainly a desertscape of the mind. but no attack comes. Drogo sees horsemen near the fort; but no attack comes. Finally, Drogo’s health disintegrates, and he is ordered to leave. As his carriage exits from Bastiano for the last time, he hears the alarm again, and we get a glimpse of horsemen on the horizon, but who they are and what’s happening remain an unexplained mystery. Destiny? Madness? The collective unconscious? Certainly, Le Désert des Tartares is a desertscape of the mind, and the occasional Sternbergian flourish in Zurlini’s direction is entirely appropriate. Unfortunately, it’s not just the possibly-nonexistant Them figures who provide all the mystification. Actual background details are never quite forthcoming; those with more knowledge of military matters might be able to identify the uniforms, but I couldn’t, and I got the sneaking suspicion we weren’t supposed to. It’s vaguely fim de siécle, but very vaguely so; we get no glimpses of primitive automobiles, for instance, and no famous historical names are dropped. We don’t even find out the nature of Lt.-Col. Nathanson’s wounds, or at what battles he got them. Nowhere-land, in short. Drogo is first seen in what could quite easily be a French provincial town, but he travels only by horseback, and over land, and he finds himself at Fort Bastiano in seemingly no time. (The location work was mainly in Iran). And nowhere-people, too; all the characters have mames that are vaguely allusive without quite seeming to belong to any one nationality—Drogo, Horiz, Tronk, Fillimore, Mattis, Amerling, Rovene. Zurlini compounds our perplexity by multinational casting, with French (Perrin), Spanish (Rey, Rabal), German (Griem), Italian (Gassman, Gemma) and Swedish (von Sydow), and the dubbing of some of these famous actors by alien voices adds to the bother. The actors, too, are used in a confusing manner. When Alan Pakula used wellknown actors—such as Paula Prentiss, Kenneth Mars, Hume Cronyn and Anthony Zerbe—in small roles in The Parallax View, he knew exactly where he was at; there was no logical reason for any of them to have more than the few minutes of screen-time each had—we just, you know, sort of thought they, well, might, because they usually do, even on TV. But Zurlini keeps his famous faces around and, with a few exceptions, keeps them under wraps for all but a scene or two, and sometimes they don’t get that. Trintignant has next to nothing to do except seem worried and chew numerous cigars. Gassman exudes aristocratic charm in a void. Rey looks enigmatic, lets out a couple of brief moans and moves slowly. Frankly, it’s not enough, especially as Zurlini never moves beyond mystification and into terror, as Pakula, with his carefully delineated backgrounds of a real world, so dazzlingly did. The payoff that doesn’t quite explain things is an honourable enough artistic device, and films as varied as Lumet’s The Appozntment and Harvey’s They Might Be Giants have concluded deliberately in a manner that confuses us all over again to reasonable, satisfactory effect. But Zurlini’s film just makes us wait, for nigh on 2% hours, pulls no unforseeable twists, and grows tedious. En route, it’s only fair to add, there’s a good deal to interest us, but in a way that demands a stronger, more intricate finish. A genuine dread established in the early sequences gives way to a sense of howmuch-longer-will-it-take, and when Lt. Drogo finally quits the fort (to be devoured by Them? Or to live in an eternal agony of not knowing?), one merely wishes he’d gotten the hell out a lot earlier. Pierre Greenfield Pierre Greenfield is a veteran film soctety organizer and writer based in Haverfordwest, South Wales. 13