Castle Keep

This 1969 film is an example of how a film can be so defined by the time-period in which it's filmed that it becomes instantly dating, curdling like milk left out in the sun. The trippiest World War II combat film you're likely to see, it's easy to imagine the entire crew wearing Nehru jackets and peace medallions, the aroma of cannabis redolent at the craft services table.

The plot concerns a squadron of eight American soldiers, led by an eye-patch wearing, tough as nails major, Burt Lancaster. They are traveling through Belgium, and come across a medieval castle owned by a fancy-pants royal (Jean-Pierre Aumont). The American soldiers are the typical assortment of types: the Southerner they call Cowboy, a phlegmatic Italian baker (Peter Falk), an eminent art historian (Patrick O'Neal), the quiet and religious guy (Tony Bill) and the narrator of all this, a black kid who is writing a novel (Al Freeman, Jr.) Of course, troops were segregated back in that war, but I think they slipped a line in there about Freeman being separated from his unit.

Lancaster wants to hold off the oncoming Germans by using the castle as a fortress, which dismays both Aumont and O'Neal, who sees all the treasures inside. The film becomes a stand-off between the impersonal destruction of war versus the civilization of art. Meanwhile, director Sydney Pollack employs every trick in the sixties cinema book, such as jump cuts, hallucinatory images, and just plain weirdness. Falk wanders off and starts working in the local bakery, wooing the wife of the actual baker, who has presumably died in the war. The enlisted men frolic at the town's bordello, called the Red Queen, with whores who seem to have been cast from the Playboy Mansion. And Lancaster plays house with Aumont's wife, who if I heard correctly is also his niece.

As with almost all World War II films made during the Vietnam period, this film is really about that conflict, pointing out the futility of war and how men on both sides are all really the same. I suppose this film would play much better at a midnight show after a few bong hits, but in the sober-eyed twenty-first century, it comes as more than a little ridiculous and pretentious.