lotus49

This film is very, very loosely based on a French film called Spoorloos, done in 1988. In that film the fiancé of a man is abducted from a roadside stop, leading to his frantic 3 year search and public campaign to find out what happened to her. It is a haunting tale of loss and random evil, mixed in with obsessive guilt and fixation. By watching Breakdown and Spoorloos you can see the difference between the European genre of exposing human frailties, without redemption, and the American genre of righteous retribution. The American film is by far the less intriguing.. being no more than a little nuanced potboiler of good over evil, with the usual facile stereotypes you find in Hollywood films, and of course, car chase. Spoorloos delves into the complexities of the human condition Breakdown can only poorly imitate.

An unusual piece of film work that was better conceived than executed. The narrative storyline belies and ambiguous framework that penetrates the interplay of marriage and subliminal sexual longings. Kari Wuhrur is outstanding and gorgeous in the character of the wife with the heart of gold -- driven by love, lust and the need to compensate for (or complete) her husband's distorted sense of priorities. Don't take the overt story to narrowly and a host of deeper purposes present themselves.

This film quickly disappeared with little notice after its release in 1965, but has a number of memorable of scenes. A theatrical movie, propelled by strong performances by the entire cast, it all takes place in military prison, in the drenching heat of the Libyan desert in WW2. The central icon of the film is a man built punishment hill, which prisoners are required to climb repeatedly with full pack. There is a great deal of ambiguity and irony in the film, a most difficult task for a director appealing to a modern audience. The clearly cut boundaries between good and evil are obscured by the sense of righteousness of all the characters. leading to a collision of irreconcilable intentions. No one is really a hero, and the villainy of the prison guards, even the most sadistic, seems contained by the proper British regard for 'reforming' these wayward people into proper soldiers. But as one of the prisoners states, everybody is serving time in this outpost. The most remarkable moment amongst many in the film comes when the the Regimental Sargeant Major (played by Harry Andrews), by far the most complex of the characters, quells a prison riot by sheer force of personality and graveyard humour. The competing forces of discipline, frustration, compassion, fear makes for compelling drama.