Cross of Iron

"I will show you how a Prussian officer can fight."
"And I will show you where the Iron Crosses grow."


Background
Prior to sending Peckinpah a copy of Willi Heinrich's novel 'The Willing Flesh' with a view to collaborating with the maverick director on an adaptation, Wolf C. Hartwig's experience as a producer was limited to such masterpieces of world cinema as 'Mit Eva fing die Sunde an' ('Sin Began With Eve') and 'Schulmadchen-Report' (you'll get that one without the subtitles) parts 1 to 10. What this purveyor of pornography with a penchant for schoolgirl uniforms thought he was getting into is a matter for speculation.

Shooting took place in Yugoslavia, when production costs were cheap. Nonetheless, by the time shooting began, Hartwig had secured considerably less than the $4 million the film was budgeted at. His failings as a producer also extended to securing locations, ensuring costumes were ready and sets built by the appropriate time in the shooting schedule, and arranging the hire of military vehicles and hardware. In particular, Peckinpah had depended on the provision of a fleet of tanks and several aircraft. The aircraft never materialised and only three rusting, barely mobile tanks were made available. It's one of Peckinpah's great achievements on 'Cross of Iron' that he manages to make said tanks look like an entire approaching army.

Peckinpah's drinking was pronounced. Days were lost due to blackouts or confusion over scenes already shot. Weddle's biography has Peckinpah, after the picture has wrapped, discussing with his DoP the logistics of a huge battle scene that would never be shot. With money not just running out but unavailable to begin with, Peckinpah sunk $90,000 of his own savings into the production. Then Hartwig and co-producer Alex Winitsky arrived on set with the news that the scripted denouement was not to be filmed and a new, audience-friendly and (crucially) cheap to film ending was to replace it. Peckinpah was so distraught that star James Coburn took it upon himself to inform Hartwig and Winitsky in vehemently unambiguous terms that the film was going to end the way Peckinpah intended it; he also threw their asses off the set.

'Cross of Iron' finished filming as per the original ending and to Peckinpah's dictates. Sadly, it made little impression at the box office and, desperate to recoup his investment in it, Peckinpah accepted another director-for-hire assignment: the execrable 'Convoy'.

Synopsis
The Russian Front, 1943. Sergeant Steiner (James Coburn) leads his tight-knit troop back from an incursion behind enemy lines to discover that a new officer has been transferred in. Captain Stransy (Maximillian Schell) is Prussian, rigidly bound by the hierarchy of rank and has one objective: to win the Iron Cross. To put it mildly, Steiner and Stransky don't get on. A Russian attack on their position results in heavy losses and Steiner is badly injured. While recuperating in a field hospital, Steiner enters into a brief relationship with a nurse, Eva (Senta Berger). Rather than spin out his convalescence, however, he rejoins several of his men who have been deemed fit enough to be returned to active duty. Back at the front line, Stransky attempts to solicit Steiner as a witness to a report that paints the German counter-attack as successful (actually it was a shambles) and his part in it heroic (actually he proved himself a coward). Steiner refuses. Another sortie behind enemy lines sees Steiner and his men faced with a dangerous crossing through no-man's-land. Stransky seizes the opportunity to take Steiner out ...

Analysis
David Weddle quotes James Coburn recalling pre-production on 'Cross of Iron'. The actor accompanied Peckinpah to the German film archives in Koblenz. They viewed German newsreel footage and Third Reich documentaries. In London they accessed similar archives. "We'd see this German newsreel film ... of some battle. Then when we got to London we saw the same footage edited completely differently for a propaganda film for the Russians. It's like there was this independent film unit out there shooting the war and selling the footage to both sides! Two totally different ideologies were editing it for their own purposes. So what we realised - and this really hit Sam - was that they were both liars."

This revelation clearly informs the opening credits sequence. A masterclass in montage and juxtaposition - right down to the soundtrack, which alternates between the innocent and plaintive strains of a child singing a folk song and a bombastically militaristic orchestral score - Peckinpah crafts a panoply of archive material into a provocative and brilliantly realised four minute mini-movie.

The opening credits already establish themselves as one of the film's great set-pieces. Others include the Russian onslaught and disastrous counter-attack, which segues into the sequence dealing with Steiner's experiences in the field hospital. Peckinpah's use of montage and editing are again unparalleled. In a purely imagistic fashion, he takes us from the visceral reality of the battlefield into a landscape that is bleaker, more disturbing and infinitely more difficult to conjure on film: that of his protagonist's psychological state, Steiner's mind fragmented by trauma. The cut from muzzle flash to the pencil beam of a nurse's torch strobing across Steiner's eyes is joltingly effective.

As the agitation of Steiner's mind subsides during his spell at the hospital, Peckinpah uses his relationship with Eva and a supposedly morale-boosting visit from a high-ranking office to make an almost Nietzschean comment on the effects on humanitarian behaviour by protracted conditions of war. "Do you love the war so much?" Eva demands at one point."Is that what's wrong with you, Steiner? Are you afraid of what you will do without it?" Steiner departs wordlessly and returns to the front. The scene is in stark contrast to an earlier moment during the bigwig's visit: the officer inspects the injured men, shaking hands and wishing them a quick recovery (naturlich: he wants them returned to active duty ASAP). Offering his hand to a heavily bandaged soldier in a wheelchair, a stump is thrust out at him in return. The officer hesitates then proffers his left hand. Another stump. The officer looks almost affronted and withdraws his hand. The soldier brings his leg sharply up in what can be taken as both a brutal parody of the Nazi salute and how much he'd like to kick the officer in the balls.

The blunt absence of sentimentality evidenced in these scenes is characteristic of 'Cross of Iron' at its most successful. Steiner's pragmatism is as unsparingly and minimalistically expressed as Pike Bishop's. His pre-reconnaisance instructions to the platoon: "Just bring what you need to kill with." On being questioned as to why some of his men died: "Bullets, mortar fire, artillery salvoes, bad luck, syphillis, the usual things." On religion: "I believe God is a sadist but probably doesn't even know it." The film's aesthetic demonstrates how Steiner's character has been formed: his antagonism towards his superiors is a natural by-product of his tight, "by example" leadership of his men. Steiner's only loyalty is to his men. There is no loyalty to country, to cause, to politics. As with Wolfgang Petersen's 'Das Boot', you quickly forget the characters are German; they simply become men, their souls brutalised by the horrors of war, their survival a day-to-day business. Uniforms look identical when plastered with mud or riddled with bullets. A photograph of Hitler is jarred from its position by mortar fire in an early scene and never rehung. Stransky's obsession with winning the Iron Cross is punctured when Colonel Brandt (James Mason) blithely says "Oh, we can give you one of mine" and unclips it from his tunic. The Iron Cross is thus devalued; worth no more than the "tin bill" that Will mocks Pat Garrett for wearing or the one that Sheriff Baker keeps in a kitchen drawer. The point is rammed home by Steiner (who, like Brandt, has been awarded the medal) in one of his frequent disagreements with Stransky:

Steiner: Why do you want it so badly? It's just a worthless piece of metal. Look.
Stransky: It's not worthless to me.
Steiner: Why is it so important to you? Tell me, Captain, why?
Stransky: Sergeant, if I go back without the Iron Cross, I couldn't face my family.

For all that the opening credits explicitly establish time, place and nationality, such specificity swiftly drains away as scene after scene plays out against the constant falling of shells in the background, In an early scene, a photograph of Hitler is jarred from its position when a shell lands nearby and is never rehung. The only other time Hitler is mentioned is during this telling exchange:

Steiner: Didn't your Fuhrer say that all class distinctions were to be abolished?
Stransky: I am an officer of the Wehrmacht! I have never been a Party member. I am a Prussian aristocrat and I don't want to be put into the same category.
Steiner: We agree for once.

'Cross of Iron' isn't about nationality; it's about class. It's about what smidgin of humanity can survive under continual bombardment, the omnipresence of death and the futility of war itself. It's about debunking the myth, present in cinema throughout the history of the medium, that conflict is iconic, heroic and glorious. It's about stealing the war movie back from propagandists. Sam Fuller's 'The Big Red One' posits that "the only glory in war is to survive". 'Cross of Iron' questions even this dictum. Peckinpah closes 'Cross of Iron' - his last great movie - with a quote from Berthold Brecht: "Don't rejoice in his defeat, you mean. For though the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again."

In 'Cross of Iron' there is no glory. None whatsoever.

PERSONAL FAVES: North by Northwest

In the late 50s, Alfred Hitchcock was attached to an adaptation of Hammond Innes’ novel ‘The Wreck of the Mary Deare’. At the suggestion of his frequent collaborator, the composer Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock engaged Ernest Lehman to write the script. Lehman wrestled with the adaptation for a while, but couldn’t find a balance between the tense opening of the novel and the static courtroom drama it develops into. Hitch encourage him to write something else*. Lehman confessed that he’d always wanted to write “the ultimate Hitchcock movie”. Ideas were batted back and forth: some made it into the movie (a murder at the U.N., a crop-dusting plane, some vertiginous business on Mount Rushmore) and some didn’t (a murder at a Detroit auto plant, a tornado).

A decade beforehead, Hitchcock had discussed with journalist Otis Guernsey an idea based on a story Guernsey had stumbled on during the war: a fictitious British agent whose peregrinations had led his German counterparts a merry dance. Guernsey had prepared a treatment, but nothing progressed beyond that. With Lehman on board, the pieces started falling into place.

The plot – on the off-chance anyone reading this has been living in a cave for most of their life and hasn’t seen one of the most famous and oft-referenced (most recently in the ‘Family Guy’ episode “North by North Quahog”) movies ever made – involves slick ad man Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) being mistaken for a secret agent called Kaplan. Thing is, Kaplan doesn’t exist. He’s a figment of the imagination of a spymaster known only as The Professor (Leo G. Carroll), invented to draw attention away from The Professor’s real operative, who has successfully infiltrated the ranks of an organisation run by the sophisticated but sinister Vandamm (James Mason).

When Vandamm’s men kidnap him, Thornhill protests that he’s not Kaplan. This cuts no ice. They force a bottle of bourbon down him and bundle him behind the wheel of a car. He survives, but is picked up by the police – to the social embarrassment of his mother (Jessie Royce Landis)**. The police disbelieve his story and Thornhill sets out to track down Kaplan. His investigations lead him to the United Nations, where he’s set up for a murder. On the run from the authorities, trying to survive the murderous overtures of Vandamm’s henchmen, Thornhill meets mysterious blonde Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) and finds that romantic entanglements are just as compromising as anything in the murky world of espionage.

So: is ‘North by Northwest’ the ultimate Hitchcock film? I’ll leave that for others to decide. For my money, it’s certainly the quintessential Hitchcock film:

It’s got a cracking score by Bernard Herrmann (and perhaps his most recognisable after ‘Psycho’).

It’s got an iconic title sequence by Saul Bass – titles and music have seldom gelled to such masterful effect as they do here.

It’s got an innocent-man-on-the-run narrative so beloved of the director (from ‘The 39 Steps’ in 1935 to ‘Frenzy’ in 1972, it’s arguably the overriding theme in Hitchcock’s filmography).

It’s got a knockout blonde with a designer wardrobe to die for.

It’s got a MacGuffin (a bit of microfilm, but who cares about microfilm when there’s planes and trains and chases and elegant blondes to look at?).

Lehman’s script is a masterpiece of narrative propulsion, joining the dots between the set-pieces with such speed and glib humour that stopping to examine the construct under the critical lens would just be bad sportsmanship. The whole film is, let’s be honest, built upon nothing of any real substance. It’s a cinematic soufflé. In the hands of many a director, it would have collapsed the moment it emerged from post-production. Hitch keeps the pace fast without being hectic, the tone light without being spoofy, the story intriguing without being overly convoluted.

He’s served by a great cast: Cary Grant is the perfect choice for Thornhill, Landis is hilarious, Saint is arguably the most appealing of Hitchcock’s heroines, and Mason does cultured/amoral/sinister with stylish aplomb.

I really don’t need to talk about the set-pieces, do I?

Or the deeply unsubtle Freudian symbolism of the last shot? It says something that the cut from Grant helping Saint into a couchette bunk to the train thundering into the tunnel is pretty much the only bit of symbolism in a film loaded with visual iconography. It’s Hitchcock’s instruction to people like me who can’t watch a movie without feeling the need to hammer out 800 words afterwards: it’s entertainment: don’t analyse it – just enjoy it.



* ‘Wreck of the Mary Deare’, directed by Michael Anderson from a screenplay by Eric Ambler, was released the same year as ‘North by Northwest’. It proved Lehman’s point: the courtroom scenes are static and unengaging.

**Landis was 63 when the film was made, just eight years older than Grant.