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A certain aspect of Meet John Doe needed clarification, apparently, so Jules Dassin takes a sledgehammer to the allegory. It begins with a flaming cross in the corner of the CinemaScope screen, Greece under Ottoman rule, insurgents and collaborators. The hillside town prospers under Church (Fernand Ledoux) and Capital (Gert Fröbe), the Turkish overseer (Grégoire Aslan) disentangles himself from rich foods and pretty boys long enough to shrug at their Passion Play reenactment. "Go ahead, crucify each other." Roles are assigned: Dodgy postman (René Lefèvre) and fat cat's son (Maurice Ronet) as apostles, wanton widow (Melina Mercouri) as Mary Magdalene, butcher (Roger Hanin) as Judas, and shepherd (Pierre Vaneck) as Jesus. "Perfect on a spiritual level," homilies about charity are put to the test in the face of starving refugees from a decimated village. "Why would human kindness be a miracle?" A mirror of the war, filmed in Crete with rugged landscapes and singing-praying-wailing choruses and, as Truffaut's Cahiers du Cinéma review goes, "nothing but nobility, nobility, and more nobility." Compassion is "cholera" to complacent order, it cures a peasant's stutter and gives the indecisive fancy-pants a bit of spine. The chapel becomes a dungeon, excommunication is followed by switchblade and Pietà, the downtrodden priest (Jean Servais) quotes the Messiah at his most militant. "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." The expatriate's cri de coeur boils down to practicing what you preach, Dassin brings it all to an Eisensteinian pitch with doomed gallantry on rocky steps. The closing view from the barricades is answered by Jancsó. With Carl Möhner, Teddy Bilis, Lucien Raimbourg, Dimos Starenios, Nicole Berger, and Joe Dassin. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |