Castle Keep (1969) Director Sydney Pollack's ultra-arch, madness-of-war allegory that positively reveled in its battle scenes arrived ahead of the pack.......
By 'the pack', we mean the onslaught of anti-establishment films that rolled out of Hollywood in 1970......a slew of angry, satirical, violent movies made in reaction to the catastrophic events of 1968, the year that left Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King dead on the concrete and rest of us stuck with Vietnam warmonger and Crook-In-Chief, Richard Nixon.........
Supposedly taking place in an Ardennes forest sumptuous Medieval castle in the midst of World War 2, it's a warped dreamscape of a movie, with its bedraggled, battle weary American soldiers speaking in pithy, metaphorical bon mots. They sound like they're already auditioning for Mike Nichols' version of "Catch 22", which would arrive one year later after this film's release.
Their commanding officer, Major Falconer (a deadpan, eye-patched Burt Lancaster) has the men take refuge in the castle. The place is stuffed to its ceilings with precious, rare artwork, much to the rapture of the troupe's Captain Beckman, a former art historian. It also houses an impotent Count (Jean-Pierre Aumont) who pimps out his ravishing young Countess (Astrid Hereen) to Falconer for impregnation to supply the Count with an heir.
The ragtag collection of enlisted men, meanwhile, wax poetic on the insanity of the war, especially Sgt. Rossi (Peter Falk, out dead-panning even Lancaster with dry zingers). And it's a tribute to the film's defiant bohemianism that the most literate, eloquent and perceptive of these men is Private Benjamin (Al Freeman Jr.) the group's only African American. and the film's narrator.
No real story transpires here, but the film treats you to some bizarre set-pieces, including the a Fellini-esque visit to the village whorehouse and the always welcome appearance of over-the-top Bruce Dern, dropped in as a mad, mad deserter leading a chorus of conscientious objectors. (The hippie-like Dern character pre-dates the arrival of Donald Sutherland's loony-toon from "Kelly's Heroes")
And let's not forget the "Catch 22" and "MASH"-like episode where Corporal Clearboy (Scott Wilson) falls madly in love with a Volkswagon and its ability to withstand a dip in the castle moat and an armed assault by his comrades. Yes, all that's as strange and funny as it sounds.......
Eventually all this artsy-smartsy byplay has to give way to actual war, as the Germans invade in force and Falconer's determined to defend the castle with fiercer determination than King Arthur.
And here's where Sydney Pollack (or the studio chiefs) wanted to have it both ways.......because their insanity-of-war pontificating gives way to sensationally staged battle sequences that are the equal of anything seen in "The Longest Day", "Battle Of The Bulge" or "Where Eagles Dare".
It's as if they're saying....."Hey, war may be utter madness but wow is it fun to watch with hot buttered popcorn!"
As you could well predict, nobody felt quite ready for a film this genre-twisting and upside down in its funhouse mirror depiction of warfare......it died a quick death.
Watching it again in today's era of meta-snark and distrust of all authority, the film seems right at home in 2021. The only thing that dates it is Pollacks resorting to the annoying, current-at-the-time technique of using subliminal, spilt-second cuts to throw flash forwards and flashbacks on the screen like sptiballs. (Boy, did that get old fast......)
Still fascinating to watch and for film buffs who love to discover movies that took the temperature of the times in a their own unique way, "Castle Keep" remains a 3 star (***) keeper.
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