The Wind and the Lion (1975)
We felt like kicking ourselves when we realized we'd missed out on doing a 'Happy 50th Anniversary' post for this film last year........especially since it's always been a favorite re-watch just as the summer season kicks off.
Well, here we are a year later for its 51st Anniversary, and since we still love the movie, we'll still happily sing its praises.
Of all of the exciting new crop of 'movie brat' filmmakers who came into their own throughout the 1970's (Spielberg, DePalma, Coppola, Scorsese) screenwriter-director John Milius stood out and apart from the pack.
A big-bear-of-a-man Hemingway-esque figure, Milius proudly stood behind his right wing conservative outlook, his love of all things military and manly and the grandly epic, larger-than-life mythic storytelling he favored in both his directing and writing ("Conan the Barbarian", "Red Dawn", "Apocalypse Now", "Clear and Present Danger", "Magnum Force", "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean")
'The Wind and the Lion', served as his most quintessential, personal and all-out attempt to duplicate the old school spectacle and sweep of films by David Lean, William Wyler and John Ford......
We think he more than succeeded, stamping the film with his own unique celebrations of macho pride, individualism and fabulist exaggeration.
Using a true incident in 1904 Morocco as a starting point, Milius has the marauding piratical Berber Mulai Rahmed er Raisuli (Sean Connery) kidnap beautiful Eden Pedecaris (Candice Bergen) and her two young children. In ransoming Eden and the kids, Raisuli's hoping to end the cozying up to European powers favored by his brother the Bashaw of Tangier. (Vladek Sheybal, Connery's chessmaster nemesis in "From Russian With Love")
Meanwhile half a world away, rugged, rambunctious U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt (a wonderfully hammy Brian Keith), fumes in outrage at Raisuli holding him up like a common mugger and sends out a company of Marines to Morocco, planning to deliver some 'big stick' whupass to that uppity Arabian renegade.
Milius, aided immeasurably by one of Jerry Goldsmith's most thunderous, propulsive and yet romantic scores, makes this high adventure a glorious joy to watch unfold. While hemispheres apart, Connery and Keith more than match each other in charismatic bravado and sardonic humor.
Bellows Roosevelt at a campaign stop, "Pedecaris alive or Raisuli dead!", a phrase taken from the true incident the film's derived from....though in fact, the real Pedecaris was a middle aged man with no children....
Bergen, still years away from her second career as an expert comedic character actress, proves a delight as the fearless, fiery independent Eden. She confounds Connery's Raisuli, whose spouting of ancient culture attitudes and wisdom clash with her blunt candor and unfailing confidence in American exceptionalism. This leads to delicious verbal clashes between them and eventually, a subtly loving, bittersweet but star crossed admiration destined never to be consummated.
But there's plenty of rip roaring fun along the way as Milius fills the screen with battles, swordfights, diplomatic skirmishes and no end of eye candy landscapes and vistas.....most of which come from the Spanish locations familiar to everyone who has watched the iconic extravaganzas by David Lean and Sergio Leone.
Yes, we'll not deny that at it's heart, the film's essentially a beautifully mounted Hollywood fairy tale....as fanciful as anything found in Arabian nights or the voyages of Sinbad. But isn't that why millions of us fell in love with movies to begin with?
We may be year late in our Anniversary wishes but here at BQ, it's never too late to lavish some praise on the cinematic gems we treasure the most.....
5 stars (*****).
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