Except for its Dalton Trumbo script, everything & everyone feels slightly, but crucially miscast in this John Frankenheimer adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s prize-winning novel, a fictionalized version of a late-Tsarist ‘blood conspiracy’ plot against handyman Alan Bates, a secular Jew, circa 1910 Kiev. (For Trumbo, delete ‘slightly.’) As a writer, Malamud was at his considerable best in short stories, but this attempt at mining a sort Dreyfus Affair/Book of Job drama should have a lot more impact on screen. Apparently, after Frankenheimer’s first-cut, more than an hour was lost which may have a made all the difference, especially in detailing the growth of international outrage on a rigged anti-Semitic case, forcing a trial on an unwilling government. But neither Trumbo nor Frankenheimer (and maybe Malamud) seem able to figure out where they want this to go, ending on an ironic/triumphant finale, a large-scaled, but feeble set piece that needs a Modest Mussorgsky (or perhaps one of those French Grand Opera masters, Giacomo Meyerbeer or Fromental Halévy, both Jewish, BTW) to save with his score. Instead, we get generic uplift from Maurice Jarre. The film’s not so much bad as well-intentioned . . . which in this case might be worse.
DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Bates got his only Oscar nom here, the Academy going with prestige, suffering & aging makeup when there must be at least twenty better Bates choices, including both films that bookend this: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD/’67 and WOMEN IN LOVE/’69.
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