A classic

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this movie but since it won the best picture Academy award, I thought I should give it a try. It is only the 3rd movie directed by Fred Zinnemann that I had the pleasure to watch (following 'The Day of the Jackal’ and ‘The Nun's Story’) and I’m more and more impressed every time by his work. I mean, those 3 movies were completely different but they all displayed some fascinating stories, some very solid acting and some expert directing. This time around, I was above all impressed by the dialogues. Indeed, it was basically a play adaptation and even though it was about 2 hours long, nothing much actually really happened but there was a lot of talking, that’s for sure. Eventually, it’s a pity that I saw this on the BBC without subtitles and I’m afraid I honestly missed 50% of it which prevented me to enjoy the whole thing even more. Still, it was all very good. I mean, nowadays I’m always surprised about how dumbed down the movies are and after watching Zinnemann’s feature, it was even more obvious. Indeed, in this movie, all the characters were so articulate, everything they said made complete sense and instead of getting some loud explosions, or some fancy CGI robots, you get instead an amazing battle of wits. Not only the dialogues were impressive but the acting was also quite amazing. As a matter of fact, it took me several minutes to actually recognize the great Orson Welles. Too bad his character died fairly quickly but I was equally impressed by Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw and (a very young) John Hurt. To conclude, it is an inspiring feature dealing with morals, religion and politics, I really liked it and it is definitely worth a look.

7/10