| |
| | Basil Dearden (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10) |
 | | An elaborate response to La Grande Illusion, with the benefit of hindsight. |
 | | There’s a lot of fine work in the directing, with an independent use of the camera in a subtle counterpoint, or orchestrating large-scale movements, as in the prisoners’ stiff-legged shamble to the loudspeakers during a propaganda assault, followed by Dearden’s establishing sequence, a long track to Cpl. Horsfall, pause and response, counter-movement, dolly, final frame. |
 | | There are a couple of extraordinary things in it: a very quick citation of Hitchcock’s flface slow crane, and at the very end a foreglimpse of Resnais’s Nuit et Brouillard. |
| cmulrooney.tripod.com /dearden.html (371 words) |
|