victory (cinema history class)

Session: Bring Your Own Movie Month (Part 2), week 2 -- Sean's pick
Movie: Victory (1981)
Directed by John Huston
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
At the height of World War II, the Nazis stage a soccer match between the German national team and a ragtag group of POWs. Hilarity ensues.

Background and Reaction:
Victory was an odd choice for this class, being that it's not a horror film, or part of any related genre (fantasy, giallo, crimmi, etc.).  But I'm not in a position to object, since I showed Shock Treatment last year, and almost showed Head this year. Sean explained that this tied together several of his interests including soccer and history.

There are a lot of things wrong with this movie:

• The characters aren't well developed
• It has this odd Hogan's Heroes feel to it, albeit without the overt comedy.
• Michael Caine,in his upper forties, was not believable as a soccer star in mid career.
• It makes no sense that a team of POWs could have competed with a well-fed and well-cared for German national team.
• Sylvester Stallone.

And yet, despite these problems, I was able to get into it, and feel compelled by the drama.

That is, until halftime during the soccer match. The POW team goes into their locker room at halftime, down 4-1 (due in part to the referees who aren't calling it straight). But they're about to escape. The French resistance has been tunneling under the stadium, and opens up an escape route from the locker room. The guys are getting out! But then they decide they'd rather stay and play the second half of the game. They can win! And, of course, that's better than escaping.

That's when I mentally checked out. At that point it was no longer an interesting drama. It was now another plucky underdog sports movie like The Bad News Bears or The Might Ducks. Joe was able to overlook that development by mentally rewriting the scene. Instead of deciding to play ball instead of escaping, Joe's version had the tunnel collapse, leaving the team no choice. It makes sense. That would have been more believable. And if that's what had happened, I would have been content. But that's not what happened, and I can't like a movie simply because Joe did a rewrite. Of course, that tells me that when I get around to working on my screenplay in earnest, I want Joe as a partner.

Ratings:


Joe: 9.2 (and 10 for the Simpsons segment)
Scott: 7
Ethan: 5
Me: 5
Christina: 7
Keith: 5

Bechdel:
Victory fails the Bechdel test.

Star Trek reference:
Actually, two. When the announcer talked about the cheering crowd and played canned applause, Joe and I both said "Bread and Circuses." Joe noted how the two soccer teams were playing for different reasons, evoking "The Savage Curtain."

Extras:
Scott teed us up with a YouTube video from The Simpsons: