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The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Posted By: denisbul
The Wind and the Lion (1975)

The Wind and the Lion (1975)
Languages: English, German, Italian, Spanish, French
Subtitles: Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew,
Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
DVD9 (VIDEO_TS) | 119 min | 720x576 | PAL 16:9 - 6136 Kbps | AC3 2.0 - 192 Kbps | 6,47 GB
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama | 5 nominations (2 Oscar) | USA

IMDB: 6.9/10 (3,400 votes)
Directed by: John Milius
Starring: Sean Connery, Candice Bergen and Brian Keith

In the early 1900s, an American businessman was kidnapped by a rebellious Arab chieftain, principally as a means to… embarrass the sultan of Morocco. This abduction sparked the threat of armed intervention by President Theodore Roosevelt, which was never carried out. In The Wind and the Lion, the unattractive male captive is replaced by the gorgeous female Mrs. Pedecaris, an American widow played by Candice Bergen. The ruthless but essentially decent Arab chief Raisuli is portrayed by Sean Connery, while Teddy Roosevelt is depicted as a jingoistic blowhard by Brian Keith. The film's main theme that of America's emergence as a world power is largely secondary to the growing mutual-respect relationship between Mrs. Pedecaris and Raisuli. After releasing his hostage, Raisuli is himself captured by German forces, who at the behest of the Kaiser are seeking out methods of laying the groundwork for what would evolve into World War I. Mrs. Pedecaris must then help Raisuli escape.

The Wind and the Lion was not the right movie for 1975. It was just a couple of years after Watergate, when the country was sick of Vietnam and in a big hurry to forget political realities. Retro history buff and he-man adventure screenwriter John Milius celebrates imperialism with the same audaciousness shown by his brash Marines, but he also has a great affection for the rebel underdog. There really is no liberal perspective in the movie at all. Gunboat diplomats on one side cheerfully battle equally cheerful fundamentalist Moslem rebels on the other, with only pompous Europeans and decadent Moroccans in between. 1

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

What saves John Milius from pretension or historical humbuggery is his essential honesty. The Wind and the Lion is his personal take on Victorian imperialism, not some poorly-researched screed.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

The film's portrayal of 1903 attitudes is refreshingly out of sync with the trends of 1975, a time when American history was being revised to stress culpability in the genocide of Native Americans, etc. Milius' affectionate portrait of Teddy Roosevelt, (played beautifully by Brian Keith) stresses all the he-man qualities of Roosevelt's public image. Roosevelt was of course an aggressive imperialist, but he also fought tooth and nail against the robber barons of American big business. In this film, Teddy is shown ignoring his opportunistic advisors, who immediately think of annexing Morocco as an American puppet state.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

The Wind and the Lion's Raisuli is fabricated with great respect. Connery's brigand may have a Scots brogue now and then, but the heart of the character is in the right place. The Raisuli is a fanciful Kipling-like creation, a holy warrior who bows to Mecca and gleefully executes men for trivial-sounding offenses. Of course, by comparison with his royal relations he's a prince. The spoiled brat Sultan and the elitist Bashaw live in outrageous luxury under in a system that hasn't changed for centuries.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

The romantic chemistry between Connery and Candice Bergen brings the show to life. The desert kidnapping is a throwback to Valentino and The Sheik, except the seduction here is never consummated. Connery struggles with trying to be a Berber, but Bergen surprises us with a wonderfully spunky nobility, matching Connery's quips with expert precision and riding a horse as well as anyone on screen. She manipulates her mount effortlessly in little moves while cursing her captor to God, something that your average clotheshorse actress probably couldn't handle. Better yet, when some of the action situations start to strain credibility, Bergen's authority makes them all work.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Milius' production is truly miraculous. Not all that expensive a movie, it makes maximum use of limited means, achieving the grandeur of 50s and 60s epics with a fraction of the cash outlay. Almeria, Sevilla and Madrid locations provide lavish palaces, castles, and towns that look too good to be found locations. Even the sets representing Washington and the Rocky Mountains aren't bad. We'd just seen Spain in countless Spaghetti Westerns and Ray Harryhausen movies, but it never looked better here. The production uses locations recognizable from Spartacus (the big valley with the gladiator camp on the hill) and a unique castle from El Cid. Southern Spain has so much Moorish architecture, it stands-in well for Morocco.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Much of the direction is classic and simple. Milius had the wisdom to allow his expert cameraman organize most of the shot to plan instead of inventing on the set. He also had a good relationship with his key second unit directors, especially stunt arranger Terry Leonard. Easily half of the shooting time of the film was used for the battles and action scenes which are a cross between David Lean and Sam Peckinpah - pictorially handsome, geared to maximum thrills.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

The action is violent fun - most of the combatants are professional soldiers of one kind or another and seem to be predisposed to fight. Our loyalties go all over the place over the course of the film. The Raisuli's pirates start as murderous scum but by the end we're applauding the nobility of their charge. Connery's superhuman rescue of Bergen and her children is pure escapist fantasy, told in epic fairy tale terms.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

The key scene is the shockingly blunt military action when Steve Kanaly's Marines seize the Bashaw's palace. The military solution to stalled negotiations is direct and brutal, and an excellent focus for discussion. Captain Jerome's stunt works like a charm, making heroes of the fighting men while resolving Roosevelt's political predicament with politically-advantageous expediency. Milius shows a takeover of a foreign government exactly the way it might have happened a hundred years ago. It's only partially justified as a rescue mission, and it's allowed to play as a grand act of war at its most basic level. This kind of thing has been going on forever, and Milius' movie helps reveal it for what it is.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

I once saw the 40-page treatment for The Wind and the Lion at UCLA, a prose tale full of descriptions of rooms and an elaborate Moorish bath given the Pedicaris character. It read beautifully. Most of the exoticism in the finished film is dropped in favor of adventure elements. The Boy's Own element is there in the repeated use of young William Pedicaris' point of view, which fuses well with Jerry Goldsmith's exultant, sweeping score.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

The Wind and the Lion only klunks in a handful of moments. Scoffers point out Connery's accent, but that's no mistake - who else could play such a bigger-than-life hero? The production does get a bit thin in the last third. We arrive at the Raisuli's castle but never see an interior, just little gatherings on the doorstep.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Milius' writing skills desert him at the end as well, just a little bit. The Connery-Bergen romance has gone from shouting to teasing to mutual honesty, but advances no further. Before their glorious parting, we just get some rather dumb dialogue, when the relationship needed to leap to some new level. The biggest waste in the film is a magnificent ride-out from the castle under a gathering storm, capped by a leaden klunk when The Raisuli says "I'm the Raisuli, they do the singing!".

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Eden Pedecaris' single-handed hijacking of the Marines is another bad idea that always makes audiences laugh. Think about it. The Marines would have shot her the moment she pulled that stunt, putting a knife to Captain Jerome's throat. The movie crosses just a bit too far into outright infantilism there.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Milius is right at the center of the 1970s generation of directors backgrounded in film school instead of the stage or old Hollywood. Thus we have some of the heaviest borrowings from fave pictures, even though Milius only mentions the obvious similarities to Lawrence of Arabia. 'The Ugly Arab' Aldo Sambrell entices Jennifer Pedicaris from a cave-like arch, it's a quote from The Searchers, a film which seems to be the touchstone for this group. Milius more crudely borrows the machine-gun test and the 'march' from The Wild Bunch. The great production team here gives The Wind and the Lion epic qualities that absorb the film-fan idolatry and rough moments. To be kind, the director's later efforts Big Wednesday, Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn show him to be much more of a writer than a director.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

But Milius' bold strokes are inspired. The title epigram - the Raisuli is like a lion who must stay in his place, while the great Roosevelt is like the wind that will never know its place - is a great encapsulization of the American search for identity. The theme informs some of the best genre work, especially Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee. Under its indulgent adventurism and occasional lapses into cuteness, The Wind and the Lion really is about something.