Castle Keep

I ordered this from Daedalus books. What can go wrong with a flick with Burt Lancaster, Peter Falk and Patrick O'Neal, and directed by Sydney Pollock? Plenty, as it turns out. Rather than a straightforward war story we have here a highly symbolic and quasi-surreal flick with a script that is both pretentious and portentous, filled with "heavy" lines that are supposed to freighted with meaning. The writer evidently is a Becket or Pirandello wannabe. However most of it just falls completely flat. It is beautifully shot and gorgeous to look at but is basically a tiresome bore. Ignore all the encomia from users. Matter of fact, ignore the movie.

Castle Keep, directed by Sydney Pollack and adapted to screenplay by Daniel Taradash and David Rayfiel from the novel written by William Eastlake. Starring Burt Lancaster, Bruce Dern, Patrick O'Neal, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Peter Falk. Music is by Michel Legrand and cinematography by Henri Decae. Ambitious for sure, intriguing even, but ultimately a misfiring piece of pretentious tosh! An endgame allegory that finds Lancaster in WWII leading the defence of a medieval castle and its art collection against the German hordes. The action when it comes is savage and colourful, and Lancaster's one eyed Major is good fun, it's just everything else is masquerading as a near hallucinogenic anti-war movie mixed with euro pontifications. There's some war is hell messages in the mix desperately trying to get out, either as satire or serious (it's really hard to tell), but this is ultimately faux-art and painful to sit through until the explosions mercifully grace the last quarter of picture. 3/10

Skip it – This is the most disappointing World War 2 movie I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them. I would call it campy, even zany. It tries to be "artsy," similar to "Thin Red Line," only it doesn't work. Was the director on drugs? Burt Lancaster is a Major with an eye patch in the U.S. army commanding a squad of men charged with protecting a medieval castle. Sounds good so far right? That's what I thought. Well, his men don't even fire their guns till the very end. Ol' Burt is more concerned with having sex than fighting Nazis. Peter Falk co-stars as a soldier more concerned with baking bread. Seriously, he's a baker, and more importantly, he's not funny in this role. This is no action movie. This is a made-for-TV quality movie at best. I'm not a fan of most 70's war movies, and even though this was made in 1969 its close enough. 1.5 out of 5 action rating

Unusual (more realistic - and surrealistic - than in other films) point of view on horrors of war, good directing and a strong cast. I liked this film very much when I saw it about 25 years ago in the Cinématheque (long live Yugoslav and now Slovenian Kinoteka). Unfortunately, the copy wasn't as good as the film itself. There were some missing parts so I'd like to check out this one again. What good movies Sydney Pollack made in his early days! I highly recommend his Slender Thread, The Scalphunters, They Shoot Horses..., Jeremiah Johnson and this one. Very unusual films for Hollywood standards, very brave, and as it seems timeless. In an interview Mr. Pollack once said that he thinks Castle Keep was way ahead of its time. The audience wasn't ready to cope with such a look at war. I wonder if it is ready now? Castle Keep recommended to all non-formula film lovers around the world. 9/10

"Castle Keep" is a film looking to find an audience in all the wrong places. Wrapping a 1960s free sex and love anti-war message around a World War 2 suicide mission is like trying to shovel crap against the tide. Seriously surreal, this failed film is nevertheless not without interest, because of the cast. The movie more belongs on an art gallery wall than in a theater, because the photography is stunning, with each shot vivid and memorable. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the film. Because it is so disjointed, the whole experience is somehow lacking in impact. By the time the bang bang ending appears on the screen, most audiences will be so bewildered by what has preceded it they will hardly be awake. - MERK

I remember watching Castle Keep many times as a youngster. The film was a staple on local TV and showed up several times a year. I loved it then and recently saw it again, for the first time in 20 years, on TCM. The film has lost none of its lustre and in its widescreen format is even better than before. Cinematographer Henri Decae (The 400 Blows) creates a surreal fairytale atmosphere without sacrificing wartime realism in this tale of stranded GIs in the Ardennes at the end of World War II. The squad, led by an eye-patched Burt Lancaster, try to halt the German advance by hunkering down in a medieval castle that has been miraculously unaffected by the tribulations of the war. The film has echoes of Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast and it's stylistic contemporary, King of Hearts, but stands on it's own as a superb philosophical exploration of warfare and violence. If you enjoyed A Midnight Clear, you will enjoy Castle Keep.