Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

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

This is a highly symbolic, artsy portrayal of American GIs in the Ardennes Forest, Belgium, preparing to sacrifice themselves (as so many did) in a last stand to stop Hitler's December 1944 counteroffensive. They are an exhausted, ragtag bunch of stragglers piled onto a wheezing jeep and its trailer, led with single-minded determination by Burt Lancaster's Major Falconer.They encounter an unexpected - imaginary? - castle at a strategic crossroads and settle in. The count and his castle have survived German occupation, and he does not want his world destroyed by GIs turning it into a modern war roadblock. His ally is Patrick Neal's Captain Beckman, who happens to be an authority on art and pleads with Falconer to continue their retreat so the castle and its art treasures can be spared.On the other hand, the scheming count wants his beautiful young wife impregnated for an heir and the predominating Major Falconer takes diversion from his unit and the war to do that duty, while killing a young German officer who had tried to return to see her. The girl feels used and falls in love with the hardened Falconer, turning against the count.Here I might mention a couple of historical precedents for this. We Americans bombed into rubble the abbey of Monte Cassino (with its library treasures) in Italy in 1944, although the Germans had said they were not occupying or using the abbey for military purposes. After the war it was easy to question the bombing, but to the troops on the ground there was no question the abbey should have been bombed.In the Battle of the Bulge - the Ardennes - the Waffen SS panzer divisions in the north soon met stubborn, insuperable resistance, after they had massacred a hundred American GIs at Malmedy. In the center, the regular Wehrmacht panzer divisions made greater penetration, thanks to more intelligent attacking. Leading the advance was General Eisenarsch (IronAss) Bayerlein's Panzer Lehr division.Bayerlein's friend and mentor in North Africa had been "The Desert Fox," General Ervin Johann Rommel, who had a few months before been forced by Hitler to commit suicide for supporting to whatever degree the attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.Our forces were confused and dispirited and falling back in the face of the overwhelming German attack. Bayerlein had the strategic crossroads of Bastogne within easy grasp, but along toward evening encountered a U.S. Army field hospital wherein he encountered a breathtakingly beautiful, blonde American nurse. She gave him the nod, and he said to hell with Hitler and the war and spent the night with her. (After the war, she settled in the Wash DC area, and I had it on good authority from an Army historian that she retained her striking beauty all her life.) And all through that night we were rushing reinforcements like the 101st Airborne Division into Bastogne to hold it against all attacks, even when surrounded, mortally crippling 5th Panzerarmee's offensive.Knowing the above helps to understand the significance of some of the dialog in the film.While the film may seem anti-war, there was obviously no question in Jewish-American Sidney Pollack's mind that Falconer's battle - and the war against the Nazis itself - had to be fought, even if some European cultural treasures had to be sacrificed in the process. In his Wikipedia biography, Bergman's The Seventh Seal is listed as one of the films Pollack most admired, and Castle Keep's dialogs before the reckoning are similar.Note that each of the GIs is described, along with his own values and goals - even if those are just getting drunk and laid in the Red Queen.There is also the sense of virile Americans coming to the rescue of Europa, incarnated by the countess. The film is in some ways pretentious and cynical, but it strives to show the real heroism of the Ardennes reverently, nonetheless.And I agree that the battle scenes ... of the castle being stormed to nihilistic destruction by the Germans' modern weapons ... are very intense and well done ... if ultimately grim.It does remind me of 2 of the Combat! TV series: the château program with Joan Hackett as the count's daughter and the demolition - of all the beautiful statuary in the cave under the bombed out château and German observation point - program with Charles Bronson.Finally, Private Benjamin represents what Pollack may have thought was the most relevant and valuable art, chronicling the castle's last epic, and his and the countess's fate - dictated by Major Falconer - is the true climax and message of the film.Lou Coatney

1969's "Castle Keep" is no standard World War II drama, although it starts out with the usual formula. During what appears to be the Battle of the Bulge (late 1944), a group of weary GIs led by a one-eyed monotone colonel (Burt Lancaster), stagger into a medieval castle that seems to have been preserved and isolated for centuries. There's also a small hamlet nearby and the townsfolk seem similarly stuck in the distant past. The castle itself contains numerous art works and its grounds are covered with classical sculptures and magnificent statues of all kinds. It's literally a work of art in itself. Aided and abetted by Lancaster's second-in-command (a cynical and disillusioned Patrick O'Neal) the GIs are as out of place in this medieval landscape as a collection of city slickers west of the Pecos. That fact doesn't stop the colonel from immediately taking a fancy to the lady of the house (Astrid Heeren) all to the utter chagrin of her much older husband, the Count of Maldorais (played by Jean-Pierre Aumont). The rank-and-file soldiers, including Peter Falk, Bruce Dern, Tony Bill, Al Freeman Jr., Scott Wilson and Michael Conrad, eventually move into the town and take up occupations as if they're back in the good old USA. If all this sounds a bit strange and out-of-place for a "war" movie, it is. Not to be outdone, however, the German army is on the advance and the castle and its accompanying town are directly in its path. Total destruction is on the way, and here lies the moral of this tale. In the ensuing and climactic battle, the castle and everything that it stands for (mainly humanity and the arts) is obliterated with few survivors. The town is crushed along with it and all its inhabitants killed. But because of the way the story is presented (i.e. with enough surrealism to rival Ingmar Bergman on his best day), viewers are never quite sure if the GIs have themselves been nothing but ghosts all along and that the whole exercise is merely symbolic of the destructive nature of war. "Castle Keep," filmed during the height of the Vietnam War, can certainly be classified as an "anti-war" movie, although its immediate subject matter and execution just doesn't fit with any of the other films of the genre. Of course, movies that are presented as World War II dramas are usually loaded with heroes fighting evil enemies (whether Germans or Japanese). Consequently, audiences were not enamored with the film's depiction and it flopped at the box office. Predictably, most critics of the day found "Castle Keep" to be too pretentious and over-the-top. Burt Lancaster's deliberate "one-note" performance probably didn't help it either. That's too bad because in retrospect the film has plenty to say and it was also an early indication of a major talent on the rise: Sydney Pollack. As for the others in the cast, Peter Falk and Al Freeman Jr. are standouts and Patrick O'Neal adds some much-needed gravitas to the proceedings. In the end, "Castle Keep" is another near-great film that could stand a critical reevaluation.

Among the many exciting roles which Burt Lancaster choose, this is certainly among his most convincing. Set during the time of The famous Battle of the Bulge, this war film will stand the test of time and become part of Lancaster's greats. The story concerns a war weary company of U.S. soldiers who have been ordered to hold a particular crossroads near a 10th century pristine Castle. There, the leader of the Americans is a battle hard, well seasoned commander called Major Falconer. (Burt Lancaster). With a collection of seasoned veterans, his men wait stoically within the impressive Medieval Castle against what is sure to be a massive armored offensive by the German army. Nevertheless, orders are to prevent the Germans from occupying the strategic position. Lancaster is superb performing a part he was born to play. Within the ancient Castle, is the Count of Maldorais (Jean Aumont) and his wife (Astrid Heeren) who hope to survive the war and re-establish their ancestral line. Among Falconer's men is a writer, (Al Freeman), historian Lionel Beckman (Patrick O'Neal) and a Baker (Peter Falk) named Rossi. Though the heart of the movie concerns the holding of the Castle, the story also delves into the personal thoughts and feelings of the Major's men. The soldiers like the actors who portray them is what makes this excellent story a Classic. These include Bruce Dern, Scott Wilson, Tony Bill, and James Patterson. The amount of drama and exciting war time action is enough for any viewer who enjoys films of military conflicts. The inner story between the principals and their objectives make for thoughtful perspectives between desperate people, their dreams and the reality of senseless destruction. All in all, this is one movie which is pure entertainment for anyone wishing to slay a somber afternoon. Highly recommended to all. ****