The Fixer (1968)

Just what I expected

Expected more

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

When people think of anti-Semitism, they usually think of Hitler's Third Reich. But equally as bad was czarist Russia. In "The Fixer", Yakov Bok (Alan Bates) is a Jewish man who leaves the Pale (the area in Eastern Europe to which Jews were relegated) to work for someone. When they discover that he is a Jew, they imprison him on a trumped-up charge. Specifically, government bureaucrat Grubeshov (Ian Holm) believes that Jews are downright untrustworthy.The movie also shows how Yakov has to hide his background once he leaves the ghetto. In one scene, he is about to have sex with aristocrat Zinaida (Elizabeth Hartman), but he realizes that she will see that he is circumcised, and so he leaves.We can clearly see how anti-Semitic feelings were alive and well long before Hitler came to power. It's always important to remember these kinds of things.

A real Oscar winning performance by Bates.Beats me why he didn't get it!The whole story portrays the times in Russia so well with anti- semitisem as a way to keep away attention from the failings of the Csar and his evil government. A unique actor who really feels his part as can be told by Bates eyes which reflect that his soul is part of what he his doing unlike todays mimik actors.

It is not often that cinema can do justice to a great novel. This one brings out the existential questions of the lead character Yakov Blok in an honest manner, true to the original. I think I would place the credit more with screenplaywriter Dalton Trumbo for this effort. He did not even change some of the key lines of the book. I wonder what Malamud would have thought of the script.Frankenheimer needs praise in some sequences, the prison sequences and the seduction sequence--but what amuses me no end is why he chose to cast the three actresses who speak their lines with no care for even a semblance of being East European. Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, Hugh Griffith, David Warner and Ian Holm are all good actors but Frankenheimer made no effort to make them speak like Russians or East Europeans. Bogarde is predictable in his role, but Alan Bates carried the film. He alone played his role with conviction. Maurice Jarre's music was good but not his best.Like "Gandhi" this film will be remembered because of the subject, not because of its cinema. The true hero was not Bates, not Trumbo, not Frankenheimer--it was Malamud!

An interesting picture. The portrait of a friendly, non-political Jew captured and accused for ridiculous crimes he did not, and for religious reasons, could not commit. It leaves you with a feeling of anger because of the inhumanity of men towards men. Enjoy!