The Journey (1959)

What a beautiful movie!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Three years after the memorable "The King and I," Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner were reunited in this 1959 drama concerning itself with a group of people from around the globe caught up in the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Arriving in the last town of Hungary on their way to Austria, they are taken for interrogation by Russian army people led by Yul Brynner. Among the group is Kerr and Jason Robards. He is a Hungarian fleeing, and Kerr is his lover. Wounded, he can't come down and Brynner at once is suspicious.Robert Morley is wonderful as the spokesman for the group, and we have E.G. Marshall married to Ann Jackson with 2 children.You don't have to wonder why Brynner keeps the group. As in 'King' is as domineering as ever, and Kerr is appealing in her appeal to him for mercy.We have an ending here quite similar to "Casablanca," but the cruelties of war and revolution can't take the time out for love or redemption of Brynner.

As a big Dostoyevsky fan, I had always been disappointed with Hollywood's halfhearted attempts to get into the Russian romantic aesthetic -- case in point, Yul Brynner as Dmitri Karamazov. I had thought the whole problem was a poor casting decisions, but then I saw Yul as Major Surov and changed my mind. When given an intelligent script to work with, he suddenly came alive and was as noble, sexy, and conflicted as you could ever want a Neurotic Russian Officer to be! So he was a better Dmitri as Major Surov than he was as Dmitri. But that's because writer Tabori actually gave Yul, as the Conflicted Russian Officer, the kind of Conflicted Russian Officer lines that are worthy of real literature, and that have real meaning and pathos in them. For example, a propos of folk music, he says musingly, "You hear a man crying in the dark. And if you listen carefully enough, you know what he cries for. You look surprised, Lady Ashmore. Despite what you may have heard, tractors and Marxism aren't the only things the Russian cares for. There is always time for music."Brilliant!!

The screenplay borrows more than a fair share from Guy de Maupassant's "Boule de Suif" ,mainly towards the end ,when the tourists start to accuse the heroine:"He wants something from you".No matter if "Boule de Suif" takes place in France after Sedan Deborah Kerr portrays a distinguished English lady (instead of a prostitute ) and Yul Brynner a Russian major (instead of a Prussian officer).This movie has often been referred to as anti-communist ,but now that we know what the commies have done ,it has become irrelevant .One should remember the director's personal history:a Russian Jew who emigrated to Germany ,then France where he made commendable works ("L'Equipage" "Coeur de Lilas" "Mayerling" ),then Hollywood where he took part in anti-Nazi propaganda ("confession of a Nazi spy") ;after the war he continued in that vein with the stunning "decision at dawn" where a German soldier came back to his country and discovered the damage done.Oddly,three of his last movies were "all thing eastern" : it began with "Anastasia" ,continued with this film and the trilogy ended with the implausible "night of the generals" In "Journey" ,while updating Maupassant ,introducing a French character (a student played by Maurice Sarfati),using several other French actors (Anouk Aimée as a Hungarian rebel who wants weapons ,not chocolate and Gerard Oury as the inn-keeper:we can wonder why ..),Litvak shows his infatuation with France where he made 6 movies in the thirties and where the action of his (average) "act of love " takes place."Journey" suffers from an implausible happy end which comes at the most awkward moment.The tragedy has turned into a Harlequin romance. But there are several good moments (particularly the scenes between Kerr and Brynner who had teamed up two years before and those between the actress and Robards)which deserve your undivided attention.Like this?try these:The red Danube George Sidney 1949Man on a tight rope Elia Kazan 1953Mademoiselle Fifi Robert Wise 1944 (based on Maupassant's "Boule de Suif" and the eponymous short story)

Yul Brynner was a symbol of villein in the tine of 50,s , he play a role of Russian leader in Hungary at the time of revolution in this country in 1956 that made it against the Marxism.The script of this film made it by good taste from the writer that mixing love and adventure with showing different characters in the journey from Hungary to England.The best point in this film was the symbol of challenge from the Hungarian Resistance to kill the Russian major(Yul Brynner) in the hall time of the film that made a meaning about the disadvantages of this major from his bad works , but at the end he made a good work to help Deborah Kerr for escaping her and her darling to London to write in his book a good working to gain at the end people,s agreement and trustment after his assassination by the Hungarian Resistance.