BY FRED BLOSSER
“Rosebudâ€
(1975), Otto Preminger’s next-to-last film, has been released by Kino Lorber
Studio Classics in a 2K Blu-ray restoration. In the political thriller, a terrorist cell kidnaps five teenaged girls
from a luxury yacht, the “Rosebud†of the title. The kidnappers are members of Black
September, an extremist Palestinian faction -- a reference that would have been
better known by audiences then than now. Their reasons for seizing the young women become clearer as they open
communications with the girls’ parents, an international power elite of
politicians, industrialists, and financiers. Sending along a film of the five young women on the deck of the
commandeered yacht, nude and shivering, the terrorists dictate that it be
televised as a prelude to a series of demands that will demean Israel and it
allies on the global stage. If the
demands aren’t met as each is put on the table, the girls will be killed one by
one.
Fargeau
(Claude Dauphin), the grandfather of one of the hostages, engages Larry Martin
(Peter O’Toole), a Newsweek correspondent, to advise on the negotiations. It seems to be an open secret that Martin’s
press badge is only a subterfuge. He’s
actually a CIA operative. Playfully,
Martin neither confirms nor denies involvement with U.S. intelligence as he
holds down his desk at Newsweek’s Paris bureau. It’s a little like the movies where James Bond’s cover story as a
salesman for Universal Export never fools anyone. Helped by an Israeli Mossad agent, Yafet
(Cliff Gorman), and calling on his friends in West German intelligence, Martin
begins multi-tasking several challenges at once. It’s a daunting checklist but he takes it in
stride, much as the rest of us would balance our weekly chores: Find the
teenage hostages, who are being held in an undisclosed bunker. Design and execute a rescue plan. In the meantime, counsel the parents on
strategies to buy time as various political hurdles arise. And locate and neutralize the elusive
mastermind of the kidnapping, Sloat (Richard Attenborough), a wealthy,
radicalized convert to Islam. Because
the girls are being held in one-far flung location and Sloat is hiding
somewhere else, the job becomes even more complicated.
Critics
were primed to savage “Rosebud†when it opened on March 24, 1975, after months
of behind-the-scenes cast changes, script revisions, and other production
difficulties. They didn’t
disappoint. “Incoherent plotting,â€
“ineptitude,†“Idiotic,†and “flaccid†were some of their kinder comments. Preminger’s stunt casting of former New York
Mayor John V. Lindsay came in for particular derision. As a U.S. Senator whose daughter (Kim
Cattrall, in her movie debut) is one of the kidnapped girls, Lindsay’s “manner
of looking worried is to look elegant,†Vincent Canby joked in his New York
Times review. Never mind it’s a
relatively small role that required Lindsay to do little more than look
elegantly worried anyway. Besides, where
would Hollywood be without stunt casting?
Robert
Mitchum was originally set to play Larry Martin, but he quit (or was sent
packing) after he and Preminger clashed. Enter Peter O’Toole. Probably
anticipating that fussy viewers would wonder why a CIA operative looks and
sounds British, the script pointedly calls Martin a “mercenary.†The implication is that he’s a freelancer on
retainer, not technically a CIA employee of U.S. citizenship.
Rumpled
and unruffled, O’Toole delivers a sharp performance that’s nicely
counterbalanced by Attenborough’s icy turn as the fanatical Sloat and Gorman’s
as the intense Israeli agent. The cover
of the KL Studio Classics Blu-ray reproduces the original poster artwork of
assault rifles, machine guns, and nudity. The collage promises a strong dose of exploitative action, but the
script by Erik Lee Preminger and Marjorie Kellogg is primarily a meticulous,
gather-the-clues espionage drama. It’s
more John Le Carre than “Die Hard.†Martin and his associates are too busy sifting through aerial
photographs, geologic charts, and eyewitness statements to provoke any
premature shootouts with their adversaries. Once they have the evidence they need, they decide that their objectives
-- rescuing the kidnapped girls and apprehending the mastermind -- are better
accomplished using subtlety, not large-scale confrontation. The critics called it boring, but the scenes
move at a nice pace, and fans who favor movie brains over brawn will be
pleased.
There’s
also less nudity than the art suggests, at least in the U.S. version offered in
the KL Studio Classics print, where the girls are briefly shown from the back
as they’re herded on deck to be filmed. Reportedly, an alternative print for other markets depicted full-frontal
nudity. It isn’t likely that, today, in
the #MeToo era, filmmakers would enact a similar scenario about victimized
young women, nudity or not. Sadly, other
things haven’t changed in the past 46 years, except for the worse, as Middle
Eastern conflicts continue to take a dreadful human toll.
The
handsome Kino Lorber disc of “Rosebud†may inspire home video enthusiasts to
visit Preminger’s late-career film and reappraise its virtues and shortcomings
for themselves. Special features include
the theatrical trailer and a full, informative audio commentary by filmmaker/historian
Daniel Kremer.
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(Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)