TEN SECONDS TO HELL (1959)

TEN SECONDS TO HELL (1959)

TEN SECONDS TO HELL (1959) Review

Who?
Director: Robert Aldrich
Producer: Michael Carreras
Screenplay: Robert Aldrich & Teddi Sherman
Cast: Jack Palance, Jeff Chandler, Martine Carol, Robert Cornthwaite, Virginia Baker, Robert Wattis, Lesley Addy, Dave Willcock, James Goodwin, Nancy Lee, Charles Nolte

How?
The rights to Lawrence Bachmann's novel The Phoenix were bought by Hammer in 1955, and Bachmann himself submitted a screenplay.  The film was planned by producer Michael Carreras as a prestige production for Hammer, with  top director Robert Aldrich (who was at the time blacklisted in Hollywood), US stars Jack Palance and Jeff Chandler, and French bombshell Martine Carol. In addition, as it was set in post-war Berlin, it was to be shot there on location and at the famous UFA Studios. The film, however, soon turned into a nightmare. Aldrich proceeded to rewrite the screenplay, replaced key Hammer staff members with his own men, antagonised the German film crew, had Michael Carreras removed from the picture and, most significantly, lost the confidence of star Palance, who felt Aldrich was making the picture too talky and philosophical. The resulting 130 minute film was eventually shorn of 40 minutes by the distributer and released to generally poor reviews.

What?
Six German POWs return to a shattered Berlin following the end of the war and are employed by the British as a bomb disposal team - work they had been previously been forced to do by the German army after losing favour with the Nazis. The work is so dangerous that the six agree on a pact - each will put up half his salary and at the end of three months whoever survives gets to keep it. They will tackle bombs on an alphabetical rota. The leader of the team Koertner (Palance), who had been a renowned architect before the war, feels the self-sacrificing work somehow strikes a blow at the self-serving mentality that led to war. Wirtz (Chandler) is only concerned with the money...and self-preservation. He means to win at all costs. As members of the team are gradually lost the others try to persuade Wirtz to abandon the pact and give the money away - he refuses, and the others cannot let him win, so the work continues until only Koertner and Wirtz remain, each aware that they must see this through to the end.

So?
Director Robert Aldrich has openly referred to Ten Seconds to Hell as a bad film - one that even if he had a chance to reshoot he wouldn't know how to improve. Now, while I'd agree that Ten is not a great picture, it's not one totally without merit. It is, in fact, a tantalisingly frustrating example of what could have been. The film was, I'm sure, intended by Michael Carreras as another attempt by Hammer to enter the 'mainstream' of British cinema - an attempt to shed Hammer's reputation as merely a purveyor of populist exploitation pictures and light comedies, and become a serious player. It, of course, failed (like other attempts) to do that, but Ten was still a worthy effort, and provides an interesting meditation on war, desolation, hope, courage and the human capacity to rise from the ashes. It's also interesting in that it provides a less 'insuler-feeling' picture from Hammer, with its American director, stars and key staff, and German crew and locations. While one can only speculate on how it would have turned out using Bachmann's original screenplay, the film does attempt to delve a little deeper philosophically than one normally would expect from Hammer (although there are notable exceptions). Unfortunately, it simply fails to work - hampered by said crude philosophical musings and, unfortunately, by two of its leads.

Palance and Aldrich didn't see eye-to-eye in the picture, Aldrich admitting that he lost control of his star, and unfortunately it shows. Palance gives a most unusual performance; obviously seeking to portray a deeply tormented man he does so in the most blatant and ham-fisted way, contorting his face into a rictus of despair at every available opportunity, interspersed with long periods of stony-faced sullenness. Deep into Method acting at the time he became virtually unapproachable off-screen, punctuated with antagonistic drinking sessions with Aldrich. The result is a mess - although a tormented mess. Combined with Martine Carol's eye-swiveling dramatics and Aldrich's, at times, cod-philosophical dialogue makes for some truly bizarre scenes together, between bouts of bomb disposal. Thankfully, some good performances by others soften the histrionics somewhat. Jeff Chandler's coldy self-serving Wirtz provides a pleasing foil to Palance, their scenes together carrying genuine tension, while Richard Wattis' Major Haven is a sterling example of a good-hearted officer who fails to appreciate the irony of using Koertner's squad exactly as the Nazi's had.

A saving feature of the picture are the locations and their wonderfully atmospheric capture by Aldrich's regular director of photography, the Oscar-winning Ernest Laszlo. His b&w photography simply oozes charisma, and the use of a still-devastated Berlin for location lends the film an air of authenticity it might not otherwise have had. But at root Ten fails simply because it cannot marry its philosophical ambitions with its post-war thriller scenario in a satisfactory way. The periods between (genuinely tension-filled and accurately detailed) bomb-disposal are too often filled with Palance and Carol musing on life, love and the nature of humanity. This is not to say that Ten has nothing to say - it does pose questions about what can and should rise from the ashes of human conflict, about the battle between self-sacrifice and self-service, about hope and despair, about the value of human life. However, it too often simply becomes an exercise in self-indulgence, whether on the part of Palance or Aldrich. Perhaps Aldrich's 130m cut would have revealed a different and much better picture? I'm inclined to believe Aldrich himself, and doubt it.