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The Professionals is a well-made, fast-paced action-adventure western starring Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan and Woody Strode. It's a sharp, witty caper flick with a team of amusing specialists engaged in a job—rescuing a rich man's wife from a Mexican revolutionary—that should get everybody killed by the end of the first reel but you damn well know won't. A sort of Ocean's Eleven, if you will, set in the Mexican desert.
But underneath all the rousing action is a melancholy meditation on the end of things (in this specific case, the Mexican Revolution) that, to me at least, makes The Professionals both a sublime western and something other than a simple caper flick.
"La Revolución," Jack Palance says in a great speech toward the end of the film, "is like a great love affair. In the beginning, she is a goddess. A holy cause. But every love affair has a terrible enemy—time. We see her as she is. La Revolución is not a goddess but a whore. She was never pure, never saintly, never perfect. And we run away, find another lover, another cause. Quick, sordid affairs. Lust, but no love. Passion, but no compassion. Without love, without a cause, we are nothing! We stay because we believe. We leave because we are disillusioned. We come back because we are lost. We die because we are committed."
It's a very good western, and may be the best of a list of those that, despite its cast and three Oscar nominations, no one seems to have ever heard of. Written and directed by Richard Brooks, with Oscar-nominated cinematography by the great Conrad Hall.
Oh, and Claudia Cardinale is spectacularly bosomy.
My rating 4.5 stars (out of 5).
Generally speaking, the phrase "Ingmar Bergman comedy" is the very definition of an oxymoron, but Smiles of a Summer Night is the exception I can recommend to you.
Loosely adapted from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and later to inspire Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music and Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night is the story of tangled relationships—she loves her ex, he loves his bride, she prefers his son, and the maid sleeps with everybody—set right on a long summer evening with the aid of magic wine and moveable beds.
Serve with champagne.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Night Of The Hunter (prod. Paul Gregory)
nominees: Bad Day At Black Rock (prod. Dore Schary); East of Eden (prod. Elia Kazan); Kiss Me Deadly (prod. Robert Aldrich); The Man From Laramie (prod. William Goetz); Rebel Without A Cause (prod. David Weisbart); To Catch A Thief (prod. Alfred Hitchcock)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Ladykillers (prod. Michael Balcon)
nominees: Guys And Dolls (prod. Samuel Goldwyn); Lady And The Tramp (prod. Walt Disney); Mister Roberts (prod. Leland Hayward); Oklahoma! (prod. Arthur Hornblow, Jr.); The Seven Year Itch (prod. Charles K. Feldman and Billy Wilder); The Trouble With Harry (prod. Alfred Hitchcock)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Pather Panchali (prod. Satyajit Ray)
nominees: Les diaboliques (Diabolique) (prod. Henri-Georges Clouzot); Du rififi chez les hommes (Rififi) (prod. René Bezard, Henri Bérard and Pierre Cabaud); Lola Montès (prod. Albert Caraco); Ordet (prod. Carl Theodor Dreyer, Erik Nielsen and Tage Nielsen); Sommarnattens leende (Smiles of a Summer Night) (prod. Allan Ekelund)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: James Dean (East of Eden and Rebel Without A Cause)
nominees: Ernest Borgnine (Marty); Cary Grant (To Catch A Thief); Robert Mitchum (The Night Of The Hunter); Laurence Olivier (Richard III); Jean Servais (Du rififi chez les hommes a.k.a. Rififi); Frank Sinatra (The Man With The Golden Arm); James Stewart (The Man From Laramie); Spencer Tracy (Bad Day At Black Rock)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Gunnar Björnstrand (Sommarnattens leende a.k.a. Smiles of a Summer Night)
nominees: James Cagney (Love Me Or Leave Me and Mister Roberts); Henry Fonda (Mister Roberts); Alec Guinness (The Ladykillers); Gordon MacRae (Oklahoma!)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Anna Magnani (The Rose Tattoo)
nominees: Julie Harris (East of Eden and I Am A Camera); Susan Hayward (I'll Cry Tomorrow); Katharine Hepburn (Summertime); Grace Kelly (To Catch A Thief); Eleanor Parker (Interrupted Melody); Simone Signoret (Les diaboliques a.k.a. Diabolique); Jane Wyman (All That Heaven Allows)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Doris Day (Love Me Or Leave Me)
nominees: Eva Dahlbeck (Sommarnattens leende a.k.a. Smiles of a Summer Night); Katie Johnson (The Ladykillers); Shirley MacLaine (The Trouble With Harry); Marilyn Monroe (The Seven Year Itch)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Satyajit Ray (Pather Panchali)
nominees: Robert Aldrich (Kiss Me Deadly); Henri-Georges Clouzot (Les diaboliques a.k.a. Diabolique); Jules Dassin (Du rififi chez les hommes a.k.a. Rififi); Carl Theodor Dreyer (Ordet); Alfred Hitchcock (To Catch A Thief); Elia Kazan (East of Eden); Charles Laughton (The Night Of The Hunter); Nicholar Ray (Rebel Without A Cause); John Sturges (Bad Day At Black Rock)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Alexander Mackendrick (The Ladykillers)
nominees: Ingmar Bergman (Sommarnattens leende a.k.a. Smiles of a Summer Night); John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy (Mister Roberts); Chuck Jones (One Froggy Evening); Billy Wilder (The Seven Year Itch)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Robert Ryan (Bad Day At Black Rock)
nominees: Jack Lemmon (Mister Roberts); Sal Mineo (Rebel Without A Cause); Arthur O'Connell (Picnic); Sidney Poitier (Blackboard Jungle)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Natalie Wood (Rebel Without A Cause)
nominees: Harriet Andersson (Sommarnattens leende a.k.a. Smiles of a Summer Night); Betsy Blair (Marty); Lillian Gish (The Night Of The Hunter); Mildred Natwick (The Trouble With Harry); Rosalind Russell (Picnic); Susan Strasberg (Picnic); Jo Van Fleet (East of Eden); Shelley Winters (The Night Of The Hunter)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Millard Kaufman (Bad Day At Black Rock)
nominees: William Rose (The Ladykillers); Paddy Chayefsky, from his teleplay (Marty); James Agee, from the novel by Davis Grubb (The Night Of The Hunter); Nicholas Ray, Irving Shulman and Stewart Stern (Rebel Without a Cause); Ingmar Bergman (Sommarnattens leende a.k.a. Smiles of a Summer Night)
SPECIAL AWARDS
One Froggy Evening (Cartoon Short); Stanley Cortez (The Night Of The Hunter) (Cinematography); Hilyard M. Brown and Alfred E. Spencer (The Night Of The Hunter) (Art Direction-Set Decoration)
The Professionals is a well-made, fast-paced action-adventure western starring Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan and Woody Strode. It's a sharp, witty caper flick with a team of amusing specialists engaged in a job—rescuing a rich man's wife from a Mexican revolutionary—that should get everybody killed by the end of the first reel but you damn well know won't. A sort of Ocean's Eleven, if you will, set in the Mexican desert.
But underneath all the rousing action is a melancholy meditation on the end of things (in this specific case, the Mexican Revolution) that, to me at least, makes The Professionals both a sublime western and something other than a simple caper flick.
"La Revolución," Jack Palance says in a great speech toward the end of the film, "is like a great love affair. In the beginning, she is a goddess. A holy cause. But every love affair has a terrible enemy—time. We see her as she is. La Revolución is not a goddess but a whore. She was never pure, never saintly, never perfect. And we run away, find another lover, another cause. Quick, sordid affairs. Lust, but no love. Passion, but no compassion. Without love, without a cause, we are nothing! We stay because we believe. We leave because we are disillusioned. We come back because we are lost. We die because we are committed."
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