This is one of those movies that wants you to feel the injustice. In 1910s Russia, Yakov Bok (Alan Bates) is arrested for being Jewish in an area you’re not allowed to be Jewish. The authorities then pin the ritualistic murder of a child on him. He’s innocent and everyone knows it, but nonetheless, the authorities try to torture a confession out of him for a couple of years.1
Yakov’s struggle leads to a political awakening. He begins the film asserting that he’s apolitical and he repeats this to the authorities who claim he’s part of some cockamamie Jewish conspiracy. When he refuses to admit to something he didn’t do, some view this as a political or religious stand. Yakov demurs, saying “a hero decides to be a hero.”
In the film’s final scene, Yakov succeeds: after years of being held in jail without an indictment, he’s finally brought to a trial he’ll assuredly win. As he walks towards the courthouse, he discovers that he’s become a symbol of resistance, having lived Spinoza’s maxim that all free men must take a positive interest in securing freedom for their neighbors. He’s finally decided to become a hero.
Rating: 7/10, a movie designed to make you appreciate habeas corpus.
Cast and Crew
We’ve seen him before for directing The Birdman of Alcatraz, but it’s time for a deep(ish) dive on director John Frankenheimer. Frankenheimer got his start directing on TV during the Golden Age of Television. He worked fast on live TV dramas and was part of the TV-to-film pipeline that also produced the more-heralded director Sidney Lumet (under whom Frankenheimer worked).
Lumet and Frankenheimer share another similarity: in the 1968 taxonomy of directors from film critic-slash-goofball Andrew Sarris, both men show up in the “Strained Seriousness” tier. I’m not sure I see “strained seriousness” in the political thrillers Frankenheimer is best known for2, though. The two most noteworthy ones are The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964).3
The “political” part of Frankenheimer’s “political thrillers” went out the window after the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. A disillusioned Frankenheimer became the director of nihilistic action films like French Connection II (1975) and Black Sunday (1977).
He got even schlockier in the ‘80s, then had his most infamous moment when he took over direction of legendary bomb The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). This film, which starred Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, was so bad there’s a documentary about what a mess it was. That wasn’t Frankenheimer’s end, though: he bounced back with Ronin (1998), a film that was on HBO every single day for like a decade.4
The last time we saw Alan Bates in this column, he was getting blown off the screen by Anthony Quinn’s Big Lead Energy in Zorba the Greek. I barely remembered Bates in that film, but he’s legitimately great in The Fixer. We won’t see him again in this column, but he worked until the 2000s, most notably in British films I haven’t seen that were based on British novels that sound boring.5
Bates also co-starred with three women who earned Best Actress Oscar noms across from him: Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl (1966), Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman (1978) and Bette Midler in The Rose (1979). We’ll chat about those latter two in upcoming Wrap-Ups.
Bernard Malamud authored the novel “The Fixer,” but he’s better known for “The Natural,” often considered the greatest baseball novel ever written. What do you need to know about “The Natural”? Roy Hobbs plays baseball for the New York Knights and wields Wonderboy, a bat made from a tree struck by lightning. A mysterious woman shoots him and derails his career; in the book, it doesn’t work out for him, but in the film adaptation, it does.
Quick Hits:
Hugh Griffith, who we most recently saw in Oliver!, plays a Russian in The Fixer exactly as convincingly as Kenneth Branagh did in Tenet.
We’ve mentioned the film A Patch of Blue (1965) before: it starred Elizabeth Hartman as a white girl who falls in love with Sidney Poitier’s character. Hartman also finds forbidden love in The Fixer: her good Catholic girl tries to sleep with Yakov.
Ian Holm plays one of The Fixer’s many deplorables. Holm later played Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings (2001) and an android in Alien (1979).
Dalton Trumbo wrote The Fixer’s screenplay. He was a member of the Hollywood Ten, a group who wouldn’t testify in front of HUAC and were famously blacklisted (though Trumbo continued writing under pseudonyms and using fronts). Some of his other films include Roman Holiday (1953) and Spartacus (1960); he’s also known for the anti-war novel “Johnny Got His Gun.”
The Trivia
The Fixer is about Yakov’s spiritual and political awakening. Let’s address the spiritual side and talk through the holidays on the Jewish calendar. The Jewish calendar is lunisolar, meaning its months track the moon’s cycles but that there are solar-year adjustments to make sure the seasons don’t get out of whack.6 That means that, when compared to the Gregorian calendar, their holidays are “moveable,” i.e., not tied to individual days.
Let’s first discuss the High Holidays (or High Holy Days): Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Rosh Hashanah: the two-day Jewish New Year, marked by the sounding of the shofar (a ram’s horn). It’s known for the ritual of tashlikh (Hebrew for “cast off”), where one’s sins are symbolically thrown into a body of water.
Yom Kippur: coming ten days after Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur (literally “Day of Atonement”) is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. It’s focused on fasting and repentance.
Some historical stuff has happened on Yom Kippur. In 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel on the holiday, starting the Fourth Arab–Israeli War (AKA the October War, Yom Kippur War, or Ramadan War—call it whatever you like). Less importantly, Sandy Koufax didn’t pitch game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur.
These next three holidays—Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot—are considered “pilgrimage festivals” (though pilgrimage is no longer required).
Sukkot: Sukkot begins five days after Yom Kippur. It commemorates the Israelites’ time in the desert and, during the weeklong holiday, Jews often build and dwell in a temporary shelter called a sukkah.7 The holiday is known for a ceremony done with the four species: palm, myrtle, willow, and citron.
Pesach (Passover): An eight-day observance celebrating the liberation of Jews from Egyptian bondage. It’s named for God “passing over” the Israelites’ homes during the final plague. It includes the Seder meal (“seder” means “order” in Hebrew), guided by a book called the Haggadah that recounts the Exodus story. I’ve highlighted some parts of the Seder below, though you can read more about it here.
The Seder Plate contains many symbolic foods. One is bitter herbs (often horseradish), which symbolize the bitterness of slavery. Another is charoset, a sweet mixture of fruits, nuts, and wine, which represents the mortar used to make bricks.
The Seder plate. Image source. The Four Questions are traditionally asked by the youngest participant at the Seder. The four questions all seek to answer one big question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”
Matzah (unleavened bread) is eaten to remember the Israelites’ haste in leaving Egypt. The afikomen is a hidden piece of matzah that children search for after the meal.
The last of the pilgrimage festivals: Shavuot, also called the Festival of Weeks. It celebrates the revelation of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai. While Passover represents the Israelites gaining physical freedom, Shavuot celebrates their spiritual freedom. It’s celebrated by eating dairy and reading the Book of Ruth.
The last two we’re gonna cover, Hanukkah and Purim, are rabbinic holidays. These commemorate historical events and are not directly commanded in the Torah.
Purim: This celebrates the foiling of Haman’s plot to exterminate the Jews of the Persian Empire, as told in the Book of Esther (which is read aloud in synagogue from a megillah, or scroll).
Hanukkah: The “Festival of Lights” celebrates the Maccabean victory over the Seleucid Greeks and the rededication of the Second Temple. Adam Sandler can walk you through it.
Odds and Ends
The Fixer is based on the real events surrounding Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Jew accused of ritual murder whose unjust incarceration shed light on antisemitism in Russia…“there’s no such thing as an unpolitical man”…some classic Passover foods: gefilte fish, macaroons, matzo brei, and Manischewitz…Maurice Jarre, whose music we heard in Lawrence of Arabia, did The Fixer’s music…besides “The Natural” and “The Fixer,” Bernard Malamud wrote “The Assistant” and “The Magic Barrel.”
One last thing: in The Fixer, a character mentions that “[the Jews’] criminal nature is constant; all this has been scientifically proven,” pointing to “Jewish noses, every one of them a criminal type.” I bring this up to remind how racism and anti-Semitism have historically swaddled themselves in the language of objectivity, using the authority of science to justify hatred, violence, and exclusion. Be careful out there.
The goal is to turn political sentiment against the Jews to protect flailing czar Nicholas II. Here’s how it’s described:
To govern men you must govern their passion. To unite them, you must unify their passion. Since hate is far stronger than love, it follows that men are best unified by hate and best moved to action by a desire to kill what they hate. If our workers and peasants begin to hate the czar […], ultimately they will kill him. Far better they hate and kill the Jew. In fact, it’s the only patriotic alternative.
This means we’re skipping over some of his other films with newsletter fav Burt Lancaster, including The Young Savages (1961) and The Train (1964). We’ll also blow past All Fall Down (1962, one of Warren Beatty’s earliest film roles), Grand Prix (1966, a racing film), and Seconds (1966, which is The Substance for boys).
These films have ripped-from-the-headlines vibes: in the former, Laurence Harvey is brainwashed into assassinating the president and Frank Sinatra has to stop him, while in the second, Army general Burt Lancaster’s out to overthrow President Frederic March and Kirk Douglas has gotta stop him. I like the vibes of both but pacing’s a problem; if you’re gonna watch ‘em, I’d recommend cranking the speed to 2x.
And even if Frankenheimer’s late film career was spotty, he directed well-regarded TV movies for HBO and TNT that won him four Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries or Special Emmys.
Including Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Women in Love (1969), The Go-Between (1971). Apparently he has a naked wrestling scene with Oliver Reed in Women in Love, so I guess that’s not boring.
Specifically, the Jewish year is 354 days long, which is shorter than the solar year. To fix the drift, the Jewish calendar has a 19-year cycle, where a leap month (called Adar II) is added in 7 out of 19 years.
The plural of “sukkah” is “sukkot.” Sukkot is also sometimes called the Feast of Booths or Feast of Tabernacles, with “booths,” “tabernacles,” and “sukkot” all just meaning “temporary shelters.”
Oh hey, after a long lapse finally a "pure" factual correction, hehe: Ian Holm played an android (spoiler?) in a famous sci-fi film, but it wasn't Blade Runner.
Unrelated: Frankenheimer's "Black Sunday" (not Mario Bava's lol) is one of my all-time Top Ten or so.