BEHOLD A PALE HORSE (1964) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Fred Zinneman
Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif,
Mildred Dunnock, Christian Marquand
Twenty years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, the battle continues in the cat-and-mouse duel between an officer in the Guardia Civil (Anthony Quinn) and an aging Republican guerilla (Gregory Peck) gone to ground across the border in France. Despite its A-list director and cast, this couldn't look much less like a Hollywood movie: a deliberately paced character study whose main character is difficult to like, an action adventure with all of its action bunched up in the final reel. The black-and-white cinematography and street-level locations are a throwback to Italian neo-realism. And it ends on a downbeat note of irony and fatalism that no producer who just wanted to send 'em home happy would touch. Which, it turns out, are all good reasons to see the film. But the best is Peck, who gives a compelling performance in a role for which he might seem miscast. When Manuel Artiguez creaks out of bed in his run-down room in Pau, he greets the day with a cough and immediately lights a cigarette. (In this picture, you almost never see Peck without a half-smoked butt clenched between his lips.) Artiguez is not Atticus Finch. He's ornery, mean and abusive to those around him. He trusts nobody, dislikes people generally, and absolutely hates priests. Peck does next to nothing to evoke your sympathy, and yet when he sets out on foot over the mountains to his last mission in Spain, you can't help rooting for him anyway. That he's doomed, that he knows it and you know it, that's just part of the bargain. He's still Gregory Peck, after all.
