Town without Pity
Dir. Gottfried Reinhardt
103 min. / B&W / 1.66:1 / DTS HD-MA 2.0 MONO
MGM Blu-ray $21.99
Available from Movie Zyng
Occupied Germany, 1960, and a U.S. Army base is near a small town where there’s not much to do but hang out at the local bar, have fun with the hookers, sweat, and complain. When four U.S. soldiers brutally assault a teenage girl who went out for a swim, to appease the angry townspeople prosecutor E.G. Marshall demands the death penalty; disgusted and reluctant defender Kirk Douglas pushes hard for a plea bargain and lengthy prison terms instead, because he knows that if goes to court, he’s going to have to further traumatize the young woman. And what to do with the pretty female yellow journalist making his life even more miserable, the victim’s father, who demands justice even at the cost of his daughter’s life, and those citizens of the town that actually have no pity for the victim, since they rely on the soldiers pay and attention for sustenance?
Whew. This is some dramatic picture, and not an easy watch, but it’s an excellent, historic film, if you can stand it.
We’ll start with the four soldiers. Note that there’s no question about their guilt; the drama is all how Douglas struggling with how far he has to go to do his job as defense attorney when it means defending rats who have assaulted a young girl. Frank Sutton is the sociopath who feigns innocence and claims the girl enticed them; Mal Sondock seems bewildered by the whole trial; Richard Jaeckel is unapologetic and acts annoyed that there’s a law against rape; and young Bobby Blake is simply nuts, sorry for what occurred, sympathetic towards the victim, and psychologically and physically impotent. He belongs in a booby hatch, not a military prison.
Christine Kauffmann, the victim (and she was actually 16 when she filmed this) is terrific in a traumatic role; she was already a film vet, and a couple of years later she’d marry her Taras Bulba co-star, Tony Curtis. I recognized her as soon as the film started, because her portrait hangs in my screening room: an original one-sheet from Escape from East Berlin (1962). Kirk Douglas keeps his usual bombast under military check for most of the film, to our appreciation; this is one of his best performances, actually. One wishes E.G. Marshall - soon to be of The Defenders - had more to do, though.
Based on a German novel by Manfred Gregor, with a taut, intense script by Sylvia Renhardt and Georg Hurdalek (and an uncredited, blacklisted Dalton Trumbo) and a wonderful score by Dimitri Tiomkin, mostly variations on a theme that became a huge hit record for Gene Pitney also called Town without Pity, heard throughout the film as incidental music.
Town without Pity is a quintessential and courageous film of its Cold War era. The MGM Blu-ray is fine, with no noticeable imperfections and no bonus material. Note that MGM has a tendency to list its home-release films in the packaging and promotion as 1.33:1 ratio whether it is or not; the film and the Blu-ray presentation are 1.66:1, as indicated at the top of this page, so fret not about that, and it’s a powerful, engrossing movie - if you don’t mind a downer.
