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Created Jun 07, 2016 11:26PM PST • Edited Apr 10, 2021 01:10AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Morituri is a terrible title for a movie, now and in 1965 when this Brando-Brynner warhorse premiered. If that wasn’t bad enough, Marlon Brando refused to do publicity, limiting himself to one line of perverse grandiosity. The movie bombed. So they renamed it The Saboteur: Code Name Morituri, better but really long. Had they simply gone with The Saboteur, they’d have had a hit. For those about to die… died.

   Brando is ideal as a German expat living the highlife in British India. His tastes: few, expensive, beautiful.

   Brynner is even better as a patriotic German Merchant Marine Captain. He knows what a despotic maniac Hitler is, but is duty-bound to sail a high-value freighter from The Empire of Japan to Vichy France.

   Great moviestars get to deliver great lines.

   Marlon Brando “You’re a cold bastard.”
   Trevor Howard “I was born on a chilly island.”

   The cleverly constructed story expertly wields the dreaded power of the SS.

   “Under these circumstances, everyone is suspect, even you.”

   Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Janet Margolin & Trevor Howard deliver serious business like nobody’s business in this near-essential WWII classic. The Saboteur reminds us WWII was as serious as it gets.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Marlon Brando opposite Yul Brynner is as good as it gets, leading-man wise. Both were in their prime during the mid-60s. Brando easily inhabits a man of great physical confidence and few human connections. Brynner naturally inhabits a commanding man among hardened men, more virile than any other man.

   • Trevor Howard opens the movie in bravura style with Brando.
   • Janet Margolin graces the picture as Esther, a young Jewess hunted by the Nazis. Margolin would go on to a long Hollywood career, but probably never topped this heartbreaking Holocaust role.
   • Wally Cox plays a ship’s doctor with a bad habit. Cox went on to fame as the voice of Underdog and the platonic love of Marlon Brando’s life.
   • Oscar Beregi Jr. smugly plays a German admiral.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    The Saboteur – made in the mid-60s – was shot in Black & White, giving it timelessness and depth.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    Bernhard Wicki was supposed to hit a career high with Morituri. Too bad it bombed.

12. Play Perfect 5.0

    Daniel Taradash wrote the screenplay based on Werner Jörg Lüddecke’s 1958 novel Morituri. Lüddecke thus gets credit for the terrific story and blame for the deathly name.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Love the cinematography and editing in the multi-leveled engine room.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.6

    Beware powerful Holocaust testimony.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Savage 3.6

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

    The terrific story is fictional, albeit easy to believe given the depravities of WWII.

    Suspension-of-disbelief aside, the extraordinary political control of the Nazi regime remains a horrid wonder. SS enforced, it radiated dread.

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0