The Fixer (1968)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

John Frankenheimer

Writers:

Bernard Malamud (novel)
Dalton Trumbo (screenplay)

Release Date:

8 December 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

This is "The Fixer" who didn't know he had courage...until courage was all he had left.

Plot:

In Czarist Russia, unjustly jailed Jewish handyman tries to get out.

Plot Keywords:

Russia | 1910s | Pulitzer Prize Source | Child Murder | Based On Novel

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 4 nominations

Cast

Alan Bates	...	Yakov Bok
Dirk Bogarde	...	Bibikov
Georgia Brown	...	Marfa Golov
Hugh Griffith	...	Lebedev
Elizabeth Hartman	...	Zinaida
Ian Holm	...	Grubeshov
David Opatoshu	...	Latke
David Warner	...	Count Odoevsky
Carol White	...	Raisl
George Murcell	...	Deputy Warden
Murray Melvin	...	Priest
Peter Jeffrey	...	Berezhinsky
Michael Goodliffe	...	Ostrovsky
Thomas Heathcote	...	Proshko
Mike Pratt	...	Father Anastasy

Runtime:

132 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:PG | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | USA:PG-13 (re-rating) (1993) | Argentina:13 | Sweden:15 | USA:M (original rating)

Filming Locations:

Hungary

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios

Trivia:

In His memoirs 'David Lodge' says that 'Jack Gilford' was cut totally from the final print, also Lodge's part was also cut to the bone.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream (1998) (TV)

Captures the strengths of the book

It is not often that cinema can do justice to a great novel. This one brings out the existential questions of the lead character Yakov Blok in an honest manner, true to the original. I think I would place the credit more with screenplaywriter Dalton Trumbo for this effort. He did not even change some of the key lines of the book. I wonder what Malamud would have thought of the script.

Frankenheimer needs praise in some sequences, the prison sequences and the seduction sequence--but what amuses me no end is why he chose to cast the three actresses who speak their lines with no care for even a semblance of being East European.

Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, Hugh Griffith, David Warner and Ian Holm are all good actors but Frankenheimer made no effort to make them speak like Russians or East Europeans. Bogarde is predictable in his role, but Alan Bates carried the film. He alone played his role with conviction. Maurice Jarre's music was good but not his best.

Like "Gandhi" this film will be remembered because of the subject, not because of its cinema. The true hero was not Bates, not Trumbo, not Frankenheimer--it was Malamud!