Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron. Byronic Hero in WWII Movie.
My Review of Sam Peckinpah's 1977 Film, Cross of Iron.
For better or for worse, the Romantic Age was the last age of heroes. Yes, there is a tendency to dismiss these Byronic Loners as idealistic, misanthropic, sexist, or adolescent, but they were heroes, nevertheless.
After that literature had produced only "anti-heroes" in the style of Dostoevsky's Underground Man: self-aware, insecure, cerebral, paranoid, and incapable of action.
One of the best rendition of the Romantic Hero was Lermontov's Pechorin, the protagonist of the novel, A Hero of Our Time. Pechorin is cool and confident, strong and courageous. He also lives by his own principles. They are not necessarily informed by high morality or social mores, but they are his own, and he tries to live by them. Most of these principles go back to the age of chivalry. You can kill your rival, but in an honest duel. You can seduce a maiden, but not because you want to brag about it or mock and humiliate her, but because you fell in love with her.
What authors like Lermontov felt and exposed so well was the fact that modern age lacks any of that. We have petty nasty people who want to win by cheating, not by being the best or the coolest in an honest competition. It is Tonya Harding's world, in other words.
Pechorin has a nice formula. I don't want to be a slave: I was not born for that. Nor do I want to be a master -- it is too fussy, petty, and boring.
What is fascinating about the Byronic Hero, is that the interest in him arises at the time, when society got engaged in some sort of soul searching. When it looks around and sees only yes-men, company men, people without any honor or any principles, people for whom winning and climbing on top is everything. When Soviets got disappointed with petty part-apparatchiks capable only of empty sloganeering, they created a great film, White Sun of the Desert, which actually has two Pechorin type characters, one Red Army soldier, one former tsarist officer, united in their anger at the local war-lord who is willing to kill women and youngsters. These two do great things because of their inner principles and not because the party or social class told them so. When Russians got disappointed with the post Perestroika lawlessness, they created another great film, Brother, which consciously refers to Lermontov and his novel. Lermontov is very much alive in Russian consciousness.
American Westerns -- is the film form that clearly continued this tradition of a Byronic hero. A hero of Westerns, listens only to his own drummer. He does not like the corrupt town leaders and their pettiness, nor does he like the nasty bandits who want to torture, humiliate, and abuse the little guy. One of the great period of westerns was during the 60s and 70s, when the society was pretty disappointed with itself as the result of Vietnam war and other counterculture discoveries. Self-reliant loner who obeys rules that he sets for himself, became a hero again.
In comes a great director of Westerns, Sam Peckinpah and transports a tough as nails hero of Westerns into a soldier of Wehrmacht, fighting Russians near Crimea. Played by a familiar Westerns actor, James Coburn, the protagonist named Steiner has very few principles, but he is willing to die and kill for them. Steiner despises career driven officers, who hide in headquarters and then expect Iron Crosses, he has nothing but contempt for ideology, he mocks empty rhetoric and can't stand the abuses of war and violence.
Why is he fighting and risking his life every day then? He just can't let his men be abandoned and left to die. He wants to stay with them, dead or alive. But he expects the same from them. When one of his guys brutally rapes a Russian nurse, Steiner actually throws the guy to the survived nurses and tells them that he is theirs. He saves a capture Russian boy and protects him from a nasty careerist who said that the new order is to shoot all prisoners.
Is the film anti-war? You bet it is. But more precise, it is anti-establishment. Establishment being an institution that creates wars and other quagmires, which then requires people of integrity, courage, and nobility like Steiner -- to waste their talents on saving people whom the Establishment assigned to the role of cannon-fodder.
Coburn's Steiner, or Lermontov's Pechorin are the rivals and enemies that one wants to have. They can beat you, but only in open confrontation, and only because they are cooler, smarter, faster, or better trained. But not because they will cheat you, or betray you, or use some lie, innuendo, or denunciation.
Nihilistic seventies were followed by the euphoria connected with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and new confidence in the so called Western Values. Nihilists like Steiner or Pechorin, went out of fashion. Just follow the orders, climb your corporate ladder, vote for Democracy and capitalism and you'll be fine.
Well, I suspect, that since most of the societies end up being corrupt and cynical, there is always a time for a Byronic hero. Maybe in today's day and age, he'll take the form or Thelma and Louise, but these heroes are as inevitable as they are inimitable.
Below are the pictures of Coburn's Steiner staring down and ignoring the nasty scoundrel of an officer, who uses all the imaginary lies and intrigues along with his aristocratic name to get ahead and terrorize those who do not obey him. Maximilian Schell is too noble looking to play such a scoundrel, but he decided to do it. Acting is very good in this film, by the way.
