FORCED MARCH

US, 1989, 104 minutes, Colour.
Chris Sarandon, Renee Soutendijk, Josef Sommer, John Seitz, Rosalind Cash, Viveca Lindfors.
Directed by Rick King.

Forced March is an attempt to deal with the Hungarian Jews, their imprisonment in the concentration camps and their treatment, forty-five years after the event. Rick King (who has had a slight film career and television career as writer and director) imagines a group going to Hungary to make a film about the Holocaust. While there are re-enactments of the scenes for the actual film, there are counterpoints with the behaviour of the actual cast and crew.

Chris Sarandon is a star who is forced on the director to play the Hungarian poet at the centre of the film. John Seitz is the arrogant director. With the interactions between the two, the contrast between the Hungary of the past and the present, the behaviour of the Germans in the past and the German tourists in the 1980s, points are made about human nature as well as about the war and the Holocaust.

1.The impact of the film? For audiences in the 1980s? Now? The Holocaust themes? The film working at different levels?

2.The American and Hungarian settings? The contrast between the 40s and 80s? The re-creation of the 40s?

3.The structure of the film, audience attention, editing? The shifts of attention?

4.The title, the build-up to the march? The effect on Ben Kline and the audience?

5.The personality of Ben as a star, the Derringer TV series, his style, career, possibilities? His personal relationships, especially with his father? His memories? His not knowing the fate of his mother?

6.The deal with the film company, going to Hungary? The death scenes? His meeting Myra? The director, the effect? Hungary in the 1980s, the end of the communist era? The studios, the hotels, nightclubs for tourists, the garish style? Budapest, the Danube and its beauty?

7.Ben’s role, Miklos Radnoti? The poet, the patriot, his life and meaning? Ben’s attempts to understand him – using method techniques to understand him, the article about method for madness? His wife and memories, the poems, the guide and the professor? The director and his dislike of Ben’s performance and the criticisms?

8.The re-enactments, Paris, the return, his wife, love, creativity? The war, the detail of the work camps, the gaunt prisoners, the issues in the camp? The quarries?

9.Leaving, the advice, his friends? The arrival, the camp and the treatment? The different cases? The black market and the book? The quarry, the self-injuries and deaths? The guards and their relationship with the prisoners? Talk, play, poetry? The tightening of control? War’s end, the moving, the firing of the camp, the groups getting ready for the forced march?

10.Ben and his relationship with Myra, sharing with her, the affair, discussions, leaving? George and his help? Staying at the camp, the set and its effect? His being gaunt, living the role, gradual understanding, the poetry?

11.Ben’s father, his worries? The walk, the photography? The explanation of his not being a Jew? The survival? Things not being okay but coming to terms?

12.Hungary and the Jews, the prejudice, the soldiers, the inevitable resentment, the hangings, the attack against fascism?

13.The personality of the director, his intensity, his attitudes towards Ben? The hanging sequence and redoing it? The executions, the squads, his demands on the actors being prisoners and to show fear at death?

14.The audience focusing on Ben, the shifts of attention between himself and his performance?

15.The march, safe or not, passing through the villages, weariness, the prejudices, Hungarian reaction, the Nazis? The wagon, deaths, the digging of the graves and the burials?

16.The poem, floating, the effect on everyone? A film evoking memories and understanding?