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Gates To Paradise

1967, Movie, NR, 75 mins

Gates To Paradise: Review

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Director Wajda, who lost his cavalry-officer father and who himself experienced the Polish resistance during WW II, was obsessed by the apparent futility of acts of heroism in wartime situations. This picture, based on the Children's Crusade of the 13th century, expresses that view in the extreme, stressing the hidden motives which often lie behind acts of presumed courage. The Children's Crusade was an early peace march, one in which thousands of youngsters, armed only with their moral convictions, attempted to halt the long-lasting carnage of the battles between Moslems and Christians for possession of the holy land. Some 50,000 of the child marchers were lost, many of them sold into slavery in Egypt and in Marseilles, France. Stander is the sympathetic monk accompanying the youthful marchers. During the journey, he hears the confessions of several of the latter, discovering that their motivations have more to do with their physical attraction to the march's charismatic leaders, Carriere and Fordyce, than to pacifistic inclination. Further investigation discloses that the "vision" which impelled one of the young leaders to begin the crusade was dictated to him by the decadent count, Mayne, who has a lecherous desire for both young leaders. Observing that the entire massive undertaking was conceived in passions more of the flesh than of the spirit, Stander attempts to halt the march to Jerusalem, but he is trampled underfoot by the juggernaut of pacifism. Stander was an unlikely choice for the part of the monk; he had played comics and heavies for the most part. This was one of a number of films he undertook as an exile from the McCarthy-era witch hunts. leave a comment
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