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Play Dirty (Cancelled)

Play Dirty (Cancelled)

(Play Dirty)

André de Toth

  • 1969
  • United Kingdom
  • Adventure / War
  • 1h58mn
  • Original version with French subtitles
  • Color
During the Second World War in North Africa, a British commando is sent on a mission to destroy a vital nazi oil depot. The distinguished Captain Douglas, supposedly in charge of the operation, soon finds himself at odds with the methods of Captain Leech and his crew of ruthless mercenaries.
Play Dirty could be just one more adventure film set during the Second World War, but with André de Toth, the escapade soon turns into a dramatically dark misanthropic fable, akin to a Dino Buzzati story tainted with cynicism. Like the snow covered landscapes of Day of the Outlaw, the desert becomes the setting for an open air huis-clos, steeped in contemplative anxiety and foreshadowing the eschatological visions of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer.

Adilkhan Yerzhanov

André de Toth was known for Westerns, a filmmaker of straightforward genre pictures—but Enfants de salauds was a revelation to me, one where genre rules are broken.

Only Peckinpah's cynicism comes close, but de Toth's 1969 masterpiece surpasses it.

Overshadowed by The Dirty Dozen, this film remains a hidden gem. Yet de Toth's hyperrealistic direction—his use of real desert locations, absence of dramatic music—feels more modern today than Aldrich's sometimes naïve staging.

And the finale—one of the best in film history—perhaps even outdoes Penn's Bonnie and Clyde in terms of absurdity.

Screenings

10/09 • 14h15 • Screen 100
Session presented by Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Because of the current social movement, we are unfortunately forced to cancel this screening

Credits

  • With : Michael Caine, Nigel Davenport, Nigel Green, Harry Andrews, Patrick Jordan...
  • Screenplay : Melvyn Bragg, Lotte Colin
  • Photography : Edward Scaife
  • Editing : Jack Slade
  • Music by : Michel Legrand
  • Production : Harry Saltzman