The "Criterion Cast" did an episode on "The Most Dangerous Game" and its role in film. Much of this post on "The Most Dangerous Game" owes a debt to this podcast, so take listen. The hosts claim this film can be seen as a companion piece to "King Kong," for it features a similar cast, crew, and directors. The commentary track on the disc talks about how the film was made as a side project while "King Kong" was filmed. It's likely that the film, while successful in its day, was overshadowed in film history by the groundbreaking film about a giant ape. Although "King Kong" certainly ranks as a great film, it wouldn't be the first time Hollywood spectacle overshadows something literate and small.
Contemporary audiences will notice the short running time (just over an hour). Filmmakers assumed audiences in the early 1930's would never sit through something more than an hour. The hunt begins very quickly, making most of the film a chase sequence. With less than a third of the film dedicated to establishing the characters, the film relies on dramatic presentation. From the first appearance of Leslie Bank's Zaroff, a contemporary audience will recognize he's the villain. The Criterion Cast hosts argued that audiences in the 1930's were less familiar with Russians (or didn't have decades of anti-Soviet propaganda directed at them). It's easy to see how Banks' interpretation of Zaroff, the sinister sophisticate, set the blueprint for other evil characters:
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| Zarkoff |
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| Dr. Han Zarkov, Flash Gordon |
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| Evil Spock |
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| Hans Gruber, Die Hard |
The lack of character development is the biggest flaw in the film, and the result is Bob's inability to grasp the irony of his situation. While being chased by dogs, Bob remarks, "This is how most of those animals must have felt." This line represents the apex of Bob's thoughts on hunting, thus limiting the scope of the film. The story ends with Bob taking the role of apex predator by killing Zaroff and sleeping in his bed, but the film requires the implied escape of Eve and Bob. Stagnant characters are common in melodrama, so we should view the film as a well-made example of the form. Most action movies act as melodramas (with simply drawn heroes, dames, and villains) and "The Most Dangerous Game" is no different.
"The Criterion Cast's" variations on a theme focused mostly on films like "Predator" or "The Running Man," where the idea of hunting humans wasn't explored in depth. "The Hunted," a film about a mad special agent being hunted by his former trainer, attempts to deal with the psychological ramifications of hunting people. Benecio del Toro's character's mental breakdown causes him to use his skills to hunt men. Zaroff in "The Most Dangerous Game" mentions having the idea of hunting men after a significant head injury. These stories both allow for the idea where the motivation for a person to hunt from another person is insanity. Other films work on the conceit that men hunt other men for revenge and pride. "Munich" focuses on the moral degradation of those men who hunt other men. The costs of people hunting for political purposes comes up in "The Debt."
"The Debt" deals with man-hunting and a love triangle. Three Mossad agents attempt to capture and spirit away Diter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), a former Nazi war-criminal known as "The Surgeon of Burkenau," from his home in East Germany to be put on trial in Israel. The team of Rachel (young Jessica Chastain/old Helen Mirren), David (Sam Worthington/Ciarian Hinds), and Stephan (Marton Csokas/Tom Wilkinson) successfully kidnap Vogel, but their plan falls apart and Vogel escapes. All three agents agree to tell a story that Rachel killed Vogel, a story that propels the team to fame. Thirty years later, Stephan finds Rachel to tell her that Vogel may have resurfaced in the Ukraine. The possible return of Vogel undermines not only the team's prestige but the career of Rachel and Stephan's daughter, who recently completed a book praising Rachel's bravery. The film focuses on the psychological implications of promoting a noble lie and amending history.
Others have written great reviews about the love triangle in "The Debt," so I won't bother to cover it. The initial plan and its unraveling is more useful in examining the theme of hunting people. "The Debt" is a fictional story with Vogel based on Dr. Mengele and the entire operation based on the kidnapping of Adolph Eichmann by Mossad agents. Like the team sent to kidnap Eichmann, both David and Rachel lost relatives in the Holocaust. David, having lost his entire family, wants to put Vogel on trial so the world will know the atrocities Vogel committed. Stephan, as team leader, seems to care about accomplishing the mission and never struggles with the moral weight of the task. Rachel's mother died in the war, but the film implies she was selected because she could enter Vogel's gynecology practice and strike where he was vulnerable. All three know the importance of their mission to the state of Israel and the need to locate those responsible for the Holocaust.
The original plan involved a quick escape from East Berlin, but the plan (no surprise) fails. As the team decides what to do, they hold Vogel in the small apartment. Time passes and the characters struggle forward coming up with an alternate plan. All three think of their mission as morally right, but those beliefs come from different places. Sympathy for the victims motivates Rachel, Stephan wants to advance the reputation of Israel, and David wants truth to come out. Because Stephan never interacts with Vogel as a person, Vogel focuses his manipulations on Rachel and David. Vogel's claims to David, "Four guards led thousands of Jews to the showers," making David consider the possibility that Jews were weak. David responds to the manipulation by brutally beating Vogel. Rachel's sympathy for weakness has Vogel playing up his infertility and relationship with his wife. The compassion Rachel shows to Vogel eventually aids his escape.
What unites all three is their belief in the righteousness of their mission and its importance to Israel. Vogel asks Rachel why the team doesn't kill him, for he didn't believe he had much chance of being acquitted in an Israeli court. He argues that the team will kill him by handing him over just the same as if they murdered him in the apartment. The complexity involved in bringing him to trial was about honor for Israel and their image as a civilized state. To accomplish their legal trial, the team must sneak across another nation's borders, tap phones, impersonate civil workers, kidnap a person, and sneak across the borders again. When the plan goes awry, the team winds up assaulting and killing innocent border guards. In the apartment, Stephan revels in torturing Vogel with an off-key rendition of "Deutchland uber Alles." The decaying apartment, with increasingly leaking roof and cockroach-infested sink, symbolizes the moral decline of the high-minded mission into murky territory.
Writer Michael Ignatieff claims that torture comes from intense morality rather than immorality. It's hard to sympathize with a monster like Vogel, but we must consider the extent to which these characters hunt, capture, and detain Vogel based on the belief that their cause is right. Their version of morality allows them to treat Vogel like a beast, chaining him to a wall, force feeding him, and preventing him from moving. When Stephan puts a bag over his head, David claims the bag could suffocate Vogel but Stephan no longer views Vogel as human but a problem. After the escape, the team agrees Vogel will never resurface, so the lie of his death will make the mission worthwhile. David struggles with the lie and hopes to find Vogel, keeping in line with his desire for truth.
The older David's later hunt for Vogel takes a toll on him. He never marries, has no friends, and loses his health. David states he was hospitalized in Mexico, perhaps for psychiatric reasons, but he finds Vogel very late in the film. He asks the older Rachel if she had the chance, would she kill Vogel rather than try him. Rachel, knowing the truth would shatter her daughter's career, says she would rather the truth remain buried. The hunt has no benefit for her, so she leaves it alone. In this way, Rachel was right to hunt him the first time and right to let him go later.
Although the morality of the team in "The Debt" seems easy to grasp, Zaroff hunts people according to his own code of ethics. Zaroff believes hunting is true living, thus he thinks a challenging hunt is a true test of his skills. He is motivated by what he believes to be supremely right, the law of the jungle and that life must be lived at the extreme, and acts on that motivation. Judging Zaroff's actions is easy because his moral code is abhorrent to most people, but the situation in "The Debt" is no less ambiguous. Vogel believed the Jews should have died because they were inferior, thus replicating part of Zaroff's outlook. Because Zaroff wants good sport, he couldn't chase someone he though was subhuman for that would negate the purpose of his hunt. On the other side of "The Debt's" conflict, Stephan needs to find Vogel (and later maintain the lie) to extend the myth of Israeli skill in hunting enemies. Stephan thinks the story of Vogel's death demonstrates strength and nothing proves the worth of someone like a successful hunt.
By no means do I intend to trivialize the Holocaust by claiming the pursuit of war criminals is wrong. Justice should be done, but intelligent people can disagree about if the rendition of Vogel (and the tactics used) are just. Stephan has no reservations about the hunt or the lie, for he believed in Israel with the same clarity Zaroff believes in the nobility of hunting, but Rachel and David have more complicated feelings. Hunting people is a strange thing made stranger when done by other people. If nothing else, these films show how noble ideas, like honor and justice, can cost us our humanity.
Other films:
"Crossing Arizona" 2005
"The Spaghetti West" 2005
"The Architecture of Doom" 1993
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