Byron ARGIRIS I "rediscovered" and just watched this little gem of a film with Good classical music and great performances, particularly by Maximilian Schell. It's technically a war movie though. My rating of 7 is based on purely entertainment value. Pretty good

juan carlos I make a difference, referring to war movies. There are some that are very faithful to the history such as Midway, Tora, Tora, Tora and there are some that emphasize the epic and heroic aspects of soldier life in terrible circumstances. I have to say that I am more interested in the second ones such as The Dirty Dozen, The Eagle has landed, etc. Counterpoint belongs to the second category. A famous music director (C. Heston) and his orchestra is kidnapped by the Nazy army in Belgium. The German General (M. Schell) wants this orchestra to play for him but the director delays this concert as much as possible to avoid his musicians to be killed. I think Ralphn Nelson felt some empathy for the character, starred by Heston because he was in the Army in the II World War and participated in different plays in Broadway to entertain people in the same way Heston tries to entertain soldiers in the cold Europe. Schell and Heston perform their roles perfectly: they admire each other but war has placed them in different sides of the river. Schell is far from the archetype of the Germans in the Hitler era. There is a love subplot between Heston and one old love, his musician,Kathryn Hays, who is now married with a partner, a serious Leslie Nielsen. This love story and the sequence in which an American soldier is nearly discovered by a German Colonel but he feigns to be a musician of the orchestra, playing the U.S. hymn, remind me of Casablanca. The cinematography of Russel Metty, in which the shadows have a relevant role, is quite brilliant. So, it deserves to be seen.Juan Carlos del Castillo Álvarez

morales_zoraida This is one of the dumbest movies I think I've ever seen. Prison camp commandant Maximillian Schell is obsessed with the idea of having Charlton Heston's orchestra perform a concert for him. Charlton Heston's character is equally stubborn in refusing to do so. This battle of wills totally dominates life in this stalag and makes trivial all other issues surround life in a Nazi POW camp in World War II. Does that make any sense? A young Leslie Nielsen looks debonair but plays a real lox. Neva Patterson is really good as the only sensible character in the whole movie. But Heston and Schell are so over-the-top, this movie plays more like a comedy than like a drama. At least the cinematography is real good,

Onthethreshold Seriously though, this film is not merely about whether the plot seems ridiculous or whether Maximilliam Schell and Anton Diffring made careers out of playing Nazi 'creeps' The story here is simple and that is that even in time of war and all its attendant horrors, people can still preserve a little of humanity through the appreciation of what lives on eternally. Music. Music such as the pieces highlighted in this movie, the talent of the musicians and the conductor can win over even the most heartless and potentially cruelest of individuals which many Nazi's arguably were at the time. Perhaps above all else 'Counterpoint' is really about how individuals are indeed malleable and can be made to see reason through all the madness. Maybe in this regard it proves that ideology and a belief system can be overidden by emotions and a love for something as beautiful as great music. As an interesting aside it should interest viewers of this film to think of the niece of the great composer Gustav Mahler, Alma Rose who as a Jew was sent to Auschwitz where she eventually died. Gifted violinist that she was even Joseph Mengele was rumoured to have paid her solemn respect after she had died. He was even rumoured to have tried to save her life before it was too late, so perhaps the morale of the story in this 1968 film is indeed relevant to real events of the past.