Original subtitles

This is Matthew Espray -Gear, and I'm delighted to be talking to you about

Michael Mann's The Keep from 1983.

In the many years since its release, The Keep has become a kind of cult film,

but it clearly...

was in 1983 not entirely an accurate representation of its director's

intentions. The form in which this film was released was a compromise.

It was a misfire.

Not entirely successful realization of Michael Mann's ambitions.

Film history is full of examples of directors losing control of their films,

and those films being released in unsatisfying versions.

If we go back to the silent era, there's the very well -known example of Eric

von Stroheim's Greed, which was cut down by the studio drastically.

Orson Welles lost control of the Magnificent Ambersons, and...

facing dignity of his work being reshot by other directors, a new ending

imposed.

And closer to the period of The Keep, there were films like Tinto Brath's

Caligula and David Lynch's Dune, even the earliest version of

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

These were...

Films that wound up being kind of a front to the director's

original conception.

But nevertheless, The Keep is tantalizing in the glimpses it gives us

ambitious and unusual artistic vision.

The film begins with ambiguities. The music does not at all suggest the period

of World War II.

It's much more contemporary music, and it's taken quite a while for concrete

images to fill the screen with these historical details.

And really, Michael Mann has spoken, or at least at the time of the film's

production, he spoke of how he wanted to create a kind of fairytale atmosphere,

dreamlike atmosphere.

He spoke to interviewers about his reading of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses

Enchantment, a book on fairytales.

He told Film Comment in 1983 that he thought, I'll quote him,

Now

this

movie has gained a reputation among critics and viewers for some level of

incoherence or

kind of inscrutability in its plotting and the supernatural background to the

story.

I don't think that's entirely a consequence of the substantial missing

the cuts that the studio forced Mann to make before the film's release.

If you read the book that the movie's based on, the novel by F. Paul Wilson,

supernatural background, the kind of backstory that explains this incident in

the Carpathian Mountains, it's much more explicit.

It's not a lot of ambiguities about what exactly is going on.

But I don't think Mann was too interested in a faithful adaptation.

I think plot -wise things are...

pretty faithful but he was quite interested in this atmosphere of the

and the dream where not everything needed to be explained

i

believe there's no such place

as the dinu path i think that was created by f paul wilson for the book

book goes into more details of why the German military was in this particular

part of Romania in 1941.

At least for the purposes of the book, they were there to protect the petrol

supply in the city of Ploiesti.

for their planned invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa in the

summer of 1941.

The novel is very explicitly set in April of 1941, so before that operation

was underway, although there are indications in the dialogue in the

that the film is set after the invasion has been launched.

Your new home.

How do you like it?

Not very well, sir.

Why not?

It should be in Russia.

For what?

The final assault on Moscow.

We could transfer.

But by the time you got there, Russia would have gone like France, Belgium,

Holland, all the rest.

We are all done fighting.

This village was constructed in a

former quarry in Wales to double for the Carpathians

and John Box was the production designer

Michael Mann said that there was a definite intention for this village to

visually contrast with the keep so we have this mostly white village

outside and the black stone of the keep which we're

about to see

Jürgen Prochnow, who plays Werriman, had recently appeared in Wolfgang

Petersen's Das Boot, in which he plays a U -boat commander.

Very successful World War II film.

The character notes in Michael Mann's script give us some backstory to

that he was a World War I soldier who'd been decorated with the Iron Cross, but

he is modest about that, and in fact had been a leftist before being

eventually drafted into the Wehrmacht.

What are you doing here?

I'm the caretaker, sir.

And they?

They're my sons.

There's 108 such crosses made of nickel embedded in the walls of the keep.

In Michael Mann's first draft, there were 16 ,807 of

the crosses embedded inside the keep.

But by the final cut of the film, there's only 108, which I guess is

cost -cutting. Where's the owner? I have no idea.

Who is he? I don't know.

Who tells you what to do?

We do what needs doing.

My father spent his life doing it.

His father before him. The character of the caretaker, Alexandru, is played by

the British actor W. Morgan Shepard.

And he affects what sounds more like an American accent than a

British accent, certainly more than a Romanian accent.

As we'll hear, Ian McKellen too was asked to perform his role

with an American -style accent. And I guess that was a way of achieving

some consistency.

Among the Romanian characters, because most of them are being played by North

American actors.

According to the script, the dog's name is Petru.

The character of the priest, Father Fonescu, is played by Robert Prosky, who

just worked with Michael Mann on Thief.

Who built the keep?

Some say Turks, some say the warlords of ancient Wallachia.

No, no, no, this is not a portrait.

If you look at the original trailer for The Keep, there's a totally different

presentation of this conversation, this realization by Wurman that

The Keep has a very strange construction because it's designed not to keep

something in.

Out, but seemingly to keep something in.

The

English

actor John Vine has looked.

They hide silver here.

Treasures, sir. Private love.

It's been a profitable day for you. Not only have you learned the crosses are

made of nickel, not silver, but you have earned yourself a place on First Watch

all week. Get out!

Never touch the cross. W. Morgan Shepard later had significant roles in the Star

Trek and Doctor Who franchises.

What a great voice.

Good day, Alexandra.

The script has a scene that didn't make it into the final cut, that happens just

after this moment, where we see the inn, and Alexandru

with his son, Father Fonescu, another character called Tomeski, who are

around reflecting on the Germans' arrival.

Well this extended horror sequence might be a good time to speak a little bit

about the different traditions of horror that this film and the novel it's based

on draw from.

F. Paul Wilson's novel was published in 1981.

And it was in fact the beginning of a long series of books known as the

Adversary Cycle.

Now the setting of the keep in Romania has an immediate association

with the story of Dracula.

And I think the novel by Wilson is a kind of riff on the Gothic tradition.

with some introduction of Lovecraftian elements.

The Gothic novel emerged from Protestant Britain in the late 18th century, and

it was in its early conception very much a look at the decaying

aristocracies of Catholic Europe.

Bram Stoker's Dracula comes along at the end of the 19th century, so by which

time there would be a hundred years of the Gothic genre and several other

notable vampire stories.

But Dracula, I think, permanently establishes something of the lore of the

vampire narrative.

The setting is, of course, Transylvania in Romania.

By the very act of setting this story in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, F.

Paul Wilson evokes the Dracula story.

Indeed, in conversations between Molisar and Cusa in the novel, we learn at

first that this is not actually what turns out to be the case, but Molisar at

first claims to be

a being from the 15th century, a feudal lord by the name of Viscount Radu

Molossar, who was a follower of Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Dracula.

Although he is not allergic to garlic or silver, he is, however,

pained by the appearance of the Christian cross.

It's later revealed that this vampire story is a kind of ruse on the part of

Molossar, whose name is actually Rathalom, which is Molossar backwards.

And Rathalom vastly predates vampire lore of the Middle

Ages. Rathalom is an ancient being, if you want to call him that, or a force of

nature, a force of evil.

who dates to what Wilson describes as the First Age.

He talks about him as the champion of chaos.

Now his opponent in this story, who is going by the name of Glenn, but his name

is really Glaken, we'll meet in a few moments, as played by Scott Glenn,

describes...

Molothar Rathalom as the source of the vampire legends, but what he craves is

nothing so simple as blood.

He's a being which sucks out the strength of humans.

He seeks their human pain and their anger and violence to create his own

evil force.

So the book is an interesting spin on the Dracula legend, but Wilson adds also

references to the mythos of H .B. Lovecraft, another seminal writer

in the horrid tradition.

There's a scene in the book which doesn't make it to the film, in which

a discovery behind a wall in the keep of a library of very rare, even...

I guess, legendary occult books, grimoires.

And the title of these books listed in Wilson's novel are

borrowed from the mythos of the Lovecraftian universe.

I think some of them were invented in stories by Clark Ashton Smith and Robert

Bloch.

So it's a book very well grounded in its tradition of horror.

And as I said earlier, the supernatural background, the backstory to this

incident during World War II in the Carpathians is pretty unambiguously

out. So you'll have a better understanding of what's going on in this

you read the novel.

Michael Mann filters this material not only through his interest in the fairy

tale, but I think very much through his debt to the German

Expressionist tradition.

Mann said to Cinefantastique magazine,

that my aim is to exteriorize the spiritual in the expressionist manner.

And expressionism is a tradition which, prior to its appearance in the world of

cinema, was a phenomenon of visual art and theater.

Its motivations were to transform the external into an expression

of psychology, terror.

Michael Mann spoke about lighting scenes in this film with very old arc

lamps dating back to the silent era.

I think he deliberately tries to evoke German expressionism in his

approach to the visual language of the piece.

So what are the tools that an expressionist filmmaker can use?

In the early days of German expressionist cinema, in films like The

Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, which was a film rendition of The Dracula Myth by F

.W. Murnau, the filmmakers used sets and makeup, and especially shadows

and lighting, to distort reality as a way of expressing the emotional and

psychological content of the story.

German expressionist cinema gave future filmmakers a toolbox of techniques to

draw upon.

We see its influence in horror cinema of the 30s in Hollywood, in film noir,

in the work of filmmakers like Hitchcock and Orson Welles.

The overwhelming aspect of expressionist Maison Saine, which was employed by

these filmmakers, was lighting, which could create

tremendously effective distortions of reality without ever entirely leaving

the realm of the real.

I don't think Michael Mann has ever been a realist filmmaker.

I think expressionism has always been a touchstone for him.

And in The Keep, he indulges that impulse at its fullest,

especially through the cinematography, which is mostly monochromatic, a

beautiful cinematography by Alex Thompson.

These scenes with the character Glacon, played by Scott Glenn, are set in

Piraeus, which is the port near Athens.

But in the novel, he makes a much greater journey to the Carpathians from

in Portugal.

It's a journey across the Mediterranean that's narrated in some detail.

Very expensive.

This scene really shows how right Michael Mann was to bring Tangerine

for the score.

This very meditative moment at dawn on the Aegean.

Tender and Dream were a big deal at the time this movie was made, and they'd

scored quite a number of films.

But there was never an original soundtrack release for The Keep in the

80s.

Subsequent decades, there were some retrospective releases which purported

the soundtrack, but...

Really, they featured very little music that's actually in the final cut of the

film.

There's an extensive study of the musical history of The Keep online

that was written by Kit Ray.

Gabriel Byrne was at a very early stage of his career in the cinema when he

appeared in The Keep as the Nazi Kampfer.

Byrne had recently made his film debut in John Borman's Excalibur. The request

for relocation is denied, Borman. I am now in command over this emplacement and

you will not interfere with our actions.

You!

You!

You! You and you!

In the novel, Kampfer appears in the very earliest pages in a prologue, which

is a sort of framing device.

It's set in Warsaw, and it's the scene that introduces the assignment that

Kampfer has been given by the SS to go to this remote part of the Carpathian

Mountains.

in response to Varuman's request, because, as he says, something is

his men.

And then after that prologue in the book, there is a flashback to the

Varuman with the German army at the keep in the Carpathians, and things progress

chronologically.

In Michael Mann's first draft script, this...

Prologue sequence in Warsaw is included, it is dramatized, but instead of

framing the film, it is reinserted at the chronological point it takes place.

Obviously it's not in the final cut of the film, and I'm not sure it would have

added very much.

It's more of a character introduction for a camphor.

We learn Camphor was at Auschwitz for a year.

I guess something that's slightly diminished or lost by the removal of

scene with Camphor and Warsaw is the sense that the awakening of Molossar at

keep is drawing different people to this remote location.

Firstly, Glycon, and secondly, Camphor.

from Warsaw.

I guess if you were to write down a bunch of key words that come to mind

you look at The Keep, you'd probably find the same bunch of key words to

describe one of Paramount's biggest hits of the 1980s, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Obviously, The Keep is an entirely different take on some superficially

similar themes.

I'm not sure what expectations Paramount brought to this project, The Keep, but

it ultimately wound up an unsatisfying experience for all concerned.

But at the very moment The Keep was being released to theaters in the United

States, Paramount was finding great success with Terms of Endearment,

which became a massive box office hit and won the Oscar for Best Picture the

next year.

Hollywood was a very different place in the early 1980s There's

also an industry in transition because the blockbuster period had arrived

Thanks to the films of Lucas and Spielberg

But there were still many vestiges of the personal filmmaking associated with

New Hollywood, which had revolutionized American film in the late 60s.

Those words are Romanian.

What they say, I won't.

They look like Romanian, Herr Officer, but they're not. I don't know what they

say. He's telling the truth.

Make him stop.

What do you suggest I do?

Direct him. Priest.

If you look at the films that Paramount was releasing in the first few years of

the 80s, you get a really interesting mix of relatively small -scale dramas

comedies and a really impressive lack of sequels, in fact.

But then also the emerging film franchises that were going to play a big

going forward, like the Star Trek films and Indiana Jones.

I'll shoot this man dead.

Paramount also had big hits with musical films like Flashdance and Footloose.

And I suppose that was a reasonably typical slate of films for a major

studio in this era.

Despite the very dark subject matter.

And the historical background of the Holocaust and the Second World War,

evidently there was an expectation that the keep had commercial potential.

And in fact, this combination of the supernatural and horror with

Nazism and the Second World War had been a winning formula for

Raiders of the Lost Ark.

To Michael Mann's great credit, he took this material and, working with the

resources of a big studio, pursued a very personal vision of what it could

In the novel, Professor

Kuzda and his daughter are seized at their house in Bucharest and taken to

keep.

The film obviously shows...

Kuzra and his daughter are in the process of being transported to the

camp.

Kind of interesting in the novel that the character of Glaken, who we see

is going by the pseudonym of Glenn because Michael Mann cast Scott Glenn

in that role.

An actor from Pittsburgh who at this point was starting to appear in some

prominent films.

Same year as The Keep, he was in The Right Stuff.

And he had just appeared in the lead role in John Frankenheim as The

an action thriller set in Japan.

And we'll of course go on to an illustrious career as a character actor

Hollywood.

Ian McKellen has not spoken fondly of his experience making The Keep,

and the accent that he adopts, which was supposedly on an instruction

from the director, was a Chicago accent rather than a Romanian accent, which he

had prepared.

Because there are mostly North Americans playing the Romanian characters,

That seemed to be the rationale to create consistency.

But the imposition of this Chicago accent, which I don't think would fool

anybody in Chicago, I think proved to be something of an inhibitor for

McKellen's performance.

But we love him. He's Ian McKellen.

than the galactic alphabet.

Your partisans are writing to you in a language that has been dead for... Now,

Ian McKellen, of course, already was one of Britain's great Shakespearean actors

on the stage and had made several films and really only come to prominence on

the big screen playing D .H. Lawrence in Priest of Love in 1981.

He'd also won a Tony in 81 for performing as Salieri in Amadeus.

Wood. You need wood for a fire.

Get that code.

Look at my father.

He looks 68.

He's 48.

Well, at this particular moment, as we have these beautifully composed shots

with these great shafts of light, it might be a good time to talk about Alex

Thompson, the British cinematographer who brought so much to this film.

Thompson was, at the time, widely acclaimed

for his work filming John Borman's Excalibur.

He'd worked his way up from the very bottom of the rung at Denham Studios in

England after the war, eventually becoming the camera operator for

Rogue, a cinematographer at that time, later a big -name director.

Now Thompson shot a lot of films through the 70s in the horror genre before

working with big -name directors through the 80s and 90s. Michael Cimino,

Ridley Scott, Neil Jordan, David Fincher.

And The Keep is a great example of how

effective a collaboration can be between a great cinematographer and a

production designer like John Box John

Box was one of the most awarded production designers,

art directors in the history of cinema working closely with filmmakers like

David Lean

We worked on the big epic lean films of the 60s, like Lawrence of Arabia and Dr.

Zhivago, and later Passage to India.

I'm not going without you.

You have to try.

I'll carry you on my back if I must.

Don't ask.

Who ever thought of sticking the miracle of the human intelligence inside one of

these decaying bodies?

He should have been fired.

So where else would God have put the human soul?

In a desk.

Maybe a streetcar.

Oh, it wouldn't be so bad. It breaks, you get a new part. Relax for me.

One of these days you're going to believe in the divine.

You believe in gods, I believe in men.

Alberta Watson plays Ava, but in the novel the character's name is

Magda.

Watson was a Canadian actress who was really just coming to prominence at the

time she appeared in The Keep.

She'd be better known in the 90s, in fact, through appearances in some...

Notable indie films like Spanking the Monkey and The Sweet Hereafter.

And on television in La Femme Nikita.

How'd you get that, big guy?

There is something that you can do for me to make me feel easier.

Orson Welles once said that with historical films, the one telltale

that often dates a movie is women's hairstyles.

And I think that's true of The Keep, because Alberta Watson's haircut is very

80s.

But then again, Tangerine Dream are not really serving up the sounds of 1941

either.

There's certainly an interesting use of sound design in this film.

Robin Gregory was the sound mixer, a two -time Oscar nominee.

And the sound effects are well integrated with the Tangerine Dream

But that said, it's been often observed of the theatrical cut of The Keep that

The sound mix doesn't sound entirely finished.

There's a kind of roughness to the final product And that was probably a

consequence of the complicated post -production and the cuts to the film

its release

This

sinister and claustrophobic scene consists of just two camera setups

One fix shot down near the food server as well as a very nifty tracking shot

which doubles for the cutaway back to the entrance

Well, it's time for some exploding Nazis.

Raiders of the Lost Ark had done this too, not only exploding Nazi heads, but

melting Nazi faces.

This impressive smoke effect was created by Roger Simons

using film running backwards and some other techniques.

So we get the first glimpse of Molisar, at least in his first incarnation,

accompanied by music adapted by Tangerine Dream from a mass by Thomas

Tallis.

This is a reworking of the Gloria from the Mass Pura Natus Est Nobis, Unto Us a

Child is Born, composed in the 16th century for four voices.

The versions of this particular piece on the officially released soundtrack

are considerably different.

Well, the big meeting is here.

Molotov is brought to life by the actor Michael Carter, who had recently played

Bib Fortuna in Return of the Jedi.

Do you remember the

alien who's a kind of major domo at Jabba the Hutt's palace?

Well, that was Michael Carter.

It was a very makeup and prosthetic heavy role to play

So

Michael Carter was quickly becoming a specialist in these types of demanding

roles We're going to see Molotov next incarnation pretty soon and

Michael Carter getting into a very impressive costume

As is widely known, the visual effects supervisor for this film, Wally Weavers,

died in the middle of post -production in February of 1983.

And this is widely cited as one of the reasons why the film had such a

difficult road to completion.

A case of having to figure out how to complete the effects that Weavers had

planned.

Of course, there were hundreds of effects shots involved.

Wally Weaver's career went all the way back to the 1930s on

seminal science fiction films like H .G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come.

and he'd worked with Stanley Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove and 2001 A Space

Odyssey, and more recent special effects movies like the 1978 Superman.

The early 1980s was an exciting time for special effects, new innovations,

and in fact, special effects had become one of the selling points.

of blockbuster Hollywood films.

I

don't

know what it is and I don't care.

While the location work was done in Wales, most of this film was

shot within the sets constructed at Shepperton Studios just outside of

on the northern banks of the Thames.

A studio that had a long history in British

Going back to the early 1930s when it was built specifically for sound film

production.

In fact, its early name was Sound City.

I forbid it. I will not permit you to send my daughter away.

You? You forbid?

Let me tell you something. You forbid nothing.

Nothing.

Get her out of here.

The legendary producer Alexander Corder made many films at Shepperton over the

years.

Corder owned British Line Films, and Shepperton was its main production

facility.

Some of The Third Man, which was produced by Corder, was shot here on set

Shepperton.

And through the 60s and the 70s, there were some major film productions made at

Shepperton Studios, like The Guns of Navarone and The String of Films by

Kubrick.

Ridley Scott went to Shepperton to make Alien in the late 1970s.

The Keeps production designer John Box

was certainly familiar with working at Shepperton, working on large -scale

like Oliver, which had won him an Oscar in the late 60s.

Wally Weaver, the visual effects supervisor, had also been working at

for years.

If I were, I would have been in the Terminal Brigade with other anti

-fascist Germans.

Despite the grandiose set, such as the very large central section of the

keep, much of the film actually takes place in this little nook.

Why do you, a Jew, need the protection of the cross?

I don't.

It was the gift of a friend, a humane man.

Listen to me, Captain Vermin.

I pass the gift on to you.

Take it.

You are a humane man, too, and you... you may need it.

So we're listening to a cue that reprises a theme already heard in the

On the official soundtrack album, the theme is presented by a cue called Night

in Romania.

This is a different version.

And again, I recommend Kit Ray's analysis of the extremely complicated

of Tangerine Dream's score for this film.

It is a bit of a relief to be out of the claustrophobic, dark environment of the

Keep.

The upcoming sequence is often spoken about when this film is discussed as

evidence of how brutally this film was cut down before it... theatrical

And it's certainly true there's a real whirlwind romance about to happen.

If you read F. Paul Wilson's novel, there's a lot more

exploration of, well, Magda, as it's called in the book, her growing and

puzzling attraction to glycan.

There are several scenes that take place that bring them closer together before

they consummate their relationship But

if you look at the Michael Mann first draft script

There really is not too much more than what we see in this final cut

There's a strong suggestion that glycan has

some kind of hypnotic power over Ava, as she's called in the film.

And I think the Tangerine Dream soundtrack helps to add to a sort of

atmosphere.

We have a resumption of the musical material that was earlier introduced

in the Piraeus sequence, where a glycan is setting out on his

quest across the sea.

We see Glycon has turned the mirror around as we've discovered creatures of

kind, beings of his kind, cast no reflection.

This was designed to pay off later on in one of the

ideas for the original ending when Glycon does obtain a sort of mortality

and is reflected in water.

But that's not the version of the ending that we'll see in this cut.

So not much explanation.

We don't even know that this guy's name is Glaykin yet.

We're entering the part of the movie where the pace is going to start to

very rapid, but it does feel like we are seeing a bunch of disconnected

scenes that lack an overall coherence.

So I guess this is the...

part of the film that was the most severe casualty of the studio's decision

cut this film down to about an hour and a half.

While Molokar is now taking a more concrete shape, and this design,

this character design, was the work of Enki Bilal, who is a French

Yugoslavian born comic book artists who came to prominence in the 70s were

writing and illustrating comics for the classic French publication Metal

Hurlant.

Many of these stories and comics were translated for the English

speaking world in the magazine Heavy Metal.

The very same year as The Keep, Bilal was also working conceptualizing designs

for Alan Rene in a film called Life is a Bed of Roses.

Much later, in the 90s, Bilal would become a film director in his own right.

One of Bilal's comics was, I was intrigued to learn, The Inspiration.

for an esoteric sport known as chess boxing, in which the opponents alternate

playing chess and getting in the ring.

It must be done by someone I can trust, like you.

Molossar's costume or suit that was especially built for the film, worn

by Michael Carter, was designed to be very responsive.

to the actor's physical movements.

There's an interview with the makeup effects artist Nick Maley in Fangoria

magazine around the time of the film's release, and he talks about how

intricately this suit was designed so that the actor was able to move freely.

So a lot of different craftspeople, designers, worked to make Molossar

And I should say as well that this visual conception of Molossar is

completely different to the way he's suggested in the novel, which

is more traditionally in the mode of a vampire.

And the Messiah, his immortal son, who took flesh of the Holy Mother and ever

-Virgin Mary. And I, I have been right.

And you, you, Theodore Cusar, you have been wrong.

I was right. In my simple faith, I was right.

The rest of evil comes from the acts between man and man. It wears a swastika

and it believes in black dreams. You know this. What's happening to you? Stay

here. Stay here with your daughter and burn with the others.

Burn with the misfits, the gypsies, the heretics. I won't lift a finger to help

you.

Monster!

We now have a series of images to suggest the ways that the evil

unleashed within the keep is starting to...

infect the town folk.

Now we really only see in the final cut of the film how it affects the priest,

and there's a disturbing scene to come very shortly that

is actually a little bit difficult to understand unless you look closely, but

turns out the priest has sacrificed his dog and is drinking that dog's blood.

In the first draft of Mann's script there was a much more broad attempt to

how this evil that is drifting around the town is affecting

different people.

For example, Alexandru, the caretaker we met at the very beginning of the film,

he is murdered by his two sons.

This certainly didn't carry through to the final draft of the script, but

initial idea was that the innkeeper decides not to be generous

to Ava, but instead to take advantage of her predicament

to try to exploit her sexually.

What's happened is that what was repressed within the keep is spreading

village.

It's not really very clear how Kuz is able to so freely leave the keep.

Scott Glenn performs his character with a very stony, unemotional

persona.

I'm sure this robotic performance was intentional.

But he really doesn't give much away.

What

do

you

want? Since music does...

Give an effective sense of impending action.

I believe he's connected with the people who pay for the keep's maintenance.

Arrest the man. Bring him to the keep.

This place seems to agree with you.

You look healthier.

This place?

has its strong points.

The abbreviated nature of this film, especially in this part of the running

time, I think presents a bit of a challenge to the audience to feel any

engagement with this relationship between Ava and Glycon.

After all, they've only met a matter of minutes ago, and we're already at

this... crisis scene which would have had a lot more power i think if that had

if their relationship had been much better developed and established if it

doesn't help that glycan is so mysterious there's virtually nothing we

know about him except his mission guarding against what is happening now

being released

Nevertheless,

despite the editorial challenges, I think Alberta Watson's performance comes

through pretty strongly.

Why did you come to me?

Become my lover?

Out of a dream?

To touch.

As only mortal men can do.

Oh hey, I know that guy.

I thought he died in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yeah, this is Wolf Karla, a very

experienced German actor.

I don't think anything Michael Mann had worked on prior to this prepared

audiences for The Keep.

In fact, it was only his second theatrical film, After Thief, in

1981.

He directed a television movie in the late 70s, The Jericho Mile, which is

not at all indicative of a director who was...

on his way to making an expressionist horror film about World War II.

However, both The Jericho Mile and Thief had announced a major new directing

talent.

Even at this very early stage of his career, long before the triumph of films

like Manhunter and Heat, Michael Mann was very much identified with

the crime genre.

He'd been writing scripts for television shows in the 70s, cop shows like

Starsky and Hutt and Police Story.

and, in fact, directed an episode of the series Police Woman.

The courageous Einsatzkommander, again a victorious.

The Jericho Mile was a prison film with a focus on

athletics within the institution, and it was shot inside a real prison,

television film

With

thief we not only get a very moving story and a compelling look at one

of the underworld really based on extensive research

But we also get to see a masterful stylist at work

this cityscape of neon rendered on film by a filmmaker

already at the top of his game.

In

2014,

in a Hollywood Reporter interview with Stephen Galloway, Michael Mann

Reflected on The Keep, he said, quote, it was a script that wasn't quite ready

and a hard script to schedule because of how the picture was financed, unquote.

And he also said it was a film that was never completely realized.

The Keep was far from successful with either critics or the public, but it

really didn't derail Michael Mann's career.

Back in the United States, he was heavily involved as an executive

the television show Miami Vice.

It became a big hit, and Mann really was crucial to establishing that film's

aesthetic.

And then he directed the fabulous film called Manhunter, adapted from the

Harris novel Red Dragon.

I'm only half a man.

All that we are is coming out.

Here in this keep.

The man sees the truth.

And what truth do you see? The keep very quickly fell into obscurity, certainly

in the wake of man's other successes.

And it's really only endured as a cult favorite ever since.

Very tantalizing because of the glimpses it gives of a much bigger and ambitious

project that man was never...

able to be released in a form that pleased him. You have released the

that dwells in all men's minds.

You have infected millions with your twisted fantasies.

Just great to see two top actors in an extended exchange like this.

These two actors were going places.

Gabriel Byrne soon to appear in Defense of the Realm and Miller's Crossing.

Jürgen Prochnow going to appear very shortly in David Lynch's Dune, another

notorious debacle, and later in the decade in A Dry White Season.

Well, now we have the big, dramatic, atmospheric set piece, and the first

confrontation between Kampfer and Molossar.

The music in this scene, I think, is very

atmospheric, very effective, and I must again acknowledge Kit Ray's article for

pointing me to

What seems to have been the source of this particular piece of music,

Dream recorded a live album called Logos in 1982, and this is a reworking

of that.

In fact, a number of other cues in the Keep score are derived from

that live album Logos.

In the novel, the Christian cross is something that Molossar reacts against.

He doesn't fall victim to any of the other things that scare away vampires,

but the crucifix is something he can't stand the sight of.

The film goes in another direction.

What are you?

Where do you come from?

In Michael Mann's first draft, Vermin, who's been shot by Kampfer, has a brief

revival, only to be killed very brutally by Molotov.

Carry it from this place.

Take it out of here.

There's no one left to stop you.

We're now hearing a dramatic musical accompaniment to this crucial part of

drama. It's a cue by Tangerine Dream called Canzone.

This particular film version is quite distinct from the versions of

this piece that have been released commercially.

I'm not quite sure what the choral music being sampled is in this composition,

this very repetitive fragment of choral music.

But it does provide, I think, a kind of epic and sort of strangely spiritual,

religious quality to the parallel movements of Cusa trying to get out of

keep.

and Glycan trying to regain his strength to confront Molotov.

What a beautiful image shot I believe in a slate quarry in Wales

I

Mean

yet, there's lots of problems with the theatrical cut of the keep but some of

these images are so stunning

and tantalizing when you think about what this film might have been if things

had gone a different way.

It does seem a little bit late at the 84 minute mark to introduce Scott Glenn's

character's name, Blaken Trismegistus.

But anyway, now we know who he is.

The Keep did not make Ian

McKellen into a big movie star. Not yet.

He spent the next few years really only doing a handful of films and television

appearances and mostly

concentrating his efforts as an actor on stage with the Royal National Theatre.

His huge international successes would come much later.

Who are you that I have to prove myself to by killing my child?

A baby!

Or you will return to the diseased state!

I found you in.

And I'll slay both of you.

If this is yours, as you said, then you take it out of it.

You can't?

Then this isn't yours.

And the keep is a prison to contain you.

And you have lied, exploited, deceived.

And you are the same evil as outside this place. So you...

Prove yourself to me.

You take it out of here.

Prove yourself.

Well, here he is, Lakin Trismegistus, here for a galactic showdown with a

supernatural force of evil.

This is a very cool effect that recalls the first moment we see Glacon when he

wakes up in Piraeus.

I think the reputation of the keep would be much higher today if

in 1983 audiences had been able to see Michael Mann's or something close to

Michael Mann's original conception.

The abridgment, especially in the later part of the film,

have the unhappy consequence of rendering the story a little bit

incomprehensible at times.

That being said, I think there are some choices in terms of characterization

and performance which don't really help.

in themselves, and there seems to be almost a kind of willful obscurity at

times, which may very well have fit into Michael Mann's bigger conception of the

film before it had to be abridged.

Well, we're listening right now to Tangerine Dreams, arrangement of a song

called Walking in the Air.

This song was composed by Howard Blake for a children's animated film called

Snowman in 1982.

Walking in the Air was to become a ubiquitous Christmas song in the 80s and

beyond. Very popular in Britain.

Well, the movie's about to end.

But I should mention here that on some of the television broadcasts of

The Keep, there was an extended ending that actually extended to the point

there was a happy conclusion.

And basically what happens is there's a depiction of a struggle through space

between Glacon and Molotar as they descend into the bowels of the keep.

And we also see Ava entering the keep and descending to the depths, and

discovering Glacon's body, and he's alive.

And more than that, he can now see his reflection in a pool of water, meaning

that he's no longer immortal.

and can therefore enter a love affair with Ava. So it's the beginning of a

beautiful friendship.

So why was that happy ending not included in the theatrical cut?

It's a good question.

It may be because the special effects shots were not properly completed.

There's a tussle between Molisar and Glaykin, and Scott Glenn remembered

shooting in front of a black velvet screen for Wally Weaver's, but after

Weaver's death, nobody could figure out how to incorporate the special effects

into the shot.

Maybe for television that was deemed okay, but not for the theatrical

Well, I'm Matthew Espray -Gear. Thanks for joining me, and I hope you've

another look at The Cape.