R. Ignacio Litardo This film made me realize there are many things I am not good at. First, a mariner's life. Second, small towns & closed societies. Third, military life. Fourth, French films with too little dialogue :)? I was truly disappointed with this one. I understand there are "big philosophical issues" here, but sincerely, the only one I truly understood was the talent's parable (which we know since early childhood) and a mild idea of the "Heart of darkness", rightly induced by the mention of another of Conrad's novels, being read by the Captain.Yes, the images are fantastic. The sea that almost got frozen seemed unbelievable, and some close up takes of the ship made it even beautiful. But the "antropological" slant of the ship's life, machines, fishermen, sailor's "humour", "stories" and appeals to authority finally got on my nerves. Let alone Lt. Willsdorff! I suppose the mention of a military officer arrying a cat ALL the time would make any true one sneer. 'Le Crabe-Tambour' was totally lost in his own world. He showed his leadership with the Africans, when he made them win a battle. When was later made "general" he seemed, for the first time, to enjoy himself, not studying them like, say, an ethnographer. But it wasn't enough. "The meaning of silences"... Good for putting yourself to sleep.

gerrythree Le Crabe Tambour is like no other movie about soldiers that you will see, being a movie that in some parts resembles Citizen Kane, in other parts Rashomon. The doctor on a ship's final voyage across the Atlantic serves as the connecting link for the episodes that describe the title character, Wilsdorf, nicknamed "Drummer Crab." At one point, the ship's captain says Wilsdorf's two best friends were his black cat and the doctor. From what happens, Wilsdorf had another best friend, the captain, but that friendship ends as a result of events described in the movie.Wilsdorf's adventures start off as picaresque, but they become grimmer as he takes a role in a military conspiracy, details of which are only vaguely described. You have as characters in this movie older soldiers –the captain, the doctor and the chief, and Wilsdorf, who is not shown as aging. A nurse at the harbor the ship stops at comments that usually ship's doctors are young. But Le Crabe Tambour is about old soldiers fading away, all except Wilsdorf, who is only shown through the memories of others.Pierre Schoendoerffer also directed La 317e section in 1967, which has the character Lt. Wilsdorf in it, then in a supporting role as a soldier at Dien Bien Phu. Wilsdorf was an Alsatian drafted by the Nazis who then became a French soldier and finally, a fisherman, with a boat off the fishing grounds by Labrador. Being a literary sort, Schoendoerffer does not explain everything at the end like a typical mystery story. Behind the opening and closing credits are images of ships beached on shore, wrecks that have outlived their usefulness, just like the ship's captain. The real French frigate, the Jaureguiberry, filmed for this movie on its last voyage, gets a mention in the last credit. When you see the ship's bow plowing through high waves in the North Atlantic, you also see the sides of the ship, with rust patches on it. The ship, like some of its passengers, has reached the end of the line. Le Crabe Tambour is not about just the adventures of an errant soldier, but is an attempt to put on screen the meaning of life for career military men at the end of their careers, with one, the ship's doctor, having a last chance to find out the truth about Wilsdorf.I doubt that the French movie industry will finance another movie like Le Crabe Tambour, which is an example of "art for art's sake." I saw the movie on the Image laser disc of the movie, an Interama Video Classic. The LD version had hardcoded English subtitles. The movie was released overseas in 1977, but in 1977 there was almost no distribution anymore of subtitled foreign movies in the United States. Le Crabe Tambour only made it to New York City in 1984 for a short run. There is a DVD version of the movie now on sale in France, but like most French movie DVDs, that DVD has no English subtitles. So, Le Crabe Tambour falls by the wayside, even though its subject, soldiers' fates, is as timely as ever.

Tector CRABE-TAMBOUR's base-camp story is simple-- the antiquated officers of a functionless army spend a voyage home on rough North Atlantic seas recounting stories of a cavalier-soldier whose busted military career spanned France's last years of colonial globalism. This beautiful film (master Raoul Coutard's sea-footage is a film unto itself) is rich, ironically resonant, and in a wrenching last scene, comparable to Peckinpah in its regard for its stoic heroes, the last-men-standing at the sorry end of empire.

Gilles Tran There are many war movies, but few movies about war. War movies are usually action movies set during a war. Other movies deal about war itself, why the people do it, why they enjoy it and suffer from it. Like Apocalypse Now or the Thin Red Line, The Crabe-Tambour is about war, though, unlike these movies, it shows little of it. It tells the story of Wilsdorf, a.k.a. the "Drummer-Crab", a French officer in the colonial armies, who witnessed (and took part in) the fall of the French empire after WWII. The man himself has become a legend and lives in the memories of fellow soldiers, who tell different tales - fantastic, ironic - about him. Wilsdorf appears as an elusive and shining ghost, a youthful figure of their past, who is still roaming the world as a free man while they grow old and embittered. Some may find there both a dubious fascination for the military (strongly reminiscent of Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese series) and nostalgia for the colonies. However, it's so beautifully filmed that this can be easily forgiven.