gordonl56 KING RAT 1965 This 1965 production from Bryan Forbes is quite frankly, one of the best P.O.W. camp films ever made. It stars, George Segal, James Fox, Tom Courtenay, Patrick O'Neal and John Mills.The film is set in Singapore's infamous Changi Prison camp during the waning months of World War Two. The Prison housed thousands of captured Commonwealth troops as well as a smattering of Americans. The prisoners are all slowly dying as they try to survive in the squalid conditions present inside the camp. That is all but Corporal King, (George Segal) who runs a thriving black market operation trading with the Japanese guards. This keeps Segal feed, and in the small luxuries most in the camp never see, eggs, cigarettes etc.The camp Provost Marshall, Tom Courtenay spends his days trying to catch Segal at his "against the rules" business. Courtenay is stymied at every turn by most everyone in the camp. This is because damn near everyone is on Segal's payroll. What few possessions the prisoners have, watches, rings and the like are all brought to Segal to move. Smart operator, Segal, takes a piece of the action off both ends during these "trades".Hustler Segal befriends British officer, James Fox because he needs a translator who can speak Malay. This would make his exchanges with the guards easier. Fox soon becomes a top man in Segal's outfit, which is mainly made up of American prisoners.Fox hurts his arm helping Segal make a big money exchange one night. The two barely get away with the deal because Provost Courtenay appears on the scene. Fox's injured arm soon becomes gangrenous and Fox looks like he might die. Segal makes a big trade to get the needed antibiotics to save Fox's arm. He does this because Fox is the only one who knows where the loot from the earlier deal is hidden. Fox recovers and believes Segal saved him because he is really his friend. This is not the case.Worked into the story, is an interesting bit where Provost Courtenay, uncovers a scam by several of the officers in charge of food supplies, who have been stealing. Courtney reports the men to his commanding officer, John Mills. Mills tells Courtenay to drop the matter. Courtenay is shocked to discover that Mills is also in on the theft of food.Segal's group soon comes up with an idea to raise rats under the hut. They will then sell the meat to the camp officers. They will tell the buyers it is really meat from the Malay Mouse Deer.This business is just up and running, when the Japanese Camp commandant informs the Chief British officers that the war is over. The Allied forces soon arrive with plenty of food, medicine and clothing. Segal soon finds he is no longer needed, and falls from his position as the un-official "King" of the camp.The film is based on the bestselling novel, KING RAT, by James Clavell. Clavell had himself been a prisoner in Changi POW camp. One of Clavell's most famous novels, SHOGUN, was made into a big time television mini-series in 1980. Clavell wrote the story or screenplays for, THE GREAT ESCAPE, THE Satan BUG, TO SIR WITH LOVE, 633 SQUADRON, THE FLY and the LAST VALLEY. Clavell also directed and produced with TO SIR WITH LOVE as his best film in that area.The film's director, Bryan Forbes, was also a triple threat as a writer, producer and director. Forbes directed this film as well as doing the screenplay from Clavell's novel. Some of Forbes other film work, would include, WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, THE WRONG BOX and THE STEPFORD WIVES.Handling the director of photography duties is five time Oscar nominated, and two time winner, cinematographer Burnett Guffey. His two Oscar wins were for, BONNIE AND CLYDE and FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. Guffey was well known to film noir fans for his work on, THE SNIPER, MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS, NIGHT EDITOR, FRAMED, KNOCK ON ANY DOOR, CONVICTED, SCANDAL SHEET, PRIVATE HELL 36, NIGHTFALL, THE TIGHT SPOT, HUMAN DESIRE and THE HARDER THEY FALL.

SnoopyStyle It's 1945. The POW camp Changi jail, Singapore holds most British prisoners from early in the war. They are imprisoned by the jungle and the far distances. American Corporal King (George Segal) lives comfortably from his various schemes in contrast to everybody else's near-starvation. Military police Lieutenant Grey is fixated on bringing down King and his selfish corruption. After catching a rat, he comes up with an idea to breed them and sell rat meat as mouse deer. King befriends British officer Lt. Peter Marlowe (James Fox) who is taken with King's methods.POW films are often grand escape films. Sure there are some scheming douches but they are all villainous types. This one makes the schemer an anti-hero. He doesn't become good to join the war effort. He is a complicated person with complicated motives. The world is a dog-eat-dog world. It's a great character. George Segal plays him with a bit of sleaze and a bit of charm but he is not a villain. He is simply the King Rat.

Naught Moses Lawrence Kohlberg wrote a controversial and much discussed paper about the stages of moral development at the U. of Chicago in 1958. Kohlberg asserted that moral development ranged from conditioned obedience and fear of punishment through self-interest, conformity, authority for the sake of maintenance of social order, and consciously made social contracts, to awareness of universal ethical principles. While still subject to argument, a number of psychometric tests have been adapted or specifically developed to test the accuracy of Kohlberg's notions. To this day, his ideas strongly influence measures of anti-social, sociopathic and sadomasochistic thought and behavior in criminal justice and other endeavors. Take a look at it on, say, Wikipedia, and then watch "King Rat" closely to see where the various major characters fall on the scale. Further, one can utilize "KR" as an illustration of socialized, acculturated, "normalized," and belief-bound -- vs. chillingly empirical, anti-socialized, anti-ac-CULT-urated, ab-normalized, observation-driven -- appraisal of events. The former may well be "just" and "fair," but relatively ineffective when it comes down to survival... and the latter may be "ruthless" and "vicious," but relatively effective therefor. "KR" demands one climb out of the box of "delivered truth" based on authoritarian in-struct-ion to "get it." In modern neuropsychological parlance (see, for example, Iain McGilchrist), it requires that one pretty much abandon the rules and regulations of the brain's verbal- symbolic-skewed left hemisphere for the open-mindedness of spatial- sensory-skewed right. Even though the 1950s had been a watershed decade for existentialism and the 1960s a decade of wider distribution therefor, "King Rat" was =far= ahead of its time in the English-speaking world. But if one could have seen it in the Russian-speaking one (not possible during the Cold War, after all), anyone who'd read Dostoyevsky and Chekov -- let alone lived in a gulag -- would have sussed it immediately. RG, Psy.D., "The 12 StEPs of Experiential Processing," online.

James Hitchcock Despite the viciousness of the Nazi regime, British and American prisoners of war captured by the Germans in World War II were generally honourably treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention and given adequate food and accommodation. Those captured by the Japanese were not so lucky. They were often treated brutally, kept short of food and used as slave labour for their captors. This may explain the difference in tone between prisoner of war films set in Europe and those set in the Far East. The former, such as "The Wooden Horse", "The Colditz Story" and "The Great Escape" are generally optimistic in tone, part of the tradition of heroic, patriotic war films. The prisoners are often shown as idealistic patriots, eager to escape from captivity so that they can carry on the just struggle against Nazism.In "King Rat", however, as in that other Asian POW drama "Bridge on the River Kwai", the tone is very different. There is no realistic possibility of escape, as there are no neutral countries nearby. Life for the prisoners is a dog-eat-dog struggle for survival, one that often involves compromises with one's principles and with the enemy. "Bridge on the River Kwai" is unusual for a Western film in that it gives a relatively sympathetic portrayal of an Axis soldier, the Japanese commandant Colonel Saito. In "King Rat" no Japanese characters play a major role; the emphasis is very much on relations between the Allied prisoners themselves. The shortages of food and other necessities mean that a black market has grown up in which the prisoners barter their possessions with the camp guards and local Malay villagers in exchange for extra supplies of food, clothing and luxuries.The "King Rat" of the title is an American prisoner, Corporal King. Despite his lowly rank, his surname is an appropriate one; his skill in exploiting the black market has made him the "king" of the camp. The "rat" part of the title may refer to a scheme he hatches for breeding rats as a food source, but it may also refer to his lack of moral scruples. The other major characters are two British prisoners, Flight Lieutenant Peter Marlowe and Lieutenant Robin Grey. Marlowe, a young RAF officer, is befriended by King, who is impressed by the younger man's command of the Malay language, and becomes King's official interpreter in his business dealings. Grey is only a junior officer, but wields considerable power because of his position as Provost-Marshal, in charge of enforcing military discipline in the camp. He develops an obsession with King, whom he is determined to see punished for his black marketeering.The film can be seen as an exploration of the theme of capitalism versus socialism, with the former coming out on top. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that this was an American film made during the Cold War era). King is a selfish individual, without a single altruistic bone in his body, yet his pursuit of self-interest has the effect of making life more bearable for his fellow-prisoners. Grey, a man of left-wing socialist views, is outwardly idealistic and a believer in fairness and equality, but he is also petty and vindictive with a bureaucratic obsession with enforcing rules (even rules imposed by the enemy) for their own sake. Without the extra supplies provided by the black market, the inmates would be forced to exist ("live" is not really the appropriate word) at near-starvation levels.The film is not, however, just a political parable. It is also a human drama about the stresses facing men in captivity, and there are some memorable performances. The role of King was turned down by Steve McQueen, who had starred in "The Great Escape", and by Paul Newman, who was later to star in another great drama about men in captivity, "Cool Hand Luke". In the event it went to George Segal, who turns in a fine performance as the amoral yet resourceful King, as do James Fox as the naïve, impressionable Marlowe and Tom Courtenay as Gray. There are also good contributions from various distinguished British actors such as John Mills, Denholm Elliott and Leonard Rossiter.The film was directed by Bryan Forbes, who was also responsible for that great British classic, "Whistle Down the Wind". I would not rate "King Rat" quite as highly, but despite the very different subject-matter of the two films both are distinguished by a similarly stark black-and-white photography. "King Rat" was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Cinematography, Black-and-White". This is, of course, an award which is no longer given; the decline in the number of black-and-white films being made has meant that since 1967 there has only been a single "Best Cinematography" award. Nevertheless, films like "Whistle Down the Wind" and "King Rat" remind us of how powerful monochrome could be as a dramatic medium. 8/10