COVID-19 changed a lot of things, including the perception of certain films made many decades ago. Few such transformations were as disturbing as the one created by the now-prophetic basic premise behind The Cassandra Crossing, the 1976 disaster film directed by George Pan Cosmatos.
The plot begins in Geneva, the seat of the World Health Organisation (for the purposes of this film renamed the International Health Organisation). A group of three Swedish terrorists arrive there in order to blow up a US diplomatic mission. Their attack ends in failure, but one of the terrorists manages to escape after being exposed to samples of various biological weapons secretly stored there. Swiss physician Elena Stradner (played by Ingrid Thulin) discovers that the man most probably carries bacteria which can cause a highly infectious and untreatable pneumonic plague. As he boards the train for Stockholm, US Army Colonel Mackenzie (played by Burt Lancaster) warns that half of Europe might perish because of the pandemic. The situation is so dire that Cold War enmities are disregarded, and Mackenzie orders the train to be sealed and redirected to a quarantine facility in Communist Poland. Meanwhile, as the passengers begin to get sick, they are tended by one of them, Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain (played by Richard Harris), a famous neurologist who also happens to know when and how to take initiative. This proves quite useful, because the train’s route includes an old, abandoned and very unstable bridge in the Carpathian Mountains. When Mackenzie repeatedly refuses reasonable warnings and insists on the train crossing that bridge, Chamberlain and a couple of fellow passengers realise that the only way to survive is to stop the train themselves.
When it premiered, The Cassandra Crossing was greeted with hostility by most of the critics, who saw it as just another uninspired attempt to cash in on the popularity of disaster epics and a vanity project for Italian producer Carlo Ponti, whose wife Sophia Loren appears in the poorly written role of the protagonist’s wife. The audience, however, thought differently, and the film had solid results in international markets. This could be explained by the presence of a very diverse and interesting cast, who often manage to overcome the flaws of Tom Mankiewicz’s script. For example, the lack of acting ability in O. J. Simpson is actually an asset when his character happens to be a sinister-looking man unconvincingly trying to pass as a priest. Young Martin Sheen displays quite a range in the unusual role of a gigolo who services a rich old woman, flamboyantly played by Classic Hollywood diva Ava Gardner. Even Richard Harris’s wife, Ann Turkel, in the role of a travelling hippie folk singer, gives some strange charm to the film while lip-syncing the film’s theme song and is, of course, pleasing to the eye. The most memorable role, however, belongs to Lee Strasberg, the famous drama teacher who, in one of his rare on-screen appearances, delivers a powerful performance as an old petty criminal who, in a sealed train bound for a camp in Poland, recognises something he experienced during the Holocaust. The interesting cast is well-matched by Cosmatos, a director known for 1980s action hits, who in this film manages to establish a good pace after a somewhat slow exposition in the first part, and in the second half delivers plenty of exciting action, involving shoot-outs, stunts, explosions and a finale with disturbingly graphic carnage for this sort of film. Jerry Goldsmith, one of the most prolific film music composers, adds to The Cassandra Crossing with another effective soundtrack.
While the original script in part tried to exploit post-Watergate distrust in the government, from today’s perspective this approach looks incredibly ahead of its time. The cause of the disaster in this film is not only man-made, but made by the US government, the most powerful human institution in the world, embodied by the world-weary but merciless bureaucrat brilliantly played by Burt Lancaster. It is difficult not to see parallels between his decision to seal hundreds of people in a train and the lockdowns that affected billions of people, just as his stubborn decision to have the train cross the dangerous bridge looks very much like the insistence of government bureaucrats to maintain strict lockdowns despite questions about whether they had any sensible effect on curbing the pandemic. Mackenzie’s total disregard for the safety of passengers, or even the implied hope that they would ultimately perish in a train crash and thus bury any proof of embarrassing games with biological weapons, can easily be compared with governments of today that completely disregard the devastating effects ruined economies and years under lockdown can have on people’s health. The Cassandra Crossing once looked silly, but doesn’t look so silly now.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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