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Three kings By Lior Friedman Tags: Eli Tavor, Uri Zohar On the sixth day of the Six-Day War, at the airstrip of the Refidim Air Force Base in Sinai, Eli Tavor, then a journalist on reserve duty, met Uri Zohar, who was sent to entertain the soldiers on the front line. "Uri called me," recalls Tavor, "and there, at the end of the runway, still under the enormous influence of the quick victory in the war, he said to me, 'We must make a movie about this.'" One year later, on July 6, 1968, "Kol Mamzer Melekh" ("Every Bastard a King") premiered at Cinema Mugrabi in Tel Aviv. It became one of the biggest box-office successes in Israeli movie history. About 743,000 people saw the film, almost four times the number who went to see "Metzitzim" ("Peeping Toms"), which came out four years later and was also directed by Zohar. Not only the public loved the movie; even critics had good things to say. In Haolam Hazeh: "Finally: a movie, not another Israeli movie, but simply a movie." Natan Gross, in Al Hamishmar: "The audience leaves the theater filled with amazement, thrilled and excited. The critics leave singing the praises of the direction, the cinematography, the editing and the dialogue, all thanks to the fact that the film is truly brilliant." Advertisement But as the years passed, the excitement elicited by the film was almost entirely forgotten. The few copies left of the video disappeared from rental store shelves. As opposed to Zohar's other films, "Every Bastard a King" is not shown on television, nor at cinematheques. Has the film become obsolete? Not necessarily. If anything, the reverse is true. From a cinematic perspective, the film isn't a masterpiece, but its description of the Israeli spirit and condition is clever and insightful. Maybe even too insightful. Director and film scholar Aner Preminger says that Uri Zohar displayed the sharp political senses of a social seismograph in making the film immediately after the war ended. The plot unfolds mostly during the anxiety-ridden period leading up to the war. Preminger believes the film provides an accurate expression of the arrogance and self-confidence Israelis assumed as an emotional defense strategy against existential anxieties. The reason for that anxiety was the Holocaust, which was still deeply ingrained in the Israeli consciousness. International aspirations "Every Bastard a King," which he wrote together with Zohar, was Tavor's screenwriting debut. He would go on to write other favorites, including the "Eskimo Lemon" films, "Charlie and a Half," and "Snooker." After becoming one of Haolam Hazeh's top writers in the 1950s and 1960s, he left journalism to do public relations for impresario Giora Godik. Tavor and Zohar finished the screenplay in late August 1967. "We had gone through two defining experiences," says Tavor. "The Six-Day War and Abie Nathan's flight to Egypt in late February 1966. Abie flew to Egypt and it was announced that his plane had crashed. We were at Abie's cafe, California, on Dizengoff, when people came and blamed us, his friends, for killing him. Later, the news came that Abie was alive, and I can't begin to describe the happiness. Thousands of people thronged Dizengoff Street. This was before he returned to Israel." Zohar and Tavor decided to immortalize Abie's character in the film in one of the main plot lines. With his sharp senses, Zohar understood even then, in 1967, the power of Nathan's outsider charm in the eyes of Israeli society, both as a political pioneer and a cultural hero. The other experience - the short war and the heroic victory - they decided to tell through the story of Yossi Leffer, "the indefatigable armored-corps soldier." Leffer became a symbol in a Patton tank. He waged a battle against Egyptian forces on the southern front alone, after his tank drove over a mine in Khan Yunis on the second day of the war. Leffer, who was awarded a medal of valor after the war, continued to operate the weapons system in the damaged tank for eight hours, even after being injured in the arm and belly, fighting on until he was rescued. "Together, Uri and I came up with the movie's motto: You and I will change the world. Uri defined it, in English, as 'self-commitment.' Meaning, history isn't only made by leaders, wars aren't only determined by generals, but also by ordinary soldiers. That was our way of connecting Leffer's story with Abie's, the crazy guy from Cafe California, who was also an example of the fact that peace won't be brought by politicians, but rather by ordinary people," Tavor said. To link the two flesh-and-blood characters, Zohar and Tavor created the character of an American journalist who comes to Israel with his wife to cover the prewar period. On the eve of the war, Israel was indeed flooded with journalists who saw the conflict coming, after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered his soldiers to enter the demilitarized Sinai Peninsula. The scent of war was in the air. The screenplay has the fictional reporter, a frustrated author named Roy Hemmings, meeting Nathan and Leffer before the war while becoming familiar with the country and dispatching reports, when suddenly war erupts. The decision to use two foreign characters, Hemmings and his wife, also served a marketing purpose. Less than a month before the war Oded Kotler won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance in "Shlosha Yamim Veyeled" ("Three Days and a Child"), directed by Zohar and based on the story by A.B. Yehoshua. "After the success of 'Three Days and a Child,' Uri became a hot potato," Kotler says. "He wanted to take advantage of the success of 'Three Days' and the international attention toward the popular Israeli who won the war, and to make a movie that could speak to the global market." In "Every Bastard" Kotler played Raphi Cohen, the character based on Nathan. "Like putting something sweet in hot sauce, there was a desire to incorporate into the war story Abie Nathan's sweetness, with his Don Juanism and his quixotic nature. To combine it all into a saga that at the time seemed like a winning formula," Kotler says. David Gurfinkel, Uri Zohar's regular cinematographer, also worked on "Every Bastard a King." It was their fourth film, the first in color. "It was [producer Avraham Deshe] Pashanel's thinking, to look abroad," says Gurfinkel. "He wanted to promote Uri as a director of international films." But Pashanel, Zohar's friend and partner, didn't have the resources to produce a project on such a scale. Topol (Chaim Topol) joined the project, but that was still not enough. Tavor negotiated with Godik, who had suffered losses due to the war but was still Israel's biggest impresario. Godik, who died in 1977, jumped in with both feet, employing his connections abroad. That led to the Danish company Nordisk Films, which entered the project as a partner and paid for the reels of film and their development at its lab in Denmark. The movie's budget reached 840,000 Israeli pounds, about $240,000, which was considered a huge sum. Star power In keeping with the international ambitions, it was decided that large portions of the film would be in English, which required enlisting actors from abroad. "They looked for what was cheap, and that's how they got to William Berger and Pier Angeli," Tavor recalls. While Berger, who played Roy Hemmings, was known as a B-actor, the presence of Angeli, an Italian actress, sparked excitement among the participants. Yehoram Gaon, who played Yoram, the tour guide who escorts Hemmings around Israel and later becomes a war hero, remembers the excitement surrounding the Italian star. "When Uri and Pasha [Pashanel] offered me a role in the film, I jumped up and shouted. Even though I had already been in 'Kazablan,' being directed by Uri Zohar and acting alongside Pier Angeli was a dream come true. I was head over heels in love with Angeli, and acting with her was the realization of all my life's dreams at once. It's hard to describe the excitement," Gaon says. Gurfinkel was more restrained, but no less excited. It was his first time working on a set with international stars. "Pier Angeli came here with social and cinematic baggage, as someone who had been James Dean's lover and played opposite Paul Newman in Robert Wise's 'Somebody Up There Likes Me.' It was fascinating to watch Angeli and Berger meet Zohar, the rough Israeli director. I saw they were a bit shocked on one hand, and on the other hand they responded and related to him. Uri, as a director, acts out what he wants from the actor. Angeli was shocked by it, and on the other hand she enjoyed the meeting." The behind-the-scenes excitement surrounding the international stars did not spill over to the work in front of the camera. Neither Berger nor Angeli are at their best in the movie. A review published in Yedioth Aharonoth stated explicitly, "Someone took the trouble to bring Angeli here from far away, for no real reason." Berger's role was more substantial. Hemmings travels around Israel, in a Jeep provided by the Foreign Ministry, looking for stories and waiting for the war he doesn't believe will come. Zohar expresses his insights into the Israeli spirit through notes Hemmings dictates to himself on a small tape recorder. He and Tavor chose to express those insights through a foreign journalist in order to give them more credibility. Hemmings speak to us from outside, from the perspective of someone who knows us but isn't a part of us. "Israel isn't a state. It isn't an idea, either," Hemmings says to himself. "Israel is an organized mess of paradoxes that somehow work together. Everything you say about Israel or about Israelis - the opposite will also be true. Every man, woman and child looks ready to go off to war at any given time, but when you meet them their first word is 'peace.' And somehow they lead you to believe they mean it." Thus Zohar and Tavor, with sharpness and sensitivity, make the local audience confront its own image. This definition was accurate in 1968, Preminger believes, and is accurate today, 40 years and four wars later, summing up the tragic essence of Israeli existence. At another point, after a charged meeting with a militant Palestinian student in Jerusalem, Hemmings dictates to himself, "I have three conclusions. One, it's nice to have an American passport; two, how exhausting it must be to be an Arab; and three, how burdensome to be Israeli." Where victory leads The two main plot lines in the film belong to Gaon and Kotler. The original idea was for Gaon to play Yoram/Leffer as a hero, but as Tavor tells it Leffer was a moshavnik, a naive farmer, and they needed to make him into a saltier character. So Zohar and Tavor made him a tour guide, the Israeli with chutzpah who says what's on his mind, everyone's best friend, another character from the colorful gallery of characters on the corner of Frishman and Dizengoff in Tel Aviv. Like Moshe Yanuka, the legendary paratrooper and platoon commander who led the occupation of A-Tur in the 1956 Sinai Campaign and who, as a civilian, was a mischievous clown who managed restaurants and clubs in Tel Aviv in the 1960s. Yoram, who refuses to be called a driver, explains in the movie that he became a tour guide after "the kibbutz ended and Zionism died." Preminger points out that these harsh words, the meaning of which is taken for granted today, resonated in movie theaters several years before the privatization of the kibbutzim and the birth of the term "post-Zionism." He believes the film demonstrates that the roots of those processes are in the Six-Day War and in the destructive process Zionism underwent during the war and perhaps even prior to it. Gaon says that then, as now, he was unable to identify with those words, but he stresses that he portrayed neither Leffer nor Yanuka but rather Uri Zohar. "Maybe I'm playing down my role in the film, but if you are acting while Uri is directing you, you're playing Uri," he says. "He doesn't give you a chance to develop the character. He demonstrates to you what the character is, and the moment you see it you try to imitate it." Zohar's control over his actors during filming was absolute, Gaon recalls. "Uri was dominant in a shocking way. It wasn't easy to develop a role with him. With Uri, even if you don't agree with the way he demands you to bring the character to life, you can sleep well at night because it's almost certain that he's right. He was a virtuoso at recognizing someone who was faking it." And indeed, Gaon plays a captivating character. He is moving as he stands, stuttering and bewildered, facing the soldier whose life he saved in battle in Sinai, who nows lies wounded in the hospital, and is equally excellent while poking fun at the dull Foreign Ministry official (Uri Levy) who is sent to accompany the American journalist, while speaking poor English with Hemmings and while flirting with his wife. In simple, everyday Hebrew - rare in Israeli movies from that era - Gaon plays the characters that Zohar and Arik Einstein played later in "Metzitzim" and in "Einayim G'dolot" ("Big Eyes"). An amusing, real-life example of such a personality - in all its rude and randy glory - is the story of how Zohar recruited the actress who played Anat, the kibbutz-member army officer with whom Yoram falls in love. "We sat at a cafe under Pashanel's office, and suddenly Uri's eyes wander across the street and notice something on the sidewalk," Gurfinkel recalls. "He says to me, 'David, look,' and I already know what he's looking at. A woman with a blond ponytail, with her side to us. Uri crosses the street and starts talking to her, and a minute later Tami Tzafroni is playing Anat." The viewer can experience the dynamic between Zohar and Tzafroni when Yoram hits on the young officer in the film. Zohar's intuitive casting method also worked with the film's supporting roles. The lighting technician, the assistant cinematographer and even Pashanel's office messenger - they all scored parts, without auditioning or rehearsing. "They were wonderful, all thanks to Uri's precise eye for casting," says Gurfinkel. "Uri enjoyed it when they acted exactly as he wanted, and even more when they flubbed their lines. He really took pleasure in that, and asked them to repeat their lines over and over, with the mistake," Gurfinkel relates. Zohar's improvisational method also characterizes his treatment of the screenplay and the movie's structure. "His first film, 'Three Days and a Child,' was in black and white, modest and stylized and directed with caution and restraint," Gurfinkel recalls. "There, Uri stuck to the script and to the filming schedule. It was uncharacteristic of him. And here, he ignored the screenplay and deviated from it, maybe even 'liberated' himself from what he felt was written in a cafe or a house. He responded to new situations with the actors, the light, the location, and took the entire crew with him. Ultimately, it worked in both directions, and often to the benefit of the scene," Gurfinkel said. "Uri's genius, and in retrospect also his shortcoming as a director, was in the fact that he relied extensively on his improvisational sense," Uri Levy said. Zohar eventually gave up on incorporating Leffer's story into Yoram's character, but he didn't forgo the heroism that the story called up. He filmed the heroic battle of the armored-corps soldier with a different actor and used the footage in the last 20 minutes of the movie, which consist of battle scenes. These scenes, a cinematic celebration recalling the big World War showpieces, were made as a result of Zohar's displeasure after viewing the prints in the editing room. Gurfinkel recalls a phone call Zohar received from General Israel Tal (Talik), who commanded an armored division: "Talik invited him to join a big tank drill at Tze'elim [the big army base in the south], and that's how we went from maneuver to maneuver in Sinai, filming everything we could grab." "The tank scenes were unplanned, but Uri couldn't give them up," Tavor says. "In the screenplay we didn't intend to illustrate the heroism of the war, but rather to emphasize Yossi Leffer's private war. We didn't plan on filming the armored-corps battles in the desert, but rather to focus on Yossi's tank." Many people felt that the armored corps scenes, which are disconnected from the main arc of the plot, detracted from the final result despite the fact that in 1968 plenty of people got a thrill from the showy display of cinematic militarism. ("That tank battle deserves a spot on the list of the best battle scenes in all the war films in the world," Gross wrote in Al Hamishmar). On the other hand, it's clear today that the euphoria of victory didn't penetrate the film, even during the Egyptians' military loss in Sinai. There's no mention in the film of famous images like that of thousands of pairs of Egyptian shoes in the sand, or of the defeated army's burnt tank columns. The Israeli and the Egyptian dead and wounded are filmed in the same manner, giving more cause to ponder Zohar's powers of prophecy. Beyond the euphoria, Gurfinkel says, "Uri was occupied with the question of where this big military victory would lead us." Preminger believes Zohar excelled in expressing the situation in which, within six days, Israel became a kingdom that was unable to cope with its new borders. The instability and the loss of borders manifest themselves, Preminger says, in the three men in the movie, all of whom are trying to win over the same woman. According to Preminger, Zohar recognized the mood of unbridled masculinity - the permission he gives himself to act like a king - that characterized the Israeli man after the war. That explains why the movie couldn't have a more fitting name. "Every bastard a king" was a popular idiom at the time, and Zohar and Tavor made an excellent decision in using it. When a tank passes their Jeep on the way to the border, Yoram explains to Hemmings that that's how things work in Israel - "Every bastard is a king." But the phrase also has another aspect, whereby Yoram, a sort of loser with no commitment to anything, becomes a king when he is called up to the army reserves. Yoram's joy over his participation in the coming war is the only war-related joy in the film. There is little room for victory songs in "Every Bastard a King." "The film is an accurate seismograph for the Israeli national condition," Preminger says. "And also for a pathological emotional state that can be defined as manic depression, or as a strong and extreme switch from a feeling of utter powerlessness to a feeling of omnipotence. A switch between the existential condition of a bastard - a worthless, illegitimate entity - and the identity of a king, an almighty entity that the entire world is meant to serve." "Every Bastard a King" is slowly becoming forgotten. Perhaps that is why two unforgettable scenes from the movie are missing from Israeli film retrospectives. The first is of Raphi Cohen, the peace pilot, trying to impress his friends at a wild party that includes alcohol and topless women. The party is on a roof in Tel Aviv. Cohen suddenly starts walking along the edge of the roof, as his surprised friends look on. Questions like "Why are you doing this" Why take the risk?" represent the amazement that nags at Hemmings, who is attempting to crack the code of this mysterious man. Why is he flying to Egypt? To impress a woman he courting? Due to an uncontrollable lust for publicity? "Why are you following him?" Hemmings asks one of six demonstrators in a bizarre peace march Cohen holds on his way to Jerusalem in an attempt to win over public opinion. "Maybe that fool will bring peace where 100 wise men couldn't," she answers. Another image can't help but bring a smile to viewers' faces. The scene is of Yoram and Anat, both recently demobilized. Their conversation takes place against a pastoral kibbutz backdrop, while they share a tomato dripping with juice. "As a shy Jerusalemite who is often embarrassed, it was hard for me to play some big lover," Gaon remembers. "Uri asked us to walk away from the set and decide how we wanted to do the scene. Tami and I stepped aside, and in a roundabout way started saying, 'I'll say that and you'll respond like that.' We returned to Uri and told him we were ready, and Uri said, 'That's okay, I already filmed you.'" "Every Bastard a King" enjoyed great success in Israel, but not abroad. Even Gurfinkel's cinematography award from the Chicago Film Festival didn't help to publicize it. "The film lacked a serious dimension of depth," Oded Kotler says. "The surface was interesting. The bombs, free love, endearing flirtations. It had humor and pace and was attractive. But the depth was missing. Uri was a huge film talent, but his was a talent that wasn't refined and that didn't ripen or mature. Maybe he ripened and matured in the arms of religion and ritual. He drank and smoked and did a lot of things in order to shake off the things that kept him from reaching the depth, but he didn't reach it." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Palin as Olmert? Free flights and life of luxury characterize both the VP hopeful and our outgoing PM 'Hit a Jew Day' St. Louis middle school students face punishment over spirit week game gone bad

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