I might be a little slow... but did Woodruff confess to HQ at the end? He says to Palance's dead body "You know what I gotta do Joe... you'd do the same thing" Than he goes in to the radio room and calls for General Parsons.
I think it indicates his confession but I'm not quite sure.
Any thoughts?
Thanks
TAK
Yes he did! But where did it go from there? This film is not as much anti-military as it is anti-bureaucratic and anti-political. I will pose another question on the topic board soon. And that is: "This film is not anti-military."
shareI felt that cleaning the slate and telling the truth was the final thought of the film.
I think a dead captain cover up would have been nice but it was 1956 when it was filmed and the public wasnt ready for that.
www.myspace.com/deadravensrock
Also, I don't think the Production code would have allowed it...you weren't allowed to show a character get away with murder.
I'm kind of surprised that they were allowed to do what they did, essentially portraying the killing of a superior officer as justified...
According to the credits, this is based on a play. Does anyone know how the play ends?
shareI have a copy of the script. It's called "Fragile Fox", by Norman Brooks. The movie follows it fairly close, with some minor changes (names, mostly.)
The ending is slightly different, however. LT Woodruff confronts the colonel, and admits to killing Cooney. The colonel tells him to think of his men, since they also shot Cooney's body. Woodruff tells him the army will realize what has happened, and the colonel's reputation will suffer. The colonel shrugs it off, tells Woodruff it's like a poker game, that Woodruff has the high card and should take his winnings and leave. The colonel says he's betting that Woodruff will keep his mouth shut, and that he (the colonel) has never lost two hands in a row. The colonel leaves as a stretcher team comes for Cooney's body. When they leave:
"Woodruff watches them exit. He slowly sits on the bottom stair, and suddenly he is weeping. His sobs are convulsive and uncontrolled as the curtain falls."
A much more ambiguous ending, and maybe a little more realistic.
Thanks. That was illuminating. The movie ending bothered me. I wanted them to move on having dispensed "justice".
shareThe ending didn't bother me, Woodruff was a man of class of course he would confess..
What bothered me was that said the Colonel set the whole thing up, like he wanted Cooney to get murdered?
I also was bothered by the movies ending. Clearly it was done to appease the censor board and gain approval certification. The way you describe the original play, it is a much more impressive conclusion. Thank you for the description. I would much rather they (the studio, censors, etc.) would have had some guts and put THAT ending in. It would have been much more affecting.
And Jack Palance's performance was top notch!
But it was justified, wasn't it? Cooney was about to get them captured, and God knows what they would the Germans would have done to the Robert Strauss character.
"If ever a man needed killing, it was that no good putrid piece of trash lying there".
Generosity, that was my first mistake
I took the ending to be when he made the call to the General he was going to tell him the way it really happened. He referred to himself as Lieutenant not Captain so he didn't accept the promotion the Colonel gave him to keep him quiet.
shareI took it as he made the call also.
I doubt the Army would have done anything.
Short Cut, Draw Blood
It looked like for me clearly that the movie had 2 endings.
Right after he talks to the colonel there is a very nice shot of him walking to the distance in the middle of a destroyed town. That shot looked clearly like a closing ending scene. But the movie does not end and suddenly it goes back to a close up of him talking to Palance's body and deciding to call the general.
It looked like that the shot of him walking to the distance was the real ending, Aldrich also shot the extended ending because he knew that it was almost impossible for the studio to accept the real ending.
But, if the movie were to have really been reality, the Army would have done nothing about the incident.
Movie Makers, especially at that time, had to make the movie goers happy.
Short Cut, Draw Blood
The movie does its best to strongly suggest that Woodruff is going to do just what he threatened to do and tell the truth to the General. As someone else pointed out. This is due, no doubt, to the production code prohibiting the depiction of a killing, like the one at the end, without consequence.
What the consequence will be though is still left ambiguous. It's enough that a higher authority is shown to be in possession of the facts, rather than the cynical lies that Lee Marvin wished to propagate.