The Journey

Another of those movies that shows up on TCM regularly enough but that for whatever reason I had never actually watched in its entirety, is The Journey. With that in mind, the last time it ran on TCM I recorded it so that I could later watch it and write up a review to post here.

The opening credits play out over scenes at the exterior of an airport. We then are taken to the inside of Budapest Airport early in November 1956. For those who don't know, at the end of October student protests led to a new, somewhat less Communist government in Budapets, something which the Soviets couldn't tolerate, so they sent in tanks. The authorities also closed the airport, with a whole bunch of passengers stranded.

Among them is Hugh Deverill (Robert Morley), a British television representative who represents the worst of the British stereotypes about Brits who think they can just dictate terms to everybody around them and get their way. There's also an American family, the Rhinelanders (E.G. Marshall and Anne Jackson, with a very young Ron Howard as their younger son), and various people from other countries, all wondering how they're going to get out of the country.

Into all of this walks Lady Ashmore (Deborah Kerr), accompanied by a man calling himself Flemyng (Jason Robards) who is feeling rather unwell. It's also obvious that Flemyng isn't who he seems to be. Worse is that Ashmore has met Deverill in the past back in England. And Deverill is an absolute prick about it, constantly not wanting to give Lady Ashmore any privacy. He also knows she's married, so shouldn't be traveling in dangerous Communist Hungary alone, and certainly not with a sick man who isn't her husband.

The stranded passengers get put on a bus traveling to Vienna, since it's the closest airport in a non-Communist country, and get stopped at a couple of roadblocks, with Flemyng fainting at one of them and it being revealed that he's traveling under a false identity. They then get to the last major town before the border with Austria. There, the passengers are forced to stop, and wait at the hotel that has been commandeered for just this purpose.

At the hotel is a Soviet Red Army officer, Major Surov (Yul Brynner). He suspects something is up, and demands everyone surrender their passports so that he can interview them individually before letting them go through. This is going to be a particular problem for Flemyng, since he's not actually Flemyng but a Hungarian freedom fighter named Kedes. Not only that, but his physical situation is getting worse to the point that it's fairly obvious to everyone, even Surov, that something is badly wrong.

Further complicating matters is that Surov finds himself taken with Ashmore, or at least acting like he is. You could get the impression that Surov is going to ask for sexual favors in exchange for letting Kedes go, or something similar. But then, this is a movie from the late 1950s released by MGM, so most likely something like that isn't going to show up in a film subject to the Production Code.

Still, The Journey isn't a bad movie, although it's one that's not without its flaws. It runs a bit over two hours, which is a bit too long. It also feels a bit too pat, with the ending being somewhat unrealistic. Then again, I think it's less about the plot and more about the characters and their dealings with each other, with the various stars giving capable performances. The Journey is not, I think, the best movie for anybody involved with it, but is also something not to be ashamed of.