Fred Zinnemann’s superb thriller has suspense, fine characterizations and a potent anti-fascist theme. Gregory Peck is excellent as an embittered lost-cause warrior who takes on one last mission into Franco territory to kill an old enemy, Anthony Quinn. Emeric Pressburger’s very modern story benefits from Zinnemann’s precise direction and impressive production design by Alexandre Trauner; the costars are Omar Sharif, Paolo Stoppa, Mildred Dunnock and Christian Marquand.

Behold a Pale Horse
Region B Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1964 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 118 min. / Street Date April 21, 2025 / Available from Powerhouse / £19.00
Starring: Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Raymond Pellegrin, Paolo Stoppa, Mildred Dunnock, Daniela Rocca, Christian Marquand, Marietto Angeletti, Perrette Pradier, Zia Mohyeddin, Rosalie Crutchley, Michael Lonsdale, Martin Benson, Claude Berri, Albert Rémy, Alan Saury.
Cinematography: Jean Badal
Production Designer: Alexandre Trauner
Art Director: Auguste Capelier
Costume Design: Joan Bridge, Elizabeth Haffenden
Film Editor: Walter Thompson
Assistant Editor: Tom Rolfe
Opening Montage: Frédéric Rossif, Nicole Stéphane
Original Music: Maurice Jarre
Screenplay by J.P. Miller from the novel Killing a Mouse on Sunday by Emeric Pressburger
Produced and Directed by Fred Zinnemann

Of all the filmmakers who fled Germany with the coming of Hitler, Fred Zinnemann carried his humanist, anti-fascist conscience throughout his filmmaking career. By his early ’20s he had filmmaking experience in France as well, and when he came to America he joined up with documentarian Robert Flaherty for a spell, and became the co-director of  Redes (1936), a pro-union story filmed in Mexico.

That picture got some attention in New York and Los Angeles, and a couple of years later Fred Zinnemann was making short subjects for MGM. He didn’t get his ‘A’ picture break until 1944 and  The Seventh Cross. Although he took on a wide range of subject matter, a thread of anti-Fascism runs strongly through his work. His ‘rubble of Germany’ picture  The Search succeeds in combining neorealist grit with MGM sentimentality; it’s the most humanist Hollywood film of the postwar years.

A committed liberal but not a ‘joiner,” Fred Zinnemann also escaped the blacklist. To his credit, he stood strong during the infamous Director’s Guild meeting, when Cecil B. DeMille tried to push through an oppressive loyalty oath, and inferred that upstart directors with foreign-sounding names were un-American. With big hits like  High Noon and  Oklahoma!, Zinnemann was not a good target for Red hunters.

I’ll easily believe that Fred Zinnemann evaded censure simply by inspiring cooperation from everyone he met. I once had to go through hours of uncut interviews for an early ’80s documentary on George Stevens, which was packed with pompous (if sincere) witnesses to the making of The Greatest Story Ever Told. Alone among them, Zinnemann stood out as utterly level-headed in his humanist values. He impressed as a man of integrity, through and through.

That quality must have been how Zinnemann found the money to make personal projects like his masterpiece  The Nun’s Story. Two films later, he turned back to the theme of a Fascism, in a country no Hollywood studio had touched. Franco’s Spain had been all but closed off until the 1960s. Tens of thousands of defeated Republicans had been murdered. Zinnemann’s Behold a Pale Horse was an unusually bold, uncommercial investment for Columbia Pictures in 1964.

The story is adapted from a book by Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell’s ex-partner in the famed ‘Archers’ productions. Wartime spy intrigue had been a Pressburger specialty, with an impressive list of accomplishments:  The Spy in Black,  Contraband,  49th Parallel,  The Silver Fleet,  The Battle of the River Plate,  Ill Met By Moonlight.

Pressburger’s very serious  Behold a Pale Horse is essentially a study of defeat, about an exiled Spanish Republican who has spent twenty years as a terrorist. For 1964 it was as uncommercial as a movie could be. Average Americans knew Spain only through bullfights, flamenco and maybe Don Quixote. The media didn’t call out the fact that Franco’s Spain was a fascist dictatorship. Hollywood even made occasional pro-tourism movies  set in Spain; producer Samuel Bronston had built a studio there to film  several giant epics. With his story, Fred Zinnemann knew he’d be filming somewhere else.

For twenty years, grizzled old Manuel Artiguez (Gregory Peck) has been raiding into Franco Spain from just across the border in France. Now retired, he’s living in poverty with his ex-rebel pal Pedro (Paolo Stoppa), his guns buried in a safe place. Manuel’s opposite number in Franco’s security police is Viñolas (Anthony Quinn). He has not succeeded in capturing the terrorist, and the fascist bureaucracy doesn’t like failure. To keep his job, Viñolas takes advantage of a morbid situation: Manuel’s elderly mother Pilar (Mildred Dunnock) is dying in a hospital. He sends the rebel’s former partner Carlos (Raymond Pellegrin), now a turncoat, to deliver the news and lure Artiguez out of hiding. But the Priest Francisco (Omar Sharif) gets a message to Artiguez first. Pilar’s dying wish is to warn her son of the trap.

Artiquez has a second reason to try his luck one more time. Viñolas tortured and killed another of his old comrades; the dead man’s orphaned son Paco Dages (Marietto Angeletti) wants Manuel Artiguez to go back across the border to assassinate the policeman.

The list of openly anti-Franco movies is not a long one. Alain Resnais’  La guerre est finie is an impassioned tale of political commitment, with Yves Montand as a cultured political exile lured back so that Franco’s minions can catch him. Zinnemann’s tale dispenses with niceties, giving us a rough-hewn terrorist who continues to war against the fascists out of pure principle and stubborn vengeance. An opening montage is taken from Frédéric Rossif’s fierce documentary To Die In Madrid (1963); it ends with nicely-matched images of Manuel Artiguez and his defeated comrades escaping across the border to France. Since that time Manuel Artiguez has become a grim Robin Hood for a lost cause — spending his years as a bloodthirsty bastard, hard and mean.

One surprise is that Gregory Peck comes across well as an aging guerrilla in an unhappy exile. Fred Zinnemann directs his star actors to play everything low key, and the result is more than satisfying. Peck’s Manuel Artiguez is believably grizzled, with a stubble beard and overgrown eyebrows. He tries to act without emotion, but is furious to learn that his old pal Carlos is a rat. He drives all the way to Lourdes to find the priest that talked to his mother on her deathbed. The irony is that the disillusioned Manuel will find himself motivated and energized by the idealism of the younger priest. As for young Paco, the little kid looks primed to continue the ‘good fight’ right into the next generation, a notion that Pressburger and Zinnemann observe, as opposed to endorse.

The wisdom communicated by Behold a Pale Horse is that Manuel Artiguez’s commitment to violence, noble as it may be, just prolongs the misery. He’s not unlike the fictional  Ethan Edwards, another hardliner who ‘didn’t show up at the surrender’ and is willing to expend his life in hatred. Manuel didn’t beat his sword into a plowshare, either — Paolo has stashed a cache of guns for him. Behold pays off almost as darkly as Kurosawa’s  The Bad Sleep Well, which doesn’t slot it in the Feel Good category of movie outings for 1964. Zinnemann must really have wanted to make this one.

Manuel Artiguez also has much in common with the anti-hero of another Fred Zinnemann masterpiece,  The Day of The Jackal. He’s another assassin on a dark mission. One last ‘old man flirt’ with a rural waitress, and Manuel is ready to go into action. We see him cross the border through a mountain pass as dramatic as the Arizona towers in John Ford films.

Meanwhile, Police Chief Viñolas worries about his Artiguez problem while keeping his men in line and his mistress (Daniella Rocca of  Caltiki il mostro immortale) a secret from his wife (Rosalie Crutchley). Viñolas also has time to accept a literal gift horse from a local rancher. It’s not corruption, exactly. Let’s call it friendly influence.

Behold a Pale Horse looks magnificent. It has a European pace and flavor, with rich B&W cinematography on impressive French locations just across the Spanish border, where the topography and architecture are similar. The show has a sense of scale. The director keeps many angles wide, pulling us into the views of streets outside Manuel Artiguez’s window. Manuel’s view of his quarry from a nearby rooftop needs a full-sized image to be appreciated — this show doesn’t play well on a small TV screen.

It’s all performed in English, but we forget about the language as we do in Fred Zinnemann’s much better known and appreciated  The Day of the Jackal, from ten years later. The performances are precise and low-key. We like the measured underplaying by the beloved Italian ham Paolo Stoppa — I guess we’ve mostly seen his comedies. Zinnemann pares away Anthony Quinn’s customary exuberance to great effect: Viñolas isn’t Zorba the Greek in a different costume.

Omar Sharif plays well in this hushed key, communicating a practical sensitivity that’s somewhat lacking in his  Doctor Zhivago. Unlike the David Lean film, people aren’t puppets caught up in ‘the sweep of history,’  They all have choices to make. Character determines fate, as the bitter Manuel Artiguez takes his chances and fulfills his destiny.

Actresses from America (Mildred Dunnock), England (Rosalie Crutchley) and Italy (Daniela Rocca) all convince as Spanish for the purposes of the story. In smaller roles we see good input from Christian Marquand (The Flight of the Phoenix), Martin Benson (Goldfinger), Alain Saury (Carve Her Name with Pride) and even a young Michael Lonsdale, who is of course will later play the surprise hero of Day of the Jackal.

Fred Zinnemann clearly reserved the right to make Behold exactly as he saw fit — no PC committee sanitized this script. We are more than surprised to hear expat Republicans voice their hatred of the priesthood, without being ‘corrected’ by the screenplay. The church was of course in alliance with Franco’s party, El Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, and participated actively in some of the worst reprisals. Only Omar Sharif’s honest Father Francisco comes across as an endorsement of Church values, and he seems rather isolated in his idealism.

The film’s artsy-sounding title may have reminded audiences of Vincente Minnelli’s rather pretentious  The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but there’s no mystery as to why Behold didn’t pull in the audiences. It’s a long story about a foreign tragedy that most Americans either didn’t know about or felt was politically divisive. The only ‘exciting action’ is in the last reel. Not really a spoiler:  We personally think Manuel Artiguez picked the wrong target. At the crucial moment, had he chosen the man on the left, the surviving fascist policemen might well conclude that the man on the right was in on the kill. His goose would likely be cooked anyway.

The most amazing thing I’ve read about this show is that the celebrated production designer Alexandre Trauner (The Man Who Would Be King,  The Apartment) built at least one entire Spanish street on a large outdoor set in a French film studio. Incredible sounding, but it makes sense if you think of how unwise it would be to film on an actual 5th-floor rooftop. And as we found out, they obviously couldn’t film anything in Spain itself.

Powerhouse Indicator’s Region B Blu-ray of Behold a Pale Horse is billed as a Hi-Def remaster, but doesn’t say that it is new to this release. The camerawork is exceptionally good. Most of us had only seen this show on old NTSC televisions, and in High Definition the visual surface becomes a major factor in our enjoyment … it is ‘polished neo-realism,’ gritty but with full studio amenities. The locations are fascinating, but Zinnemann will resort to a process shot close-up, if that’s what’s needed.

Jean Badal’s high contrast B&W images stand out in both the dusty interiors and the beautiful exteriors, such as when Viñolas admires that show horse that a local landowner will likely give him as a political bribe. Badal was a cameraman on both  What’s New Pussycat and Jacques Tati’s amazing  Playtime.

Once again, interesting extras make these import discs attractive, even when one must have an all-region player to see them. Film academic Caitlin McDonald offers a lengthy visual essay on ‘the transition of the famed filmmaker Emeric Pressburger’s novel from the page to the screen.’ Pressburger is a really interesting writer, and we’re always ready to learn more about him. The second piece is a long audio interview / discussion with the actor Omar Sharif, in conversation with Quentin Falk at the National Film Theatre.

A trailer and an image gallery are included; we recommend a look at the 46-page illustrated insert booklet, which has a nice Michael Patterson essay on the show. A second essay on the book adaptation is good reading as well. A text interview with Fred Zinnemann is included, plus Indicator’s expected sampling of critical responses.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Behold a Pale Horse
Region B Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Visual essay – lecture: Caitlin McDonald on Emeric Pressburger
Audio recording The Guardian Interview with Omar Sharif (1984) in conversation with Quentin Falk at the National Film Theatre, London
Original trailer
Image gallery
Insert booklet with an essay by Michael Pattison, an in-depth look at Emeric Pressburger’s source novel, a collection of anecdotes from Fred Zinnemann, and an overview of contemporary critical responses.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Region B Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: April 13, 2025
(7314pale)

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