Watch The Journey For Free

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

As a big Dostoyevsky fan, I had always been disappointed with Hollywood's halfhearted attempts to get into the Russian romantic aesthetic -- case in point, Yul Brynner as Dmitri Karamazov. I had thought the whole problem was a poor casting decisions, but then I saw Yul as Major Surov and changed my mind. When given an intelligent script to work with, he suddenly came alive and was as noble, sexy, and conflicted as you could ever want a Neurotic Russian Officer to be! So he was a better Dmitri as Major Surov than he was as Dmitri. But that's because writer Tabori actually gave Yul, as the Conflicted Russian Officer, the kind of Conflicted Russian Officer lines that are worthy of real literature, and that have real meaning and pathos in them. For example, a propos of folk music, he says musingly, "You hear a man crying in the dark. And if you listen carefully enough, you know what he cries for. You look surprised, Lady Ashmore. Despite what you may have heard, tractors and Marxism aren't the only things the Russian cares for. There is always time for music."Brilliant!!

I've only just caught up with this one so any 'cutting edge' element it may have had at the time - it was made three years after those Russian tanks cut a swathe through Hungary - is long diluted and there is more interest in the cast - from Ron Howard in only his second film, to Gerard Oury who would direct the first of many fine movies the following year, to Ann Jackson, a fine stage actress who was sparing with he film work, to E.G. Marshall, another stage actor, one of the 12 Angry Men and starring on TV in The Defenders at the time this was shot, to Anouk Aimee, a fine French actress yet to go supernova with Un Homme et une femme to Jason Robards who'd made a film in 1946 and waited 13 years to do another, filling the years between with standout Broadway performances in The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night. As has been noted George Tabori's screenplay owes more than a little to Maupassant's Boule de suif, which also formed the basis of Stagecoach and viewed today it's a pleasant enough diversion but little more.

The screenplay borrows more than a fair share from Guy de Maupassant's "Boule de Suif" ,mainly towards the end ,when the tourists start to accuse the heroine:"He wants something from you".No matter if "Boule de Suif" takes place in France after Sedan Deborah Kerr portrays a distinguished English lady (instead of a prostitute ) and Yul Brynner a Russian major (instead of a Prussian officer).This movie has often been referred to as anti-communist ,but now that we know what the commies have done ,it has become irrelevant .One should remember the director's personal history:a Russian Jew who emigrated to Germany ,then France where he made commendable works ("L'Equipage" "Coeur de Lilas" "Mayerling" ),then Hollywood where he took part in anti-Nazi propaganda ("confession of a Nazi spy") ;after the war he continued in that vein with the stunning "decision at dawn" where a German soldier came back to his country and discovered the damage done.Oddly,three of his last movies were "all thing eastern" : it began with "Anastasia" ,continued with this film and the trilogy ended with the implausible "night of the generals" In "Journey" ,while updating Maupassant ,introducing a French character (a student played by Maurice Sarfati),using several other French actors (Anouk Aimée as a Hungarian rebel who wants weapons ,not chocolate and Gerard Oury as the inn-keeper:we can wonder why ..),Litvak shows his infatuation with France where he made 6 movies in the thirties and where the action of his (average) "act of love " takes place."Journey" suffers from an implausible happy end which comes at the most awkward moment.The tragedy has turned into a Harlequin romance. But there are several good moments (particularly the scenes between Kerr and Brynner who had teamed up two years before and those between the actress and Robards)which deserve your undivided attention.Like this?try these:The red Danube George Sidney 1949Man on a tight rope Elia Kazan 1953Mademoiselle Fifi Robert Wise 1944 (based on Maupassant's "Boule de Suif" and the eponymous short story)

Set during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, this story has all the suspense of a good cold war book or movie as a multinational group of foreigners attempt to smuggle Jason Robards out of Hungary into Austria. However, three things complement the story, making this an extremely good movie.First, the actors use the actual languages of their roles. The Russian soldiers speak only Russian; the Hungarians only Hungarian; the Germans only German, except to the minimal extent to tell the story. Since Debra Kerr is English, she speaks only English, and, of course, Yul Brynner and a few others essential to the story also speak heavily accented English. As a result, the empathy of the audience to the travelers becomes paramount. The viewer shares all the confusion and suspense of being involved in an illicit border crossing when he/she cannot understand any of the languages spoken around them. Very powerful feelings are aroused in the audience, and notwithstanding the heavy use of foreign languages, the audience is never at a loss for following the film. No subtitles are necessary.Second. I was in Hungary in 1995, and I'm telling you, this movie has it right on. From the gypsy music overpowering the dinner meal to the underground caverns in the buildings where much of the action takes place to the village scenes, the realism is incredible. If I didn't eat in the actual restaurant in the movie, I ate at its double. I thought that I actually walked down the main street in that village. (Actually, the film was shot in Austria).Third, and most important, this movie reunites Deberah Kerr and Yul Brynner (after The King and I) and the magnetism between them as the story unfolds is nothing short of Oscar qualified. Of course, Yul already received an Oscar for playing that relationship, so the Acadamy wasn't going to give him another one, but that is the quality of the film. Don't miss this one.