THE TENTH LEGION (US, 1967, Warren Sonbert)

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THE TENTH LEGION is a fantastic film… I could watch this film several hours on end because it has no real beginning or end, it just goes on and on. Not that it is repetitious, for it is, just as each day follows another. —Gregg Barrios, Hollywood Harbinger, 1982

THE TENTH LEGION, the new film of Warren Sonbert, is a very important contribution to the new story-telling, narrative techniques in cinema. With the narrative aspect of the underground cinema expanding, this film should be of great interest… Sonbert shows the fashion, the model, the art student world — its people, its feelings, its surroundings, textures, moods. The image that is created here is very complex and multidimensional… It’s a post-Godardian-cinema. —Jonas Mekas, Village Voice, 1967

In THE TENTH LEGION, Sonbert presents his college age friends at work and play, wandering the streets of NYC, lounging, shopping, and posing for the camera.  The film stylistically exemplifies Sonbert’s masterful use of a constantly moving hand-held camera as it trails the teenage protagonists in choreographed fashion, and of chiaroscuro lighting effects in interior scenes.

Sonbert was not only a noteworthy avant-garde filmmaker, but also a noted film critic, writing regularly for publications in the San Francisco Bay Area.  His articles about commercial Hollywood films are among his most extraordinary, profound, and insightful creations.  Sonbert was fascinated by the manner in which Hollywood directors “exposed and undermined the hollow cupidity and superficiality of idle-class ideals of the Eisenhower years in America.”   Sonbert’s THE TENTH LEGION and Nicholas Ray’s REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) portray the idle wandering of middle-class youths; both films convey a sense of beautiful people lost on the cusp of adulthood.


As film critic James Stoller once wrote about THE TENTH LEGION, “I think part of [Sonbert’s] sensibility is related to a set of New York City hip values of appearance and lack of productivity. In other words, this is the age in Sonbert’s life, in his characters’ lives, that they are to live stylishly and not contently.” In titling his film THE TENTH LEGION, Sonbert invariably refers to an elite army formed by Julius Caesar, which subdued the Jewish rebellion at Masada, just as the youth in Sonbert’s film have the burgeoning ambition of taking over the world-at-large (especially as they are seen working for such colorful art world figures as Henry Geldzhaler and Fred Hughes). Sonbert’s film ends with his young protagonists entering and exiting a movie theater with Frank Sinatra’s nostalgic song about passing youth, “Young at Heart,” playing on the soundtrack; for Ray, the film results in the tragic death of Sal Mineo’s character, a wake-up call to adulthood.

This digital version of THE TENTH LEGION is a 1080p transfer from 16mm materials.

THE TENTH LEGION
(US, 1967)

Director: Warren Sonbert

  • 30 minutes
  • 16mm
  • Color
  • Sound
Distribution Format/s: DSL/Downloadable 1080p .mp4 file on server

Published By: Gartenberg Media Enterprises

Institutional Price: $250

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