it be base on a best selling mystery novel that do tom clancy style business and at a time when post war euro mystery writer ( like maj sjowall and per wahloo remember them . ) be bring the war back in revisionist way . the nazi art theft theme be also a revisionist topic of the day . the two star who carry the picture hat producer sam speigel for past injustice and and hat the picture he have rope them into . otoole and in particular and think it be a comedown to be direct by age old schooler anatole litvak and though litvak do keep the euro flavor consistent in this . otoole and speigel biography talk of the actor deliberately overplay the tanz role so a to sabotage the mystery element of the picture and though it hard to see how restraint would have improve the role . ( and while this pic isn not the lion in winter and it also hard to see how it bad than beckett . ) even a a kid and i admire the big concept of the film represent murder be wholesale in nazi europe and yet one freak be buy it retail and and another have only as much morality ( or perversity ) a be necessary to obsessively hunt the small murderer and but not the large one . if the state vs. individual angle have be play up a little more and if a young director have make it in an arty style and if it do not disregard history in so many way people would be fall over themselves compare this to blow up a a portrait of modern time . they would also be talk stuff about low material redeemed . be closer in time to the war than picture like the good german ( ehhh . ) give the apparent offhandedness of the moral treatment of the material a contemporary edge and though . the war slip away into the past without notice and just as and to american eye and it seem to have happen in europe . only the singular prostitute murder survive a prosecutable crime not even a war crime . otoole jack the ripperish performance seem to tie the two eras together and and the end and in which celebration of his public excess be spoil by discovery of his private one and nail the theme in the same deadpan style the picture have quietly establish all along . it hard to fault litvak in this and though another director might have emphasize the passage of time a a dramatic psychological element . like the script of gang of new york and night of the general cram in a lot of historical background ( yes and with anachronism like the warsaw ghetto action place in 1942 ) and but it never seem like butt cover for an inaccurate foreground fiction a in gang . hannah arendt banality of evil trope be put to work and a all fact even those of the holocaust become statistical fodder for the war machine that remake europe and while only the personal murder that the tanz character be hunt for disturb the placid hum of the post war apparatus . so both litvak and novelist han helmut kirst be creditable for a contemporary and distanced view of the war . some transition and plot point be not suavely or accurately handle and or humanely consider . but do not let bad screenwriter shorthand fool you into think this be a comic book treatment of the war or the post war era . compare the theme of individual and state action in night of the general to those in blade runner and the sixth sense even the fugitive . those pic have a noir ish victim mentality akin to camus the stranger and while general have an activist mentality like the plague and present in a similar deadpan existentialist style and in the face of futility . however it come about collaboratively and it do come about .