The Sergeant (1968) Queer Film C+

DIRECTOR: John Flynn

Master Sergeant Callan was Rod Steiger’s second gay role of 1968, though unlike “Dorian,” his mincing, lethal hairstylist persona in No Way to Treat a Lady, almost no one saw it. The subject matter, the ill‑timed Christmas release, and a round of scathing—and unmistakably homophobic—reviews from Pauline Kael, Judith Crist, and Vincent Canby sealed its fate almost immediately. The film is far from terrible. Directed by John Flynn in his debut and produced by his former mentor Robert Wise, it plays like a lean, haunted cousin to John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye, released just a year earlier.

Both films center on a martinet intoxicated by the rituals of men living among men. Callan presides over his remote French military outpost (set in 1952) with rigid authority, all while nursing an unspoken desire for a beautiful young soldier. A stark black‑and‑white prologue set during the final days of World War II establishes the emotional terrain. In Reflections, the object of Marlon Brando’s fascination was Robert Forster, often bare‑skinned and astride Elizabeth Taylor’s prized horse. Here, it is John Phillip Law—caught between his breakout in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming and his iconic turn as the blind angel Pygar in Barbarella—radiant, aloof, and entirely believable as the focus of Callan’s longing.

But where Reflections had the genius of Carson McCullers and the full weight of Huston, Brando, Taylor, Julie Harris, and Brian Keith, The Sergeant can only intermittently rise above its pedestrian screenplay. A sanctimonious heterosexual romance between Law and a young French woman (Ludmila Mikaël) drags the narrative into cliché. The film’s strongest moments come from the two leads: Law’s quiet, wounded reserve and Steiger’s florid, tightly coiled intensity. Steiger—arguably the most flamboyant of the great American actors—lands several scenes that teeter on the edge of camp without losing their pathos.

There is a kiss, but it is a Judas kiss, not a Cupid one.

Adapted from the novel by Dennis Murphy.

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