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.
Review of The Journey
