Cornel Wilde directed this combat film on Luzon in the Philippines, and he did a realistic job of it. He had the cooperation of what appears to be the entire armed forces of that nation. He had the cooperation of the U. S. Marine Corps too, but when they saw the results, they asked that their credit be deleted.
There had never been another movie quite like it, but this was 1967 and a time of experimentation. Wilde had his actors lugging real forty-pound backpacks around on the beach. It's crude and sometimes arty and confusing but it was an original in its time. I don't believe we'd ever seen an assault from the sea in which bloody body parts were left floating in the water before. Corpses, yes, blown-off arms and legs, no.
Wilde gives a good deal of sympathetic time to the Japanese defenders of this island. It's completely unlike any of the early World War II movies, such as, say, "Bataan," where the enemy is faceless and referred to only as "bandy legged baboons" and worse. Here, not only do the Japanese soldiers have faces, but some of them are handsome too, and they have friends, and, like the Americans, they have families back home and like the Americans they fight well before they die in agony. It's the kind of movie that's likely to make some people nervous. Not too many, only the ones who think about what they're watching.
But it IS crude. I don't know what the novel is like, but I'll bet I could pick out the bits of dialog that were drawn from it. The rest is overblown and tends to state the obvious. And Wilde uses (sparely) internal monologues that could better have been dispensed with. We see a close up of a man's face and we hear his thoughts. "Will I get out of this alive? Oh, sure I will. I got my lucky rabbit's foot with me." That sort of thing. The dumb theme song is so glaringly obvious that it's almost palpable.
It's arty too, as befits a war movie made in the 60s. An ominous spider hides in a pretty white blossom. (Did Terence Malick see this?) Lots of reminiscences about life back home, almost all of them in still shots. The interior monologues roll on. ("I love you, darling.") Everybody -- Americans and Japanese alike -- seem to have pretty wives and smiling children at home. Every damned one of them seems to have lived a better life than I have so far!
And it's confusing, especially towards the end, as if hurried. This had nominations from two professional organizations for best editing and I can't imagine why. Wilde discovers that the Japanese are about to mount a flank attack and calls in the air force to stop it. "Here come the flyboys," he remarks with satisfaction. And indeed a couple of fighters fly over the beach and strafe the troops to pieces. The only problem is that the troops are all wearing Marine fatigues and there's not a Japanese in sight.
The two men we've gotten to know best -- a hillbilly and a minister's son -- evidently have a terrific mano a mano battle with a Japanese soldier until only one American and one Japanese are left alive to show each other a touch of ironic humanity. But we don't see the battle, just the three soldiers lying there.
Still, I give the thing extra points for its ambition and its ability to make war creepier than most films do. I can think of only three or four films that can make you squirm with discomfort while watching a battle, by showing that the enemy is something more than a villainous rat. I think of THOSE as true anti-war films. The others are puffery. Maybe necessary propaganda, even good propaganda, but propaganda nonetheless. I wonder if it's ever morally sound for us to leave a movie theater after a war movie feeling satisfied and proud, as if our local high school had just won a football game.
There had never been another movie quite like it, but this was 1967 and a time of experimentation. Wilde had his actors lugging real forty-pound backpacks around on the beach. It's crude and sometimes arty and confusing but it was an original in its time. I don't believe we'd ever seen an assault from the sea in which bloody body parts were left floating in the water before. Corpses, yes, blown-off arms and legs, no.
Wilde gives a good deal of sympathetic time to the Japanese defenders of this island. It's completely unlike any of the early World War II movies, such as, say, "Bataan," where the enemy is faceless and referred to only as "bandy legged baboons" and worse. Here, not only do the Japanese soldiers have faces, but some of them are handsome too, and they have friends, and, like the Americans, they have families back home and like the Americans they fight well before they die in agony. It's the kind of movie that's likely to make some people nervous. Not too many, only the ones who think about what they're watching.
But it IS crude. I don't know what the novel is like, but I'll bet I could pick out the bits of dialog that were drawn from it. The rest is overblown and tends to state the obvious. And Wilde uses (sparely) internal monologues that could better have been dispensed with. We see a close up of a man's face and we hear his thoughts. "Will I get out of this alive? Oh, sure I will. I got my lucky rabbit's foot with me." That sort of thing. The dumb theme song is so glaringly obvious that it's almost palpable.
It's arty too, as befits a war movie made in the 60s. An ominous spider hides in a pretty white blossom. (Did Terence Malick see this?) Lots of reminiscences about life back home, almost all of them in still shots. The interior monologues roll on. ("I love you, darling.") Everybody -- Americans and Japanese alike -- seem to have pretty wives and smiling children at home. Every damned one of them seems to have lived a better life than I have so far!
And it's confusing, especially towards the end, as if hurried. This had nominations from two professional organizations for best editing and I can't imagine why. Wilde discovers that the Japanese are about to mount a flank attack and calls in the air force to stop it. "Here come the flyboys," he remarks with satisfaction. And indeed a couple of fighters fly over the beach and strafe the troops to pieces. The only problem is that the troops are all wearing Marine fatigues and there's not a Japanese in sight.
The two men we've gotten to know best -- a hillbilly and a minister's son -- evidently have a terrific mano a mano battle with a Japanese soldier until only one American and one Japanese are left alive to show each other a touch of ironic humanity. But we don't see the battle, just the three soldiers lying there.
Still, I give the thing extra points for its ambition and its ability to make war creepier than most films do. I can think of only three or four films that can make you squirm with discomfort while watching a battle, by showing that the enemy is something more than a villainous rat. I think of THOSE as true anti-war films. The others are puffery. Maybe necessary propaganda, even good propaganda, but propaganda nonetheless. I wonder if it's ever morally sound for us to leave a movie theater after a war movie feeling satisfied and proud, as if our local high school had just won a football game.