A Walk in the Sun (1945)
The first third of this film is amazing. It' remarkably disturbing and dark, about a bunch of soldiers landing at night in Italy, World War II. The sun does eventually rise, but it's an eerie and claustrophobic and surprisingly gentle twenty minutes. The cast is really perfect, without any overly macho guys, just some ordinary men with feelings, feelings for life, for each other little by little, and for a kind of fatalistic fear that turns into acceptance at times, until events force them into action.
Once toward halfway, the movie becomes a more conventional, a large rambling group of foot soldiers a bit lost as to what to do as they walk along, in the sun, in Italy. They talk without a lot of open fear, including a bit of chitchat even as they confront enemies of one kind or another. There is an air of ordinary resignation through it all, as if the movie makers knew the audience could only handle a kid gloves kind of truth about the war, which was still raging when it was released. Even though there is an inevitable sense that the Americans were winning (they were landing in Italy, not being pushed off to sea), there is also the sense that these really nice guys might die, suddenly, because of events beyond their control.
By the final third a military objective clarifies, a small one, but a potentially deadly one. When it plays out, it's more about war, and winning. The enemy is never shown, and the brutality is limited to the last two minutes, but it's a devastating two minutes, and probably too difficult for audiences to watch at the time while the war was going on. Though filming was finished in January 1945, the film wasn't released officially until December, with six months of peace already healing some of the wounds, and didn't see wide release until the following year, long after war films had stopped being made. Director Milestone did get Army approval for the film in 1945, and it does seem accurate in its awfulness, even now.
It's right before the climax that the film returns to it extraordinary, inner conscience, following Dana Andrews crawling though the weeds to the farmhouse they intend to overtake. How long would it take to crawl around the world? A hundred years? A thousand years?
This interested me in particular (among WWII movies) because it was made and released around the end of the war, and because the director (Lewis Milestone) made the remarkable "All Quiet on the Western Front" about WWI. (For accuracy, it was shot in 1944 and fully released in 1946, from what I can read.)
A note on the filming itself, under cinematographer Russell Harlan, who made great use of darkness (at first), and of foreground/background (throughout), giving the film a dramatic and rather rich feeling. Arthur Edeson came through in a similar way in 1930 with Milestone's "All Quiet" and you end up realizing how important the collaboration is between the two roles. Here, the photography makes a case for watching and waiting just as the characters do the same, waiting and waiting. And watching. And talking.
Some might find the movie talks too much, but that's really the point. There are many times it feels very "written" rather than felt. The author of the 1944 book gets credit for a lot of the dialog (adapted directly) but he might actually get some blame, because it's all a big stylized, or made "nice" even though in reality there must be a drastically higher level of stress and hardness. There is far too much clever, and even sweet, dialog. There is a part of me that likes that (I want to like these guys) but it doesn't seem quite right.
At the time, Sam Fuller, who would later be a film director himself, wrote a scathing letter as a recent veteran of the war to Milestone, and I think he was maybe saying the same thing. (He would later direct "The Big Red One" which is a counterpoint to this, though it has its own flaws.) I will say that the end feeling after the short climax is one of relative familiarity. It was what you expect from this kind of movie, with a formula mix of success and failure.
The first third of this film is amazing. It' remarkably disturbing and dark, about a bunch of soldiers landing at night in Italy, World War II. The sun does eventually rise, but it's an eerie and claustrophobic and surprisingly gentle twenty minutes. The cast is really perfect, without any overly macho guys, just some ordinary men with feelings, feelings for life, for each other little by little, and for a kind of fatalistic fear that turns into acceptance at times, until events force them into action.
Once toward halfway, the movie becomes a more conventional, a large rambling group of foot soldiers a bit lost as to what to do as they walk along, in the sun, in Italy. They talk without a lot of open fear, including a bit of chitchat even as they confront enemies of one kind or another. There is an air of ordinary resignation through it all, as if the movie makers knew the audience could only handle a kid gloves kind of truth about the war, which was still raging when it was released. Even though there is an inevitable sense that the Americans were winning (they were landing in Italy, not being pushed off to sea), there is also the sense that these really nice guys might die, suddenly, because of events beyond their control.
By the final third a military objective clarifies, a small one, but a potentially deadly one. When it plays out, it's more about war, and winning. The enemy is never shown, and the brutality is limited to the last two minutes, but it's a devastating two minutes, and probably too difficult for audiences to watch at the time while the war was going on. Though filming was finished in January 1945, the film wasn't released officially until December, with six months of peace already healing some of the wounds, and didn't see wide release until the following year, long after war films had stopped being made. Director Milestone did get Army approval for the film in 1945, and it does seem accurate in its awfulness, even now.
It's right before the climax that the film returns to it extraordinary, inner conscience, following Dana Andrews crawling though the weeds to the farmhouse they intend to overtake. How long would it take to crawl around the world? A hundred years? A thousand years?
This interested me in particular (among WWII movies) because it was made and released around the end of the war, and because the director (Lewis Milestone) made the remarkable "All Quiet on the Western Front" about WWI. (For accuracy, it was shot in 1944 and fully released in 1946, from what I can read.)
A note on the filming itself, under cinematographer Russell Harlan, who made great use of darkness (at first), and of foreground/background (throughout), giving the film a dramatic and rather rich feeling. Arthur Edeson came through in a similar way in 1930 with Milestone's "All Quiet" and you end up realizing how important the collaboration is between the two roles. Here, the photography makes a case for watching and waiting just as the characters do the same, waiting and waiting. And watching. And talking.
Some might find the movie talks too much, but that's really the point. There are many times it feels very "written" rather than felt. The author of the 1944 book gets credit for a lot of the dialog (adapted directly) but he might actually get some blame, because it's all a big stylized, or made "nice" even though in reality there must be a drastically higher level of stress and hardness. There is far too much clever, and even sweet, dialog. There is a part of me that likes that (I want to like these guys) but it doesn't seem quite right.
At the time, Sam Fuller, who would later be a film director himself, wrote a scathing letter as a recent veteran of the war to Milestone, and I think he was maybe saying the same thing. (He would later direct "The Big Red One" which is a counterpoint to this, though it has its own flaws.) I will say that the end feeling after the short climax is one of relative familiarity. It was what you expect from this kind of movie, with a formula mix of success and failure.