Film Review: Everyman's War, 2010

I bought this on DVD and watched it today. I could pretty much tell, just from looking at the cover, that this belongs to the ever-growing Indie-WWII movie scene. The cover of my DVD isn't the same as the image above, which is both a better cover and has a better strap-line - 'one man's hope, one man's courage... everyman's war'.

Sadly some marketing schmucks, as so often happens with war-themed films, especially when being marketed in places other than their country of origin, have gotten hold of the design process, and designed a more generic montage, pictured below. And, rather bizarrely, they've substituted Churchill's 'never have so many...' Battle of Britain quote for the original tagline. Why does this sort of thing happen so often!?

My DVD sports this generic style cover.

After watching the film, I thought I'd check the Amazon UK reviews for it. One of the many very critical reviews there compared it unfavourably with Band of Brothers. But that's pretty dumb, in my opinion, seeing as Band of Brothers cost $125 million, whereas Everyman's War cost about $500,000 [1]. Or in other words less than half of one per cent the budget of the star-studded Spielberg/Hanks HBO blockbuster.

Everyman's War tells the story of a group of young men from various places and backgrounds in the U.S, who wind up in the same unit, eventually fighting in The Battle of The Bulge. Mostly we follow Don Smith, who's falling in love with a girl called Dorrine, just as he gets called up. An unfinished letter to her becomes his talisman of hope, keeping him going as the war gets ever grimmer.

Don Smith (Cole Carson) and Cpl. Sparks (Mike Prosser).

None of the actors are famous faces (none even have wiki entries), and the whole thing does have the feel of a movie made on a tight budget. The pacing of the narrative wouldn't pass muster on a Hollywood blockbuster. But it's actually done remarkably well, using appropriate locations, with the Germans speaking German, etc. And, quite frankly, I get sick of the formulaic way blockbusters are done. This sort of thing can't compete with the big bucks boys on stars, explosions and effects. But it can with a bit of refreshingly humble humanity. Something often notably lacking in star-driven movies.

The stories are all based on real people and real events, and the film had an unusual genesis: 'It started out as a short film and a labor of love, for my father's 85th birthday (he's 94 now) and quickly became a feature that I shot over a year.' [2] It's a movie about ordinary men in war. And a heartfelt one at that. I found it engaging and moving. And whilst it's not as 'epic', production wise, as for example the old 1960s Battle Of The Bulge film, in many ways it's a lot more realistic. [3]

Not an out and out classic, perhaps. But certainly worth watching. 

Thad Smith directing.

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NOTES:

[1] I got in touch with director Thad Smith and asked what the budget was.

[2] Quoting from Thad Smith's email reply to my inquiry about the budget.

[2] At one point there's a very interesting scene with a prisoner being rescued from abuse by Don Smith. I won't say more here, as I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen it. However, it is worth noting that the German's who fought the 94th Infantry, Smith's unit, nicknamed them 'Roosevelt's Butchers'.

Shoulder patch of the 94th Infantry Division.

Film Review: Attack, 1956

It's 1944, and somewhere near Aachen a platoon of American troops of Fragile Fox company [1] are attacking a German pill-box. Jack Palance plays Lt. Costa, whose 'boys' get badly chopped up by machine gun and mortar fire, their promised support never materialising.

Capt. Cooney (Eddie Albert) is the vacillating, non-committal commander responsible for the debacle. Confronted with a challenge, he simply freezes. Holding his rank by dint of his father's society connections - daddy is a judge (and bully) - his costly failures look remarkably like rank incompetence, perhaps even cowardice. [2]

Lt. Joe Costa (Palance, right), can't stand Capt. Erskine Cooney (Albert, left).

After the initial opening battle sequence, we spend a while behind the lines. Capt. Cooney prepares to receive Lt. Col. Bartlett (Lee Marvin), who he knows from pre-war days, at HQ. A card game with booze and cigars is laid on. Cooney and Bartlett each intend to milk the occasion, laced with Southern bonhomie, for their own careerist ambitions. Cooney wants to win disapproving daddie's approval, by returning home as a decorated war hero; Bartlett seeks postwar office, with Daddy and Cooney Jr. as backers.

But rankling grievances that have been festering just below the surface erupt, and things turn sour. Costa simply cannot contain his anger over the Aachen affair. And it's soon clear that morale in the unit as a whole is close to breaking point, thanks to Cooney's lacklustre leadership. Lt. Harry Woodruff wants Costa to back him up in getting Cooney 'kicked upstairs'. Costa's too jaded to even try. And Bartlett manages to fob Woodruff off, saying that it's 100-to-1 they'll be pulled off the line.

A great still, looking very like a documentary photograph.

Instead, they're caught up in the Battle of the Bulge. Bartlett gives Cooney and Fragile Fox co. the task of taking and holding the strategically important town of La Nelle. Cooney requests Costa's platoon take the key initial position, on the edge of town. 

Like the pill-box near Aachen, it's a dirty dangerous job. But Costa reluctantly if fatalistically agrees, telling Bartlett that if the promised back up doesn't arrive this time, and promptly, and if he loses any more men as a result of Cooney's incompetence, he'll come back and shove a grenade down the Captain's throat and pull the pin!

Pulling the pin on a grenade is an image key to the film's pent-up violence.

Well, it's pretty clear what's going to happen. Exactly how it unfolds, however, is very well handled. Palance is just great, so ruggedly masculine you feel he might well be made of granite! Albert is also excellent, as the less than sympathetic Cooney. Marvin, another amazing looking fellow, is also reliably rugged, but with an added layer of viciously smooth careerist snakeskin. 

Costa is a man who drives himself over the edge, Cooney one who never finds his footing, and Bartlett cracks the whip, as they teeter on the brink. Amongst the officers only Harry retains any balance and composure. Or does he? The film promoted itself with the tag 'rips open the hot hell behind the glory', and has been described as cynical. Certainly it's not a straightforward 'heroes of America fight and defeat their evil foe' type affair.

Palance and friend during filming.

Actually I think it's a quite remarkable film. Palance really is great. His character, whilst extremely charismatic, in a homely yet gung-ho way, is damaged by the war. Yet we sympathise with him. Ultimately we may even sympathise with and feel pity for Cooney, who's the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Desperate to win the approval of a bullying father, but fully aware he hasn't the character to achieve his goal.

What transpires, over several well managed scenarios, is the evolution of this toxic set-up, under the rigorous strains of modern armed conflict. Us war buffs might grimace at the incorrect matériel - in particular the rather poxy looking M3 Stewart Light Tanks [3] standing in for magnificent panzers - but the film is good enough to surmount such limitations.

Palance prepare to bazooka a 'Panzer'.

Indeed, whilst on some levels this could be seen as a run of the mill WWII potboiler, in others, it clearly isn't. Palance's performance is almost Tolstoyan in intensity, but with a touch of neo-operatic grindhouse ham. There are some familiar faces, like Richard Jaeckel, and some low-budget workaround shots. But there's also an almost Francis Wolff (of Blue Note records, the famous jazz label) aesthetic to the black and white photography, and the opening title sequence. [4]

And in addition to a gripping well performed story, there's the moral complexity and the compromised systems of values that interplay. The denouement is appropriately messy and confused, much like the fighting depicted. Mixing the homely with the brutally cynical, it depicts a sad reality, in which humanity seems to oscillate under the polar lures of compromise and integrity.

Lee Marvin, as the jaded and cynically practical Lt. Col. Clyde Bartlett.

All told, I love this film. Lee Marvin is great, Palance is like some kind of pagan deity in the flesh, attractively primitive and dangerously, combustible volatile, Eddie Albert plays an unattractive role with real vigour and credibility, and William Smithers (who I didn't know prior to this) is the Everyman, trying to fathom his moral compass on the storm-tossed seas of war. Fab!

Smithers as Woodruff, the Everyman character.

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NOTES: 

[1] The film is based on a play, originally titled Fragile Fox.

[2] In fact actor Eddie Albert was a decorated veteran of WWII!

[3] Aldrich had to buy his own tank, and rent another, to make the film, as the US military refused to cooperate in the making of the film.

[4] It turns out it was graphic design maestro Saul Bass who did the superb title sequence. 

Film Review: Battle Of The Bulge, 1965

NB - Another in my continuing series of archival posts. Drafted ages ago, but only finished now.

Hmm? I want this to be a good film, and I want to enjoy it. But it isn't, and I don't.

In terms of accuracy of any sort, it's pretty woeful. Only in the broadest of terms - the Germans luanched an offensive that ultimately failed - is it anywhere near the mark. Some of the detail chimes with certain events, such as the SS Malmedy prisoner massacre, and the German attempts to cause confusion behind the Allied lines (by using German troops disguised as Americans) [1]. It's obviously intended - as the original publicity materials, such as the poster below, make clear - to be a blockbuster in the mould of A Bridge Too Far, or The Longest Day. But those films worked much harder to achieve authenticity. And, particularly in comparison to this movie, they succeeded.

'Only Cinerama could give it to you the way it was.' If only! [2]

Col. Hessler (Robert Shaw) is introduced to wunderwaffen, the new Tiger. Eh? That's not a Tiger?

Hessler and his orderly, Conrad (Hans Christian Blech), singing the Panzerleied, with...

... the young tankers. [3]

It's also hard to watch a film in which not only is the history well off the mark, but the looks of the locations are wrong, and the materiél, in particular the tanks and vehicles of both sides, are wrong. Even the uniforms look too generic. They didn't have CGI back when this film was made, but then neither did the Russian makers of 'Osvobohzdenie' (Liberation), a truly epic five-part film about the counteroffensives on the Eastern Front that puts this lacklustre and innacurate drivel properly to shame. And the Russian's at least had the wherewithal to try to make some of their armour actually look like the Tiger tanks, or whatever else, they are standing in for.

An M3 masquerading as a German half-track.

M47 Patton tanks were used to stand in for Tigers. Poor image dubbing doesn't help.

There are a few films, Battleground, and parts of Band Of Brothers, for example, that cover aspects of the Battle of The Bulge, and do so far better than this movie does, but it remains a campaign ill served by western cinema. Sadly this film doesn't measure up to its own sense of self importance, which ends up making the rather portentous triple interludes - there are three bombastic musical segments, an overture, an intermission, and an exit - seem rather ridiculous. The stark red and black title graphics, as nice as they are, are scant consolation.

Telly Savalas as Guffy, an American tanker with a sideline in black market contraband.

Filmed in Spain, the landscape settings don't quite evoke the Ardennes.

In my view you'd have to be shamefully ignorant of the history of these important events to be taken in by this Hollywood gloss, which comes off more as a melodramatic Western, relocated to WWII, in terms of acting and drama. What a missed opportunity. And what a waste of plenty of decent acting talent.

This nice old poster makes the film look much better than it is. 

It's quite clear from the older posters that this was cast in the mould of star-studded epics such as The Longest Day, and A Bridge Too Far. It just goes to show that throwing big names into the pot with a turkey doesn't alter the fact it's a turkey.

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NOTES:

[1] This latter aspect, however, like so much of the history with which this film should've concerned itself, is grossly misrepresented, in this instance by being hugely overplayed.

[2] Introduced in the 1950s, Cinerama was an attempt by the cinemas to find new means of competing with TV, by offering a more spectacular immersive panoramic viewing experience. But by the time Battle of the Bulge was made it was already on the decline. And this film was shot in a single camera budget version of the format, where the original called for three cameras shooting simultaneously!

[3] This was one of the few scenes I actually enjoyed, as I felt it conveyed well the positive camaraderie aspect of the German war machine, something usually glossed over in big budget war films.

Film Review: Battleground, 1949

The modern DVD cover.

A classic period piece title still from the film.

Dedicated to the 'Batterered Bastards of Bastogne', Battleground tells the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne, who wind up holding the strategically important crossroads town of Bastogne, a key German objective in their final offensive, known to us now as the Battle of the Bulge.

Looks like it was marketed under a different title in some places.

There are a number of familiar faces here, from genre movies of the era, some almost unrecognisable, as they're so young. The big name star is Van Johnson, who plays Holley, alongside such actors I did recognise as Richard Jaeckel, as Bettis, and Ricardo Montalban, as Rodrigues. But really it's an ensemble piece. I didn't recognise John Hodiak (Jarvess), George Murphy (Stazak) or Herbert Anderson (Hansan), but they're all equally good, being both believable and sympathetic. One of the standout turns, however, is James Whitmore as Sgt. Kinnie.

This poster looks practically Soviet!

If you've seen Band of Brothers, this will be familiar territory. Partly that's 'cause the more recent HBO mini-series covers the same ground. But also it's partly 'cause this film is much grittier than most of a similar vintage. Indeed, one suspects that Band of Brothers might owe this earlier movie a debt, here and there. I'd certainly be incredulous if I were to learn that Hanks and co. hadn't studied this film as part of their research.

The film starts with two new recruits, privates Layton and Hooper, who've become buddies during training, arriving to find they've been assigned to different companies of the 327th Glider Regt, which in turn is part of the 101st Airborne. 

Replacements Bill Hooper and Jim Layton.

Bad news: all leave is cancelled.

About to go to Paris on a three day pass, everyone, newcomers and old hands alike, are pretty pissed at learning that a German offensive has begun, and all leave is cancelled. 'Pop' Stazak (George Murphy) is especially entitled to feel this way, as he's just found out he's due to be sent home to his family... as soon as the paperwork arrives.

An ensemble piece, populated with flawed characters you grow to care for

They were looking forward to Paris, but wind up in Bastogne.

There's a running gag concerning Holley's attempts ...

... to cook some eggs in a helmet.

Newspapers from home know more about the situation than those at the sharp end.

Cold comfort, served daily at the mess.

Watching buddies die, or get stretchered off the field takes it toll.

Layton finds it hard to be accepted by the old hands, and his initial experiences aren't encouraging. But eventually, mainly by just surviving, he becomes one of the old hands himself. Digging foxholes, hiding in the fog and snow, numbers are whittled down by constant bombardment and occasional contact. The men are turning into dishevelled tramps, contending with wounds, enemy infiltrations (some disguised as Americans), lack of adequate supplies, and foul weather. But, whilst they bellyache, or even plan ways to escape, their spirits are never truly broken.

The perils of the patrol...

One less in the company.

This is a pretty old film now, and image quality varies, being quite grainy and poor sometimes. Actually this doesn't bother me, and almost helps the stock footage blend in better. There's also a mix of studio and outdoor filming. Funnily enough, this looks no worse than the equivalent tricks used in Band of Brothers.

Nowadays such war-weariness as is displayed here is a familiar trope, but back in 1949 this was notably more risqué. The main thing, however, is that the characters are sufficiently engaging, so we care about their fates. Not a classic film, quite. But solid and worth watching nonetheless.

'Sound off!' 'One, two... three, four...' Battered, but proud.

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Compare the image below with the still above. Looks like someone else thought Whitmore's Sgt. Kinnie was the biz:

Sgt. Kinnie, in miniature!

A more Technicolour version of the old poster.