Reeling Backward: "Battle Cry" (1955)

First of all, they should've called it "Training Cry." Because the bulk of this 1955 so-called war drama takes place during training for a group of World War II Marines. The film's first -- and only -- battle doesn't arrive until the two hour and 10-minute mark. And it's absolutely horrible stuff, some of the worst battle scenes in a Hollywood movie, ever.

Or maybe "Love Cry," since most of the story is about the various romances the soldiers fall in and out of. I'm all for a little female presence in war movies, if for no other reason than to add some context about what the men are fighting for back home.

But "Battle Cry" is so laden wish mushy kisses and jealousy and tortured romance, it plays out like a soap opera with bayonets. Watching it, I kept feeling like the kid from "The Princess Bride," who expects his grandfather to read him tales of adventure and death, and keeps complaining, "They're kissing again."

Mostly, the title of this terrible picture should have just been "Cry" -- because that's what I felt like doing while watching it.

It's based on a novel by Leon Uris, who also wrote the screenplay, who used his own experiences as a Marine as the basis for the story. All I can say is, military life in his depiction seems to consist mostly of frequent, lengthy leaves of absences. Though there are a few depictions of the drudgery of boot camp -- marching, etc. -- most of what happens takes place while the men are on leave.

Raoul Walsh is considered one of the great classic Hollywood directors, but I can't say I thought much of his work here. Although it's generally a nice-looking film -- helped by the vivid colors and CinemaScope photography of cinematographer Sidney Hickox -- the acting is almost uniformly hammy. And the brief war sequence is staged so ineptly, one suspects a film school junior could do better.

You may say that they're typical of that era, but when I think of great war films of the 1940s and '50s, like William A. Wellman's "Battleground," the fighting in "Battle Cry" seems very stagy and hokey. Everyone who dies clutches their chest or whatever dramatically, then slowly collapses to the ground like they're goddamned Hamlet or something.

Speaking of "Battleground," that (vastly superior) movie also starred James Whitmore. Here he plays a sergeant named Mac, who also acts as the narrator. Mac is gruff and tough, but genuinely regards his recruits as more than just soldiers, sticking his neck out to help them out of their romantic entanglements on several occasions. Notably, Mac is the only major character without a wife or girlfriend.

His boss is Major (later Lt. Colonel) Sam Huxley (Van Heflin), aka "High Pockets." He demands much of his Marines -- taking them on two back-to-back 60-mile forced marches for no other reason than to break the local time record -- but also fights for them when he feels the 6th Marine Regiment isn't getting the choice assignments.

In that sense, "Battle Cry" can be given credit for depicting how decidedly unglamorous life could be during WWII. Huxley's Harlots, as they are called, are repeatedly given only mop-up duty in major Pacific battles like Guadalcanal and Tarawa. People forget that the vast majority of people enlisted in the military are in non-combatant roles, and even the fighting corps spend most of their time waiting for battle.

The soldiers are the usual, familiar (to use the kind term) mix of different ethnic and regional types. You've got your cowboy strumming a guitar, Southern loudmouth, tough street kid with a dicey past, upstanding All-American type, the quiet bookworm, the American Indian, the loudmouth Lothario, etc. Virtually every war movies does this, but it's still a pain to endure.

The story essentially plays out with one Marine's romance taking center stage at any given time, until they yield the floor to the next guy. I have to confess that by the time the last smoochy story rolls around, I had pretty much forgotten the first one -- which involved "Ski" Wronski, a penny-pinching guy saving his dough to bring his girl out to California, who gets a Dear John letter.

For me, the most interesting character was Marion Hotchkiss, dubbed "Sister Mary" by his fellows because of his spectacles and constantly having his nose in a book. Marion prefers to ride the ferry than go bar hopping while on leave, and talks openly of writing a book about his wartime experiences. He falls for a gal he meets on the ferry, only to have his heart crushed when's revealed as a floozy. I was disappointed with the way his death is handled; we learn through Mac's laconic narration that he bought it.

It's a testament to the weak storytelling throughout this movie that a minor character can be brought to the fore, his love story occupying center stage for a good chunk of the film, and then his passing is dismissed with a line of dialogue.

The longest romance tale involves Danny Forrester, a blond kid from Baltimore played by Tab Hunter. Danny has a sweet girl-next-door type back home, but falls hard for Elaine Yarborough, the older wife of Navy man who's never home. She's played by Dorothy Malone, who had an interesting career playing good girls and then suddenly morphed into a femme fatale type.

Malone wears tight sweaters with those prototypical torpedo bras of the 1950s that result in a very, um, horizontal profile. (That probably looked out of place in 1942.) Hunter and Malone's scenes are the only ones in the movie with any real heat. (Ironic, since Hunter was a gay actor forced by the studios to stay in the closet until late in life.)

The least interesting romance for me is the last one, involving the lumberjack Andy Hookens, a strapping guy who doesn't believe in getting tied down by just one girl, until... well, you know. His love interest is Pat Rogers (Nancy Olson), a New Zealander whose husband was killed in the fighting in Africa.

Andy is played by Aldo Ray, who definitely looks like a lumberjack. He's built like a linebacker, with a bull neck and wide shoulders, but has a curiously pinched face, with slightly buggy eyes. His raspy voice sounds like he screamed until his voice box shattered.

He's also blond, which is notable in that four of the main actors -- Heflin, Ray, Hunter and Lupton -- are fair-haired. As I've discussed before, yellow-haired performers had a better chance of making it in Hollywood a few decades ago than they do now.

1.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Asphalt Jungle"

Was there ever a film noir as dour and cynical as "The Asphalt Jungle"? Was there ever an anti-hero as hard-boiled as Sterling Hayden's Dix Handley?

I think the answer to both questions is a resounding "no."

Director John Huston's 1950 masterpiece is a vision of grime and human depravity. The main character is a hooligan who kills quickly and without remorse, and seems indifferent to the girl who is clearly in love with him. And yet, he's the closest thing to a redeemable character in the picture.

What's most striking about the film is how criminals are portrayed as professionals with a job to do, not necessarily evil people who enjoy inflicting hurt. Made during a time when the Production Code decreed that criminals always had to be shown getting their comeuppance, Huston's depiction of cops and crooks caught in the same shadowy underworld ot temptation was practically an open rebellion.

No one in "Jungle" is shown as being purely evil. Sure, Dix is a Kentucky farmboy-turned street muscle, but his dream is to buy back the family horse farm they had to give up in the Depression. "Doc" Erwin Riedenschneider (Same Jaffe, in an Oscar-nominated performance) is the criminal mastermind who goes about his work with utter professionalism and respect for his peers. Doc is a jewel thief with the demeanor of a lab scientist.

His scheme for a big jewel heist is funded by a respectable lawyer, Lon Emmerich (Louis Calhern). Except for one problem -- Emmerich is broke himself, the price of leading a double life with a high-cost girlfriend who must be kept in gin and furs. She's played by Marilyn Monroe in one of her first substantial screen roles, already displaying the legendary sex appeal that would propel her to fame, and limit her career.

Marc Lawrence has an effective turn as Cobby, the small-time bookie who'd like to break into the big time, and acts as go-between for Emmerich. The attorney's plan is to use Cobby's dough to finance the heist, then make off with the goods himself, with the help of a lowlife private investigator played by Brad Dexter.

Rounding out the cast are James Whitmore as Gus, Dix's hunchback friend and an occasional wheel man, when he's not running the local greasy spoon diner. And Jean Hagen plays the dame, whose name is literally Doll. (At first, I thought that was just what Dix was calling her, but no, that's her actual name.) Doll's had some hard luck herself, and is crashing at Dix's place when he gets the call to join Doc's crew.

As Dix, Hayden is a pastiche of icy glares and jawboned dialogue that tumbles out of his mouth like he has contempt for every word. Hayden was an interesting Hollywood iconoclast: He began his life as a sailor, and fell into acting because he thought it was easy, and paid well. He made little attempt to conceal his contempt for the acting craft, which cost him jobs later on in his career. I read somewhere that Hayden was supposed to play the role of Captain Quint in "Jaws," but Robert Shaw took over because of Hayden's tax trouble.

The robbery goes well at first, but an increasing number of complications keep cropping up. After Emmerich's double-cross fails, Doc and Dix are on the run with a bag full of jewels and no fence to pay them.

Doc's capture by the police is one of the all-time great scenes in crime movies. Doc has a weakness for girls, and had planned to use the money to retire to Mexico in luxury. He makes it out of the city -- the film is set in an unnamed Midwest metropolis, possibly Cincinnati, where it was partially shot -- and seems to have gotten away. While resting in a roadside diner, he spies a teen girl who's upset that the two boys she's with have run out of nickels for the jukebox. He offers her a couple dollars worth so he can sit awhile and watch her provocative dancing. Meanwhile, some cops spy him through the window and arrest him when he comes out.

Doc's questioning of one of the police men about how long they had been waiting for him is poignant, since it's clear that if he hadn't delayed to satisfy his lust, he could have gotten away.

Every man has a weakness, the message of the film seems to be, and the jungle of the modern city acts as a pressure cooker to bring out their worst instincts. Dix says he can't wait to get back to Kentucky so he can wash the dirt of the city off of him.

Huston wrote the script with Ben Maddow, based on the book by W.R. Burnett. There's a great line of dialogue where Emmerich is talking about how people treat criminals as a lower form of humanity than "respectable" people like himself. "They're not so different. After all, crime is merely a left-handed form of human endeavor."

The irony that the lowly professional criminals hold up their end of the bargain, and the eminent lawyer is the one who louses things up with his dirty scheming, is tasty indeed.

4 stars

Reeling Backward: "Battleground"

I just can't believe "Battleground" was made in 1949, a mere five years after the actual Battle of the Bulge, which it depicts.

I admit I'd never heard of this movie until recently; it's one of those lost classics that gets overlooked over the march of time. Perhaps you'd be as surprised as I was to learn that it was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, and won two, for screenwriting and cinematography.

What's surprising about it is how gritty it is, and how realistically bitter the soldiers are portrayed. It's really, really raw stuff -- if it were not for the black-and-white cinematography and the presence of a few name actors of the era, like Van Johnson, James Whitmore and Ricardo Montalban, one would swear it was made during the peacenik '60s.

The head sergeant, played by Whitmore, gets frostbitten feet but can't get a medical evac because Army regulations say your feet have to change color first. Another soldier named Pops gets a discharge due to family hardship, but he can't get out because he needs one final letter from HQ, and it gets lost in the mail before the Bulge squeeze starts.

One of the most touching bits has to do with Van Johnson's character, Holley. He gets some eggs from a nice French woman's barn, but they're ordered to ship out before he has a chance to eat them. For the next few days, he carefully cradles the eggs in a cloth, even under gunfire. He starts to cook the eggs in his helmet over an open fire, but again the call comes to move out, so he pours the batter into his meal tin and carries that around for a couple more days. At one point he's ordered out on patrol, and gives the eggs to another soldier to guard, with the offer to split them. Finally, the eggs are blown up in a mortar blast.

I love stuff like that because it has such verisimilitude -- a fancy word I learned in college that I translate as "more real than real." You can just imagine real G.I.'s behaving this way, carefully hording little things like eggs or a letter from home that reminds of the sane life that awaits them across the seas.

"Battleground" was directed by William A. Wellman, who also helmed "The Story of G.I. Joe," from a script by Robert Pirosh, who mostly was a TV guy. The cinematography was by Paul Vogel, and is truly a watershed in American cinema. The stark black-and-white of soldiers fighting in the snow, with images that just seem to pop off the screen, makes the film seem timeless.

The tone of the movie reminded me very much of "Willie and Joe," the iconic cartoon strip penned by Bill Mauldin in Stars and Stripes during the war. Mauldin drew the regular soldiers, or "dogfaces" as they called themselves, as unshaven, surly and tough regular guys who loved to poke fun at the insanity of Army rules and bureaucracy. In one of my favorite strips, Willie says to Joe that because he saved his life, Willie was giving him his most prized possession: His last pair of dry socks. "Battleground" exactly captures the mindset of guys in the foxholes like Willie and Joe.

One of the other main characters is Jarvess, played by John Hodiak. Jarvess was a newspaperman who kept writing columns about how important it was for every American to get into the fight against the Axis, so he felt compelled to volunteer himself. He eagerly awaits copies of his newspaper sent by his wife, who is filling in as columnist. Jarvess is ostracized from the other grunts, partly of choice, because of his intellectual bent.

Marshall Thompson plays Jim Layton, the fresh-faced kid who just joined the outfit. At first he's unbelievably green, but in short time he becomes a grizzled veteran, and one of the most cynical at that. At one point he surprises the platoon with an acerbic monologue degrading the Army and even the existence of God.

There's a great moment where the soldiers are pinned down, and Holley suddenly breaks away and runs to the rear. Layton follows him, assuming he's going AWOL. Holley does indeed start to sprint toward the rear, but when he sees the rookie following him, he quickly turns and runs toward the enemy line, outflanking them and forcing their surrender.

In showing the gray line between heroism and cowardice, and its stark realism in peering at the face of war, "Battleground" stands out as one of the best World War II dramas I've seen.

4 stars