The Last Escape (1970)

          Strange as it may seem that old-fashioned World War II flicks were still unspooling in American theaters during the climax of the Vietnam War, the evidence is found in disposable flicks along the lines of Hell Boats, Underground, and this drab thriller starring Stuart Whitman, all of which were released in 1970. Brisk, handsomely produced, and watchable, The Last Escape quickly evaporates from the viewer’s memory. Whitman stars as Mitchell, an American spy who leads a collective of international covert agents during a mission to liberate a rocket scientist being forced to work for the Third Reich. All the usual complications arise. Mitchell’s American comrades die before reaching the mission’s rendezvous point, so Mitchell’s British counterpart challenges him for leadership over the mission. Upon liberating the scientist, the group’s path to freedom is complicated by the difficulty of moving extra people through hostile territory—the scientist demands that Mitchell’s team extract numerous family members and friends, rather than just key personnel—and by such practical issues as diminishing fuel supplies. The plot also includes trite romantic elements, as well as the inevitable barrage of chases, shootouts, and so forth.

          Appraised superficially, The Last Escape ticks most of the right boxes, and therefore should make for a satisfying—if undemanding—viewing experience. Alas, that appraisal leaves out the important considerations of depth and originality. The Last Escape has neither. The film’s characterizations are beyond perfunctory, so Whitman’s character is stoic, his love interest detects the sensitivity hiding behind the stoicism, the Nazis are odious, and the scientist represents moral complexity by demanding that Mitchell leaven his determination with compassion. Had this movie been an episode of some World War II-themed TV show or even some 80-minute programmer cranked out by a low-budget studio in the 1950s, the sketchy plotting might have been sufficient. For a proper feature released in 1970, not so much. That said, it’s not as if The Last Escape is intolerable. The picture contains long sequences without dialogue, and there’s something to be said for any movie with elements of pure cinema. Furthermore, once could do worse than hiring next-level scowler Whitman when casting the role of a tight-lipped tough guy.

The Last Escape: FUNKY

Massacre in Rome (1973)

          The European-made World War II drama Massacre in Rome depicts a 1944 incident during which the Third Reich killed 335 citizens in reprisal for a partisan attack that left about 30 German soldiers dead. The so-called “Ardeatine Massacre” carried sociopolitical implications extending beyond the war itself, since the Vatican was asked to intervene but refused to do so. Written and directed by George P. Cosmatos, who adapted a book by Robert Katz, Massacre in Rome is a serious attempt at cataloguing the myriad factors that led to the slaughter, although the process of dramatization led Cosmatos toward both oversimplification and turgidity. Regarding the first extreme, Cosmatos transformed historical figure Herbert Kappler, the German officer tasked with organizing the reprisal, into a cinematic protagonist, which necessitated some sanding of edges. In the movie, Kappler—as played by Richard Burton—is a pragmatist who urges his commanders to exercise restraint not out of any great wellspring of human compassion, but because he knows that an excessive response will energize opposition among the Italian citizenry. Historical accounts suggest that the real Kappler had no such reservations about following the company line.

          Regarding the second extreme, that of turgidity, Cosmatos created a composite character, Father Pietro Antonelli—portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni—to represent the tricky relationship between the church and Italian partisans. Many scenes involving the priest devolve into pretentious debates about morality. Worse, the priest ultimately serves no discernible narrative function—despite fretting a lot, he never impacts the action in a meaningful way. Given these problems, Massacre in Rome is a middling film even though it’s also a sober undertaking with terrific production values. At his best, Cosmatos conveys a vision of the Third Reich’s high command as a dysfunctional family, with insane leader Adolf Hitler (who is never shown onscreen) creating a top-down climate of paranoia and savagery while more rational people eye the inevitable future after Hitler’s power structure collapses. Marginalized in this treatment of the story are the people affected by the massacre, because Cosmatos doesn’t spend enough time with the partisans or with the common people of Rome. That said, Cosmatos and producer Carlo Ponti honor the dead with a closing text crawl featuring the names of the victims.

Massacre in Rome: FUNKY

All Quiet on the Western Front (1979)

          Considering that a 1930 black-and-white adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s antiwar novel All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the first films to receive the Academy Award for Best Picture, it’s no surprise that Hollywood avoided revisiting the story for decades. Once cameras rolled on a fresh take, albeit for television, restrictions on what could be shown had relaxed sufficiently for the 1979 version of All Quiet on the Western Front to play rougher than its predecessor. Particularly when viewed in the “uncut” extended version that was released theatrically in Europe, the 1979 All Quiet on the Western Front is much bloodier than Lewis Milestone’s 1930 feature. It’s also much less poetic, though it nearly matches the earlier film in terms of scope.

          The story follows a group of German soldiers during World War I as they evolve from new recruits to battle-hardened veterans. At the center of the piece is Paul Baumer (played by Richard Thomas of The Waltons), a gentle artist who learns to kill out of necessity. The story tracks Paul’s relationships with many people, including fellow enlisted men as well as cruel training officer Himmelstoss (Ian Holm) and pragmatic NCO Katczinsky (Ernest Borgnine). The Himmelstoss character represents ambitious conformists whose participation in the military brings out inhumane qualities, and the Katczinsky character represents the challenges faced by those who wish to survive war with their souls intact. Per the forceful but schematic architecture of Remarque’s storyline, Paul finds himself pulled between these extremes—as well as other impulses—while he resists the circumstances that could otherwise compel him to become a callous killing machine.

          Though his work is earnest and rigorous, leading man Thomas is the weak link in this production, hitting voiceover lines too mechanically and playing scenes too obviously. By contrast, Borgnine, Holm, and Donald Pleasance—who plays a schoolteacher with dubious notions of nationalism—all come across as nuanced and subtle. Generally speaking, All Quiet on the Western Front commands and rewards attention. Cinematographer John Coquillon and director Delbert Mann create a rich widescreen look with much more texture than the average ’70s telefilm, composer Allyn Ferguson layers scenes with suitably ominous music, and the picture contains several startling images. Rats chewing on corpses. A dazed man begging mercy for wounded horses. Lines of soldiers dropping from gunfire as they climb out of trenches. It’s all quite potent, from the unexpected significance of what happens to a wounded soldier’s boots to the grim final images that succinctly express Remarque’s antiwar themes.

All Quiet on the Western Front: GROOVY

Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? (1970)

          Partly an antiwar film reflecting the counterculture perspective and partly a squaresville pro-military picture promulgating Greatest Generation attitudes, the misshapen comedy/drama Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? depicts an explosive conflict between the soldiers occupying a U.S. Army base and the citizens of the hick town neighboring the base. The movie features myriad subplots and several principal characters, so for about the first hour of the film’s running time, it’s hard to tell who or what the story is about. Once things come into focus—or at least as much so as they ever do, which is not a lot—the sum is less than the parts. Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? includes some amusing performances, as well as fine production values and fleeting passages of snappy dialogue, but the script is simultaneously overpopulated and underdeveloped. Interesting ideas fade into the ether, silly tropes rise to the fore, and it all congeals into a kind of cinematic sludge.

          The basic gist is that a career soldier named Officer Michael Nace (Brian Keith) gets tasked with handling community relations between the base and the town. That’s easier said than done, because troublemaking Army personnel including drunken womanizer Sergeant Shannon Gambroni (Tony Curtis) have made enemies of the town’s sadistic top cop, Sheriff Harve (Ernest Borgnine). As the film progresses, tensions between citizens and soldiers grow worse and worse, eventually inspiring Mace to lead an armed assault on the town. The town fights back not just with police but also with a private militia funded and overseen by megalomaniacal idiot Billy Joe Davis (Tom Ewell).

          This short synopsis excludes easily half of the film’s narrative threads, because characters played by Don Ameche, Bradford Dillman, Ivan Dixon, and Suzanne Pleshette—among others—also have significant amounts of screen time. Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? is such a mess that it’s not worth expressing frustration that certain elements almost work. Borgnine adds another scenery-chewing monster to his gallery of screen villains, and Keith is entertainingly grumpy, but their efforts are stymied by the general formlessness. As Borgnine says in his autobiography, “We had a lot of fun doing it and I got a paycheck, even though it turned out terrible.”

Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?: FUNKY

The Execution of Private Slovik (1974)

          A grim footnote to the epic saga of World War II, the fate of Private Edward Donald “Eddie” Slovik speaks to the deepest questions about the relationship between morality and war. The only American soldier executed for desertion during World War II, and the first such U.S. casualty since the Civil War, Slovik was among thousands of soldiers who rebelled against fulfilling their military obligations while serving in Europe (as Slovik did) or the Pacific. The unique resolution of his case, however, has profound significance. If the purpose of a nation going to war is to protect its citizens, doesn’t killing one of those citizens betray the nation’s common purpose? Yet if soldiers are allowed to flee combat with impunity, how can the armed forces maintain discipline and morale, much less battlefield momentum? And even if generals and government officials seek to reconcile these questions by employing non-lethal forms of punishment for desertion, does the lack of an ultimate deterrent weaken the force of law? Once the complexities of individual personalities are thrown into the mix, the whole question of how to handle such situations becomes an ethical quagmire.

          To its great credit, the acclaimed telefim The Execution of Private Slovik does nothing to simplify these issues. Based upon William Bradford Huie’s book and adapted by writer/producers Richard Levinson and William Link together with cowriter/director Lamont Johnson, The Execution of Private Slovik is slightly more than a straightforward docudrama re-creation of historical events. Starring Martin Sheen at his most soulful, the picture opens with preparations for Slovik’s execution, then flashes back to sketch his life story and early military career before depicting the private’s final hours in meticulous detail. The picture employs a heavy narration track, with some of the voiceover stemming from Slovik’s letters and the rest of the voiceover emerging from supporting characters, each of whom offers a different perspective on the protagonist.

          Eventually, a portrait emerges of an unfortunate young man who spent his youth in and out of trouble, got his life together and settled down with an understanding young woman, and is thunderstruck by a draft notice that he’d been promised would never arrive because of his criminal record. From his earliest days of basic training to his final verbal exchanges with superior officers, Slovik self-identifies as a nervous individual who can’t deal with the stress of combat, but the Army denies his myriad requests to serve in a support function. Slovik eventually forces the Army’s hand by deserting, thereby triggering his arrest and court-martial process. Although viewers know that clouds of doom hang over the entire story, Slovik and the other onscreen characters never believe an actual execution will take place until the very moment it does. In that sense, the movie is about both Slovik and the U.S. military paying terrible costs for commitment to ideals.

          Sheen, who received an Emmy nomination for his work, hits myriad tonalities, from childlike obliviousness to deer-in-the-headlights terror, while Ned Beatty serves as the film’s de facto conscience by playing the military chaplain assigned to comfort both Slovik and the members of the firing squad tasked with killing Slovik. Both actors deliver work that suits the compassion, intelligence, and seriousness of the entire project.

The Execution of Private Slovik: GROOVY

All This and World War II (1975)

          This one needs a disclaimer. While the film All This and World War II is quite awful, taking a wrongheaded idea far into the realm of bad taste, the movie features a nifty soundtrack comprising covers of Beatles songs by noteworthy musicians. Therefore, it’s possible to watch the flick as a sampler platter for the songs, some of which appear via snippets and some of which are played in their entirety. The basic premise of All This and World War II is as simple as it is stupefying—using the Beatles’ songbook as the score for a greatest-hits survey of how key events during World War II affected Great Britain. The resulting juxtapositions of songs and imagery (newsreels, stock footage, and clips from fictional films released by 20th Century-Fox, the distributor of All This and World War II) are maddeningly literal. Helen Reddy sings “Fool on the Hill” over shots of Hitler during prewar days. Henry Gross performs “Help!” over scenes of Nazi tank commander Erwin Rommel pummeling UK forces in North Africa, as well as scenes of American President Franklin Roosevelt battling resistance from isolationists in order to help—get it?—the British. Sometimes, director Susan Winslow struggles so hard to match footage with tunes that madness ensues: Why the hell does Leo Sayer howl “I Am the Walrus” during combat scenes? And what’s the deal with Frankie Laine crooning “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” during a sequence celebrating American volunteerism?

          Yet the truly cringe-inducing bits involve generalizations about race and culture, such as matching the Bee Gees’ version of “Sun King” with Pearl Harbor and pairing Richard Cocciante’s weirdly overwrought take on “Michelle” with the liberation of France. To Winslow’s credit, every so often something works. Sayer’s plaintive reading of “The Long and Winding Road” works as accompaniment for harrowing images of London during the blitz, and Jeff Lynne’s faithful remake of “Nowhere Man” is a droll companion for shots of ousted Italian strongman Benito Mussolini in exile. Still, the basic flaw of this project—matching the Beatles’ peace-and-love tunes with war imagery—becomes painfully clear in the end, which is to say marrying the London Symphony Orchestra’s performance of “The End” with a shot of an A-bomb test meant to represent America’s nuclear attack on Japan. Just wrong. As for the handful of cover versions that add luster to the enterprise, including Elton John’s hit version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (listen for John Lennon himself singing the chorus), they are better appreciated outside the context of this misguided movie.

All This and World War II: LAME

Charge of the Model T’s (1977)

Harmless but stupid, this war-themed comedy is roughly in the mode of a Disney live-action picture from the same era, only Disney moves of the ’70s were generally more palatable thanks to breakneck plotting and the participation of name-brand actors. Charge of the Model T’s writer-director Jim MicCullough Jr. grinds a small number of jokes into the dirt through endless repetition, and the broader the style of the movie gets, the more actual amusement disappears from the equation. By the time the movie sputters out, viewers who’ve gone the distance are likely to be left numb. The mere fact that McCullough obviously means well isn’t enough to make the experience of watching his picture worthwhile. Set in southern Texas during World War I, the story follows Lt. Matthew Jones (John David Carson), an ambitious young officer assigned to a cavalry unit even though he’s not a horseman. Matthew swears by his Ford Model T automobile, going so far as to advocate the creation of a fully automated cavalry unit. Meanwhile, German spy Friedrich Schmidt (Louis Nye) receives orders to stir up trouble on the Mexican border, ostensibly to distract soldiers who might otherwise participate in the European war effort. Also thrown into the mix is a trite love story involving Matthew and the daughter of his superior officer, as well as silly business related to a Mexican bandito—who is played by the familiar Jewish character actor Herb Edelman. Oh, and Laugh-In star Arte Johnson plays a dumb supporting role as an elderly doctor who causes trouble because he can neither hear nor understand what people say to him. Based on a novel by Lee Somerville, the picture starts off well enough, with Carson evincing fresh-scrubbed likeability, and then the rot sets in: To the accompaniment of awful, Keystone Kops-style music, characters engage in lifeless physical comedy and the worst kind of farce, with jokes predicated on characters being total morons. Furthermore, any novelty stemming from the sight of doughboys driving Model T’s as they battle villains in the desert wears off very quickly.

Charge of the Model T’s: LAME

1980 Week: Breaker Morant

          Beautifully filmed, expertly acted, meticulously directed, and thoughtfully written, Breaker Morant is not only one of the best Australian films ever made, but also one of the finest dramas of its era. Presenting a complex story about courage, cowardice, politics, violence, and war, the picture dramatizes an infamous real-life incident that took place during the early 20th century in what later became South Africa. Amid the storms of the Second Boer War, fought between forces of the British Empire and those resisting British rule, three officers in an Australian regiment serving the UK were accused of killing unarmed combatants, including a German priest, as reprisal for the murder of their commanding officer. Partisans of the accused characterized the legal action that was brought against the Australians as craven political expediency, a maneuver designed by the British to appease German interests and facilitate a peace settlement. Despite strong evidence proving that the Australians were following orders, the officers were executed, and many people perceived the event as a classic miscarriage of justice.

          Cowritten and directed by Bruce Beresford, using Kenneth J. Ross’ play Breaker Morant as a foundation, this elegantly constructed film follows the trial of the Australians and includes flashbacks to key events on the battlefield. A picture emerges of a conflict in which the rules of engagement were murky at best. The leader of the Australians is the sophisticated Harry “Breaker” Morant (Edward Woodward), a horseman and poet who was born in England and therefore understands the duplicities of the British aristocracy better than his Australian-born comrades. In fact, Morant realizes his fate is sealed the minute he meets the attorney assigned to represent the Australians, an inexperienced Aussie named Major J.F. Thomas (Jack Thompson). The lawyer is given only a day to prepare, and all of his motions to buy time are overruled. Yet as the absurdly one-sided military trial commences, Thomas proves more formidable than either the defendants or the jurists expected, sparking hope among the Australians that truth may out. In sad and tragic ways, it does—with little effect on the foregone conclusion.

           Through evidence and testimony, Thomas demonstrates that a no-prisoners policy was in place before the death of the Australians’ commanding officer, thereby demolishing the prosecution’s argument that Morant and the others acted savagely. “The tragedy of war,” Thomas opines, “is that these horrors are committed by normal men, in abnormal circumstances.”

          Beresford shows exquisite restraint in every aspect of filmmaking. The performances are almost perfectly modulated, with anger breaking through decorum at just the right moments, and the camera angles and lighting that Beresford contrives with cinematographer Donald McAlpine heighten tension while also infusing scenes with the immersive texture of remote locales. Woodward is extraordinary in the title role, blending cynicism and romanticism to incarnate a unique individual. Bryan Brown, in his breakout performance, lends roguish charm while playing one of Morant’s co-defendants. And Australian-cinema stalwart Thompson does some of the best work of his career. Best of all, the movie can be watched in close detail by viewers curious about the internecine historical details, and it can also be absorbed viscerally as the story of ordinary men thrown into battle against forces beyond their ken.

          Either way, it’s a masterpiece of dramatic storytelling.

Breaker Morant: RIGHT ON

The Losers (1970)

Also known as Nam’s Angels, this bizarre biker flick imagines what might happen if an American motorcycle gang was hired by the U.S. government to conduct a covert operation in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Apparently inspired by a real-life suggestion presented to President Lyndon Johnson by the Hell’s Angels, the movie features a paper-thin story, tedious storytelling, and underwhelming action scenes. Director Jack Starrett and his collaborators also fail to justify the movie’s outlandish premise, since the bikers in the picture don’t do anything that couldn’t have been done more effectively by trained soldiers. In fact, the members of the “Devil’s Advocates” (the name of the onscreen gang) approach their mission incompetently. Tasked with rescuing some VIP who’s trapped behind enemy lines, the Devil’s Advocates spend inordinate amounts of time brawling, drinking, fixing their bikes, and screwing prostitutes. It’s difficult to generate enthusiasm for a men-on-a-mission movie that lacks urgency, and, indeed, The Losers is so leisurely that the whole picture stops dead for several minutes while Starrett’s camera ogles a topless dancer. Yawn. Biker-cinema icon William Smith brings his usual macho swagger to the party, though his animalistic appeal isn’t nearly enough to make The Losers interesting—even when he periodically spews a nugget of tasty dialogue (“You hired scooter trash for this job, that’s what you got”). Instead of using Smith or fellow B-movie vet Adam Roarke properly, Starrett burns film chronicling the unfunny antics of Houston Savage, who plays the violent slob of a biker named “Dirty Denny.” Apparently, the spectacle of Dirty Denny beating up his friends, indulging himself with whores, and staggering as people crack beer bottles over his head was envisioned as entertainment. It’s not.

The Losers: LAME

1980 Week: The Big Red One

          Maverick B-movie director Samuel Fuller returned from a decade-long hiatus with The Big Red One, a World War II melodrama based upon Fuller’s real-life experiences as a soldier in the U.S. Army’s First Infantry. The picture closely follows a single squad’s experiences as the squad moves from one deployment to the next, spanning D-Day to the end of the war. Episodic, heavy-handed, and meandering, the picture is deeply flawed but nonetheless interesting. Among other things, The Big Red One doesn’t feature any commanding officers—the highest-ranking major character is a sergeant—so it’s very much a grunt’s-eye-view of combat. The soldiers in this movie follow orders without a sense of the overall conflict’s larger political and/or strategic significance, which makes the brutality the soldiers witness (and commit) seem especially gruesome. Additionally, Fuller has a great eye for locations, putting viewers right there in the muck and rubble with physically and spiritually existed Yanks as they plow through seemingly endless waves of enemy combatants. Because Fuller was not a subtle filmmaker, however, the movie’s realistic textures clash with the clunky themes of the storyline.

          For instance, the main emotional hook involves the squad leader, Sgt. Possum (Lee Marvin), who was traumatized years earlier when he unknowingly killed a German soldier moments after the World War I armistice was signed. Forever cognizant of war’s costs, Possum has zero tolerance for cowardice—and zero tolerance for avoidable bloodshed. Fuller pays off this character arc in the least believable way possible, ending the picture on a false note. Similarly, a subplot about Pvt. Griff (Mark Hamill) turns trite as Griff overcomes his initial cowardice during a highly unlikely moment of heroism.

          Despite all of its narrative excesses and shortcomings, The Big Red One has a hell of a climax, because—as Fuller’s squad did in real life—the movie squad liberates a concentration camp. Demonstrating uncharacteristic restraint, Fuller evokes the soul-shattering horror soldiers must have felt upon encountering the depths of human evil. Photographed in rich color by Adam Greenberg and held together by Dana Kaproff’s efficient musical score, The Big Red One is a grand old mess of a personal statement, which might explain why the film has suffered so much at the hands of outside forces. Although Fuller’s original version ran nearly three hours, Warner Bros. cut the picture to 113 minutes for its initial release. Commercial failure and complaints from Fuller about tampering followed. Years later, well after Fuller’s death in 1997, a restored version running 162 minutes was released to much approval by critics.

          In any form, The Big Red One is noteworthy because it’s so clearly a passion piece, and because the best moments ring true. As for Fuller, he remained undaunted by the box-office stillbirth of The Big Red One, directing one more American feature—the relentless race-relations melodrama White Dog (1982)—before transitioning to the small European films that comprise the twilight era of his long and singular career.

The Big Red One: FUNKY

The Boys in Company C (1978)

          Despite a fuzzy script that glosses over important transitions, resulting in a disjointed and episodic storyline, The Boys in Company C deserves a respectable position in the history of movies about the Vietnam War. Not only was The Boys in Company C the first American feature to capture the madness of America’s disastrous involvement in Indochina—countering the jingoism of John Wayne’s vile The Green Berets (1968)—but The Boys in Company C provided two very important elements that Stanley Kubrick later repurposed for his powerful but problematic Full Metal Jacket (1987). Like the latter film, The Boys in Company C is divided into two parts, with the first section depicting basic training and the second section dramatizing life on the battlefield. The Boys in the Company C also includes the debut performance by R. Lee Ermey, the motor-mouthed ex-Marine who plays drill sergeants in both The Boys in Company C and Full Metal Jacket.

          Directed by Sidney J. Furie, who cowrote the picture with Rick Natkin, The Boys in Company C opens with a mosaic of scenes introducing five new USMC recruits: streetwise drug dealer Tyrone Washington (Stan Shaw), naïve hick Billy Ray Pike (Andrew Stevens), longhaired war protestor Dave Brisbee (Craig Wasson), scheming slacker Vinne Fazio (Michael Lembeck), and would-be war chronicler Alvin Foster (James Canning). Foster’s narration, representing entries in his combat journal, ties the film together. The men bond during six weeks of harrowing training under the command of instructors including Staff Sergeant Loyce (Ermey), then encounter pure lunacy in Vietnam once they fall under the command of Captain Collins (Scott Hylands). A gung-ho fool who regularly endangers his men by pursuing pointless missions, Collins earns enmity from all of his subordinates, even his seasoned second-in-command, Lieutenant Archer (James Whitmore, Jr.).

          The drama of The Boys in Company C stems from the tactics that enlisted men use to keep their lives—and their sanity—while fighting a losing battle in which commanding officers are as dangerous as the enemy. During one memorable incident, for instance, the soldiers suffer heavy casualties while escorting a convoy, only to discover that the trucks they’re escorting are full of luxury goods intended as gifts for a U.S. general. The picture culminates with a soccer game, of all things, and the climactic scene falls somewhere between the brilliant satire of the football game in M*A*S*H (1970) and the surrealism of the surfing sequence in Apocalypse Now (1979).

          While The Boys in Company C ultimately comes together well, it’s a bumpy ride. Furie has a tendency to skip important phases in the development of relationships, so characters often shift from adversaries to friends with little explanation. The director also introduces several subplots via exposition instead of proper scenes, so it feels as if big chunks of the movie are missing. That said, the acting is consistently vibrant, if not especially subtle. Overlooking the fact that he’s too old for his role, Stevens does some of the best work of his early career, especially during his many tense standoffs with Shaw, who dominates the picture with his intensity. Wasson adds soul (even crooning a tender ballad at one point), while Canning perfectly incarnates a certain kind of irresponsible junior officer. As ambitious as it is undisciplined, The Boys in Company C is compelling and frustrating in equal measure.

The Boys in Company C: GROOVY

Von Richtofen and Brown (1971)

          The World War I aerial-combat drama Von Richtofen and Brown was supposed to elevate cult-favorite director Roger Corman from the exploitation-flick ghetto into the mainstream, since it was centered around respectable subject matter and made for a major studio. Instead, the film completely derailed his directing career, because Corman walked away from the wreckage of Von Richtofen and Brown to focus on producing. (In the intervening years, he has helmed only one more movie, the 1990 dud Frankenstein Unboand.) The parsimonious Corman has admitted he found the corporate decision-making and economic wastefulness of studio filmmaking distasteful, but it’s also plain watching Von Richtofen and Brown that Corman was a filmmaker who thrived on limitations. His best directorial efforts—the funky black-and-white horror/comedy hybrids of the ’50s, the stylish Edgar Allen Poe adaptations of the ’60s—excel because small budgets forced Corman to substitute ingenuity and wit for spectacle.

          Throughout Von Richtofen and Brown, Corman showcases impressive aerial footage of biplanes engaging in dogfights, but the material doesn’t cut together particularly well. Breaking his own cardinal rule of collecting only as much footage as is necessary, Corman accumulated reels upon reels of similar-looking shots that, when assembled, comprise repetitive and hard-to-follow combat scenes. Worse, sequences set on terra firma are no better. The movie’s exceedingly weak script tries to explain how legendary German pilot Baron Manfred von Richtofen (John Philip Law), better known as “The Red Baron,” rose to prominence and eventually clashed, fatally, with Canadian pilot Roy Brown (Don Stroud).

          Excepting terrific production values, nearly everything in the movie works against the efficacy of the narrative. Characters are underdeveloped. Key milestones, such as the awarding of medals, are repeated ad nauseam. Subplots are abandoned capriciously. And the attempt at contrasting the two main characters (Brown the crude humanist, von Richtofen the aristocratic hunter) never gels. Compounding these problems are threadbare performances. Law, the tall stud from Barbarella (1968) flattens lines and renders stoic facial expressions. Stroud, a salty character actor, seems adrift in every scene, as if he received no guidance whatsoever about the nature of his role.

          So, while the movie’s not a disaster by any stretch—it’s one of Corman’s best-looking films, and every so often a moment connects the way it should—one can easily see why Von Richtofen and Brown failed to generate any excitement for a new phase of Corman’s career. Still, it’s hard to call this turn of events a shame, since Corman had already accomplished so much, and since he spent the ’70s and ’80s training important new directors who made their first movies for Corman’s New World Pictures. Like von Richtofen, Corman was brought down from the stratosphere to the earth with his legacy intact.

Von Richtofen and Brown: FUNKY

Go Tell the Spartans (1978)

          Although precious few fiction films were made about the Vietnam War while it was still raging, the late ’70s produced a number of thoughtful pictures about the war’s history, impact, and legacy. Yet not all such movies were created equal. Compared to the other 1978 releases Coming Home and The Deer Hunter, for instance, Go Tell the Spartans feels old-fashioned, stylized, and even obsolete. After all, the picture is set in 1964, when U.S. involvement in Indochina was still limited to “military advisors,” so the whole film unfolds as a warning about the dangers and pointlessness of an expanded American role. Had this picture been made in the late ’60s, when the underlying material originated—Daniel Ford’s novel Incident at Muc Wa was published in 1967—Go Tell the Spartans could have been politically incendiary. Arriving three years after the end of the Vietnam War, the picture is elegiac but also something of an unnecessary told-ya-so lecture. This is not to say that Go Tell the Spartans is a weak picture. Quite to the contrary, it’s a brisk and powerful tragedy laced with dark humor and deep pathos. But timing is everything, and the moment for Go Tell the Spartans to influence public opinion passed long before the film was made.

          In any event, Burt Lancaster stars as Major Asa Barker, a lifelong Army man tasked with supervising military advisors in a violent section of South Vietnam. Barker is a cigar-chomping cynic who hates authority, and Lancaster invests the role with an endearing stripe of amused world-weariness. When Barker is ordered to establish a garrison around a seemingly insignificant village called Muc Wa, he sends a group of losers and misfits under the command of inexperienced Lieutenant Hamilton (Joe Unger). Also in the Muc Wa detachment are Sgt. Obleonowski (Johathan Goldsmith), an experienced NCO who’s struggling with battle fatigue, and Corporal Courcey (Craig Wasson), a principled draftee whose naïveté about military conflict fascinates Barker. The soldiers’ tenure in Muc Wa is fraught with unexpected hardships, and it soon becomes clear the village is dead center in the path of a massive North Vietnamese invasion force. Thus, the Army’s entanglement in Muc Wa becomes a metaphor representing America’s involvement in Vietnam—an unwinnable fight against an unstoppable enemy in unfamiliar terrain.

          Were it not for the script’s plentiful jokes, many of which Lancaster delivers with sublime charm, Go Tell the Spartans would feel impossibly schematic and strident. Further, much of the film is TV-sized instead of feature-sized, with director Ted Post obviously inhibited by a tight budget. Happily, interesting performances compensates for the meager production values: In addition to character actors David Clennon, Clyde Kusatsu, James Hong, and Dolph Sweet (all of whom deliver their usual crisp work), supporting players including Goldsmith, Watson, and Marc Singer contribute impassioned portrayals that underscore the film’s theme of war’s terrible human cost.

Go Tell the Spartans: GROOVY

Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

          Full disclosure: My first book was about Dalton Trumbo, the writer-director of Johnny Got His Gun, and in the course of writing the book I became acquainted with Trumbo’s son, who also worked on the picture. Therefore, I’m not completely objective, so some of the virtues I see in Johnny Got His Gun may not be quite as visible to casual viewers. Adapted from Trumbo’s own novel, a legendary antiwar story originally published in 1939, Johnny Got His Gun is an impassioned personal statement about an important theme. That said, the movie is challenging because of problems that stem not only from budgetary limitations but also from Trumbo’s inexperience behind the camera—even though he’d been working in Hollywood since the mid-1930s, Trumbo did not attempt directing until this project, which he made when he was 65. And while it would be heartening to report that Johnny Got His Gun represents one of the great cinematic debuts of all time, it’s more accurate to say that the picture is interesting because of its intentions. It must also be said, of course, that the narrative is not inherently cinematic.

          Set during World War I, the tale concerns an unfortunate Colorado youth named Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms), who suffers horrific battlefield injuries. In the “present day” scenes, Joe is an armless, legless cripple; he also lost his ears, eyes, and mouth. What remains of Joe’s body lies in a French hospital bed, and doctors spend endless amounts of time trying to determine why Joe remains alive. Yet while the doctors believe Joe to be unaware of his circumstances, his mind is still active and his sense of touch allows him to develop a sort of communication—he can respond to taps on his body, and can in turn lift his head back and forth to send Morse code messages. The “present day” scenes are intercut with plaintive flashbacks to the life Joe lost—his relationships with his father, mother, and girlfriend.

          Many previous attempts to film Johnny Got His Gun ran aground, but as he neared the end of his incredibly colorful career, Trumbo decided to adapt the book himself. (Determination was nothing new for Trumbo; he’s the screenwriter credited with breaking Hollywood’s anticommunist blacklist, of which he was an early victim.) Some of Trumbo’s directorial flourishes work better in concept than in practice, like shifting between color, black-and-white, and an intermediary muted color scheme; the device has intellectual heft but little emotional impact. Further, Trumbo’s lack of visual panache exacerbates the claustrophobic nature of the story—a more experienced director could have “opened up” the material without harming the spirit of the piece. The worst shortcoming, however, probably involves Trumbo’s weak attempts to apply a Fellini-esque veneer to certain dream sequences. Yet the underlying story is so powerful, and the key performances are so heartfelt, that Johnny Got His Gun packs a punch.

          Bottoms delivers incredibly sensitive work when performing onscreen in flashbacks and when voicing narration during the “present day” scenes; the psychic pain his character experiences from start to finish is harrowing. Jason Robards brings palpable world-weariness to the role of Joe’s father, and cameo player Donald Sutherland offers a sly interpretation of Jesus during a memorable hallucination scene. To his credit and detriment, Trumbo honored the unrelentingly grim tone of the novel, which means Johnny Got His Gun has integrity to burn but is also a tough picture to sit through. Nonetheless, Johnny Got His Gun is a fittingly idiosyncratic statement from one of the 20th century’s most irrepressible voices.

Johnny Got His Gun: GROOVY

Hearts and Minds (1974)

          Years before Michael Moore started using the documentary form to launch broadside attacks against the political right wing, lefty producer Bert Schneider backed the creation of Hearts and Minds, director Peter Davis’ scalding examination of the Vietnam War from a multiplicity of perspectives. The Academy Award-winning doc is unapologetically polemical, because even though supporters of America’s involvement in Vietnam are given room to speak in the movie, they damn themselves with the ignorance of their statements. For instance, the jaw-dropping climax of the picture features General William Westmoreland, supreme commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, claiming that “life is cheap” to Asians—even as Davis cuts to heartbreaking footage of the funeral for a South Vietnamese soldier. In unforgettable images, the soldier’s young son wails in agony while the soldier’s wife tries to climb into her husband’s grave.

          Obviously, Davis moves far beyond journalism with these types of rhetorical choices, so it’s best to approach Hearts and Minds not as an objective overview of the war but rather as an essential record of why so many people were against the war. Davis makes his points by presenting several distinctive individuals and then juxtaposing their perspectives. The first major player is Lt. George Coker, a clean-cut Jersey boy shown receiving a hero’s welcome after his release from a long internment as a P.O.W. During this opening scene (and elsewhere throughout the movie), Coker echoes Westmoreland’s dehumanizing attitude, referring to enemy combatants as “gooks.” Meanwhile, ex-pilot Capt. Randy Floyd, a wheelchair-bound longhair, openly weeps when trying to imagine how Vietnamese parents must have felt when the napalm bombs he dropped from his plane killed their children.

          Employing montage with great dexterity, Davis forms a collage of archival footage and new material, essentially distilling the debate about the war into an intense 112-minute discourse. On one extreme are former government officials and soldiers who rehash the old “domino theory” justifications; on the other extreme are anguished vets trying to grasp the severity of their deeds and their injuries. In between these extremes are key figures such as Daniel Ellsberg. The famed whistleblower whose illegal release of “The Pentagon Papers” radically changed the American public’s attitude toward the war, Ellsberg methodically explains how his discoveries changed his attitudes. Like many others in the picture, he describes a gradual radicalization informed by mounting evidence that the war was not only unwinnable but fundamentally wrong—a political maneuver rather than a humanitarian intervention.
          One could argue that Davis overreaches during scenes in which he tries to identify the essential characteristics of the American soul that generate warmongering aggression; the merging of a rough high-school football game with a Lyndon Johnson speech about how Americans refuse to lose crosses the line into editorializing. But when Davis’ technique is true—which is the case throughout most of Hearts and Minds—he hits targets with incredible impact. The parade of interviews with physically and psychologically damaged veterans underscores how many young American lives were needlessly ruined by the war, and Davis’ footage of ordinary Vietnamese citizens describing how they ravaged by the war is enough to make any supporter of the conflict feel shameful. It’s probably impossible for contemporary viewers to imagine how powerful this material must have been during its original release, when all of these divisive issues were at the forefront of the national conversation, but Hearts and Minds has lost none of its ability to indict, inform, and infuriate.

Hearts and Minds: RIGHT ON

Young Winston (1972)

          It’s appropriate that the longest sequence in Young Winston takes place during the Boer War, because the movie is a bore. Restrained and respectful in the extreme, this adaptation of a memoir by the revered UK wartime leader Winston Churchill sprawls across 157 lugubrious minutes. Written for the screen and produced by the great Carl Foreman, with Richard Attenborough handling the direction, the film boasts impressive production values but an overly sterile narrative style.
          The most interesting thread of the movie relates to future politician Winston's fraught relationship with his father, forceful Member of Parliament Lord Randolph Churchill (Robert Shaw). During childhood, Winston struggles to earn his aloof father's attention, and during adulthood, Winston seeks revenge against the political establishment that bested his father. This is rich stuff, but Foreman and Attenborough approach the intense family material with the stuffiness of textbook authors. Another thread of the picture involves Winston's relationship with his American-born mother, Lady Churchill (Anne Bancroft). She represents an interesting collision between aggressive and passive impulses, but her complexities remain largely unexplored. The third and final major thread of the story—which gets the most screen time--involves Winston's military career. Alas, the filmmakers can't decide where they stand on Winston's conduct as an officer. Is he a hero willing to risk all for his country and himself (two entities he considers inextricably linked), or is he the glory-hound his detractors criticize him for being? Like so many questions that are raised by Young Winston, this one goes unanswered.

          Foreman integrated many of Churchill's own musings into the script, and those remarks are read in voiceover by star Simon Ward, performing a cartoonish impression of the real Churchill's distinctive speech pattern. Attenborough, who later found his groove as a director of critic-proof dramas about saintly characters—notably Gandhi (1982)—delivers acceptable work during the picture's big-canvas scenes, such as those depicting Winston's battlefield exploits circa the late 19th century and early 20th century. (It helps that the filmmaker shamelessly copies David Lean’s pictorial techniques.) Attenborough's filmmaking doesn't fare as well during close-quarters sequences. For instance, he relies on an ineffective device of filming just one side of long interview scenes while an unseen journalist peppers the interview subject with questions. These scenes drag on forever.

          Not all of Young Winston’s shortcomings should be blamed on Attenborough, however. Leading man Ward (who plays Winston as a young adult) lacks charisma and dynamism, which short-circuits the whole enterprise, and Foreman’s script features excruciating detail about the internecine processes of British government. (Even the long Boer War sequence, which portrays Winston's capture by enemy forces and subsequent daring escape, gets bogged down with narration explaining the political significance of Winston’s situation.) Unsurprisingly, Shaw gives the closest thing the picture has to a full-blooded performance. His appearance climaxes with a poignant scene of Lord Churchill succumbing to mental decay in the midst of a speech. But if the best scene in a two-and-a-half-hour biopic doesn't revolve around the protagonist, that’s a problem.

Young Winston: FUNKY