A Walk in the Sun (1945)
Country: US
Technical: bw 117m
Director: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Sterling Holloway, John Ireland
Synopsis:
A platoon of soldiers makes a night beach landing and spends the day marching towards its first important action.
Review:
Undeniably memorable and justifiably celebrated though it is, this self-consciously stylised war film spends much of its length establishing a feeling of universality in its portrait of streetwise but inexperienced GIs, only to destroy it with a last-minute shift into propaganda gear: they are soldiers of freedom fighting a war of necessity. Oh, excuse me, I thought we were watching an anti-war film here? Anyway, if you can take the preachiness, there is much to appreciate: the direction, with some great in-depth compositions and tracking shots during action scenes; and the poeticised dialogue by Robert Rossen is something else, what with the Conte/Tyne double act and lines like 'Butt me!', 'Nobody Dies' and Norman Lloyd's 'You guys kill me, you really kill me.' An undoubted classic of the genre.
Country: US
Technical: bw 117m
Director: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Sterling Holloway, John Ireland
Synopsis:
A platoon of soldiers makes a night beach landing and spends the day marching towards its first important action.
Review:
Undeniably memorable and justifiably celebrated though it is, this self-consciously stylised war film spends much of its length establishing a feeling of universality in its portrait of streetwise but inexperienced GIs, only to destroy it with a last-minute shift into propaganda gear: they are soldiers of freedom fighting a war of necessity. Oh, excuse me, I thought we were watching an anti-war film here? Anyway, if you can take the preachiness, there is much to appreciate: the direction, with some great in-depth compositions and tracking shots during action scenes; and the poeticised dialogue by Robert Rossen is something else, what with the Conte/Tyne double act and lines like 'Butt me!', 'Nobody Dies' and Norman Lloyd's 'You guys kill me, you really kill me.' An undoubted classic of the genre.
Country: US
Technical: bw 117m
Director: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Sterling Holloway, John Ireland
Synopsis:
A platoon of soldiers makes a night beach landing and spends the day marching towards its first important action.
Review:
Undeniably memorable and justifiably celebrated though it is, this self-consciously stylised war film spends much of its length establishing a feeling of universality in its portrait of streetwise but inexperienced GIs, only to destroy it with a last-minute shift into propaganda gear: they are soldiers of freedom fighting a war of necessity. Oh, excuse me, I thought we were watching an anti-war film here? Anyway, if you can take the preachiness, there is much to appreciate: the direction, with some great in-depth compositions and tracking shots during action scenes; and the poeticised dialogue by Robert Rossen is something else, what with the Conte/Tyne double act and lines like 'Butt me!', 'Nobody Dies' and Norman Lloyd's 'You guys kill me, you really kill me.' An undoubted classic of the genre.