While I liked this movie, it has a gripping story and the actors do a great job, it still came across as kind of a low budget movie. Not great special effects, even for the year it was made, and parts of the jungle set looked fake. All the actors did a great job, but the script isn't really that well written. Still, it is worth watching.
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It's a tough universe...If you're going to survive, you've really got to know where your towel is.
Yes, I agree. The set is very much a "set" and not a real jungle. Of course, at the time of filming (1943) most of the places where you could film a jungle scene were actually under the flag of the Empire of Nippon. :D
shareYes it's low budget, but at the same time you have to hold it to a different standard as it is a war-time film. At first I was annoyed by the fake plane, but you must consider that aviation fuel can't be wasted on movies at a time of war. You can't just borrow a bunch of tanks and extra men from the army. You see similar fake plane cuts in Casablanca, another war time movie. My only advice is not to think of this as a cheap movie, but how does it fit into war-time culture in which the Phillipines were a defeat and no one knew how the Pacific war would pan out yet.
shareI actually liked the fake, studio jungle. It gave everything a claustrophobic feel, which to enhance the feeling of surrounding, ever-encroaching doom.
shareVery true! I didn't mean to say low budget as a negative, but more that studio limitations due to the fact that the movie was made during WWII, is almost a special quality unique to movies like Bataan! and Casablanca.
I, too, found the obvious fake surroundings to add to the foreboding atmosphere. Sorta like a Universal horror film.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
I found the set to be clearly distracting, and quite cheap looking. Go on location for 2 weeks, use the back lot with a few fake plants and call it good.
This is NOT a current mindset. People noticed at the time
NYT review, June 4, 1943
Perhaps the world will never know the whole story of the heroic defense of Bataan—of sick men who died fighting in foxholes with not a survivor to tell how they died, of brave deeds and noble sacrifices performed where no friendly eye could/see. Perhaps the full record of that ordeal is already lost in the silences of time. But, for all the limitations of a studio and the general tendency of Hollywood to cheat a bit, a surprisingly credible conception of what that terrible experience must have been for some of the men who endured it—the grim attrition of body and mind—is inexorably presented by Metro in a harrowing picture tersely titled "Bataan."
The review listed on Amazon (which I doubt is that recent) says:
Bataan was made at MGM, and the principal setting, a jungle clearing overlooking a strategic bridge, stinks of the soundstage.
And no reference, but the Trivia section here says:
"The film was criticized for being too studio-bound."
Sure, it's a good movie, and I like it more than most reviewers, and have no other real complaints about it, but the look is a killer. One of the few I'd like to see remade. I think a shot for shot remake, kept realistic, could be a great film but wouldn't happen due to the one-sided nature of the presentation and we now like the Japanese.
Haste makes waste ... they needed propaganda fast so they cranked it out ASAP ... now we look back and see a really crappy film. I have seen live theater with better sets than this!
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