When I saw the high user rating I was expecting a better movie. I have always liked Robert Mitchum as an actor but I was disappointed in his lackluster performance. He just seemed to casual throughout, not like an officer with the pressures of leadership in a life and death struggle. Burgess Meredith just didn't project well as a famous war correspondent, almost as if he didn't have his heart in the movie. I gave it a 6/10.
Mountain Man
Perhaps you are mistaking their portrayal of weariness as being lackluster. I'm watching it right now for the first time and under the circumstances being shown I think acting gung ho would ring false. I think I understand what you mean about the pressures of leadership, especially when one considers Damian Lewis' portrayal of Maj. Dick Winters in Band of Brothers. Still, I think this is a gritty, realistic war film, especially when one remembers when it was made.
shareI agree with you.... this movie was made up of a variety of well known actors that were portraying the way the times really were. A number of the characters were played by themselves and basically reliving what they had experienced in this time in their lives.
They were depicting a world-weariness, not casualness. Funny that you should say that, bec. I thought later in Mitchum's career, he overused the 'casual' thing, but in G.I. Joe he played the tired, and even depressed lieutenant (his marriage has fallen apart, he waits in vain for mail) beautifully. And Meredith was perfect as Pyle -- not gung-ho, but sensitive enough to feel for what the guys are going through, and to suffer with them.
Baby, I don't care!
His "lackluster performance" resulted in the only Academy Award nomination he ever received!
shareYeah, I was disappointed too. I had taped it for future watching and when I finally settled down with my popcorn and coke, I found about 1/4 of the way through that i was thoroughly disinterested. There wasn't one character that was worth watching, the story seemed disjointed with some scenes following others without any explanation as to what was going on. I understand the attempt to make it realistic without the gungho stuff, but hey, there has to be some tension somewhere in the film and I found none in this one. Performances were flat (not weary--flat)and the dialog was trite.
I left it somewhere in Italy below the monastery in the rain, when I couldn't figure out whether they were falling back, going forward, digging in or what.
The bottom line is that this film did not show how really exhausted and battle fatigues men react. I mean, really, the scene with Wingless and his fiance was downright stupid. As was the sgts attempt to get the italians to understand he wanted a record player. All he had to do was take the stupid record out of his jacket and show them.
"We're going to need a bigger boat..."
I agree.
(1) Character weariness is not easily confused with actor laziness. The accusation that somehow we're not able to tell the difference is bizarre. It's pretty easy to tell, and in this film, it's actor laziness.
(2) The story, direction, and cinematography all appeared to be just thrown together to make a quick buck on a war film at the end of the war. As one example, Ernie is always returning to Company C, but it's never clear when he leaves Company C. Where is he coming back from? Just sloppy. Another example is when a German is captured, this prisoner just suddenly appears. They don't actually show the capture -- you know, something that might actually wake up the audience from their slumber. Overall, it's just a pointless collection of random scenes.
(3) The characters remind me a bit of HBO's "The Pacific". There's too many. They're interchangeable and forgettable. But at least in "The Pacific", there are a handful you can identify and almost care about their story. Not so with this one.
(4) The battle scenes simply didn't look realistic to me.
(5) Some of the behavior was just out of place, and no explanation was given.
For example, if I'm being asked to retreat, and I'm the last guy around, I wouldn't slowly saunter about the place looking at a dead body. I'd get out of there. If the film is supposed to be telling me something about this behavior, then the cinematographer should have done a much better job of getting that message clearly across.
(6) A kid saying "Hello daddy" does not sound like an adult woman making baby talk "Hewwo daddy".
5/10. And that's generous.
I'm somewhere in between the expressed opinions here. I found several scenes to be touching and thought-provoking, especially towards the end, and the film was certainly quite realistic for its time (or for being Hollywood). However, I do agree that some scenes either didn't make sense, or were explained unsatisfactory. What truly "did" this movie to me was the excellent performance of Robert Mitchum.
shareI have to agree with rspear61 about the phonograph scene...all I could do was plead with him through the TV to take out the stupid record and show it to them. I mean, the character himself struck me as not too bright, but still.
And I have to agree with those of you who found the continuity frustrating. The transition between scenes felt like reading a book that is a collection of someone's individual memories, where each chapter was just a personal anecdote and not a continuous narrative. That approach can work very well for a book (i.e. Dispatches, Michael Herr) but in a movie there needs to be some sort of segue that links these visual acts together ( again, as far as Dispatches goes, a good deal of Apocalypse Now is based on that book...and in that movie, the river journey provides the thread that ties all of these disparate scenes together), and again, like some of you expressed, it needed to expose more of what took place behind the scenes - where exactly DID they get the German prisoner? It seemed so easy to just go out and grab one, you might as well just go round them all up and be done with it.
A noble effort perhaps, in that it did not glorify war, but IMO needed polishing.
The "segue" is Ernie Pyle, who won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism by by publishing his vignettes of ordinary individuals in extraordinary circumstances (ie "Brave Men"). By slogging along with the infantry, he would come in and out of the stories, capturing the vital focus, the way he did in this remarkable film. If we were to get the background details on every story, both his writings and the film would be interminable.
It appears that the movie was made from Ernie Pyle's newspaper columns. That would explain the disjointed nature and lack of background information. If Pyle was stuck in base camp and his subjects were out in the field, he would have little knowledge of what was going on. Besides, his writing was supposed to focus on the experiences of the soldiers, not be a step-by-step narrative of combat operations in that theatre of war.
shareSaw this movie for the first time on TCM tonite, Memorial Day Weekend. When Bill Osborn said Pres. Eisenhower said it was the finest war movie ever made, (plus my husband had some affiliation in his college years with a social group named after Pyle) I eagerly anticipated it...but I, too, was disappointed:(( Did not get a sense of who Pyle actually was via Meredith's acting...just seemed to be more a social gadfly than anything else. And even the wonderful Mitchum was...ehhhh. This was the best war movie? Well, war stinks but too bad Eisenhower never got to see Full Metal Jacket!
share
I never read where Eisenhower thought this was the best war movie. He obviously did not see Twelve O'Clock High. Or even Battleground, which wasn't great, but was much better than this.
For me Twelve O'Clock High stands as one of the best all time war movies ever made and that is comparing it with FMJ, BoB and SPR.
"We're going to need a bigger boat..."
"war stinks but too bad Eisenhower never got to see Full Metal Jacket!."
Which did stink.
This movie was great.
"war stinks but too bad Eisenhower never got to see Full Metal Jacket!."
Which did stink.
This movie was great.
"Social gadfly"? Ernie Pyle won a Pulitzer Prize (quite deservedly so) by relating the stories of the infantry as he lived and moved with them through the camps and battlefields. He lost his life doing so.
shareBy the way, the host of Turner Classic Movies is Robert Osborn, not Bill Osborn.
shareI can't believe some of the comments I've seen on this thread. Is there that much of a difference between today's Americans and those of 1945?
Lackluster performance? How do you think an officer is supposed to behave in the field? Separate and unconcerned about his men? I would shoot an officer like that. This was Robert Mitchum's only Oscar nomination. And it was a realistic portrayal of Ernie Pyle's involvement with the dog-face infantry--common, ordinary citizens before the war. Pyle won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism for that involvement with those guys.
What didn't you get? Were there no exploding cars? Not enough blood? Wasn't there enough day-to-day misery, heroism, and suffering portrayed? Didn't you understand how common, ordinary citizens were made into soldiers and placed in harm's way and suffered, with no expectation that they would get out of it alive?
Tell me what you didn't get.
I can't believe some of the comments I've seen on this thread. Is there that much of a difference between today's Americans and those of 1945?