BATTLE CRY (1955)

From a big whopping bestselling WWII book, a big whopping top-grossing war pic.  Though, as our poster accurately shows, it’s more Fringes of War than combat.*  Men to the side of the main event a 1955 speciality at Warner Brothers where only MISTER ROBERTS (about a Navy supply ship that never gets near the war) made more money that year than this one about a Marine company that trains and trains, but keeps missing the big battles.  Not till the last ten minutes of a two & a half hour pic do they see serious action.  Before then, a few mop-up operations, but mostly on-base interpersonal dynamics between the men, and off-base romance with tarts, tarts-in-hiding, wives with husbands overseas, sad-eyed widows and (via the post) girls back home either pining or signing Dear John letters.  Raoul Walsh, already comfortable in his first try at CinemaScope, gets what’s needed out of a motley cast, even pretends the Marines were integrated at the time, handling the immense scale of the thing without batting an eye.  (Some shots look like the entire Marine Corp was ordered to show up.  No doubt explaining those just integrated units.)  The brief battle, when it does come, is well staged for the period, but ultimately, this is Leon Uris territory, which means mostly obvious character flaws and stiff dialogue.  He’d only do one more screenplay before letting others adapt his doorstop novels.  Standouts include scratchy voice Aldo Ray, losing his cynical attitude toward love, and the alarmingly pretty Tab Hunter falling briefly for an older gal in glasses.  (That’d be Dorothy Malone.  She soon takes the glasses off, but if anything, looks sexier with them on.)  Everyone else holding to the one-dimension Uris gives them.  Then there’s Major Sergeant James Whitmore.  Pulling Voice-Over narration duty, the guy never shuts up.  Even as the battle gets going.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Is this the first Hollywood studio release to show men ‘giving the finger’ on screen?  It’s during a hiking sequence when some jeeps drive by.  ALSO: Some of those soundstage exteriors really stink up the joint in a film with so much fine on-location shooting, courtesy of Sidney Hickox in his last feature film assignment before switching to tv.

DOUBLE-BILL: Two years on, Anthony Mann directed Aldo Ray in a chamber-sized Korean Conflict war story, MEN AT WAR/’57.  It takes a while to find its bearings, but settles down and digs deep into a No-Man’s Land both realistic and abstract/poetic.