WAKE ISLAND (1942)

Fairly standard WWII action from Paramount (a mid-list item with featured players but no major stars), out within months of the real events (on tiny Wake Island, a Marine unit, some Navy flyers and civilian construction workers, held off wave after wave of Japanese flotilla attacks), was a surprise Best Pic Oscar® nominee, probably because of timing.  Most war films beginning production before the Battle of Midway victory, tended to accent the positive and eliminate the negative; heavy on recruitment messaging, morale boosting and unlikely comedy angles.  Only when news from the front(s) improved did the films toughen up.  WAKE an exception.  Downbeat and tragic, a sort of 300 Spartans story of front line sacrifice, hence the Best Pic nod.  (Not that it won, that would be the redoubtable uplift of MRS. MINIVER.)  Journeyman director John Farrow (Mia’s dad) gets good results from all, though 23-yr-old Robert Preston & William Bendix lay it on pretty thick as comic relief grunts always getting into trouble, but Brian Donlevy and Walter Abel are briskly fatalistic as commanders fully aware of the inevitable, so too underrated MacDonald Carey in an airborne sacrifice, even Albert Dekker goes from ‘me-first’ civilian contractor to fatalistic hero with an automatic gun.  1940s F/X has the usual trouble with scale model ships at sea, but most of the tricks hold up pretty well.  And the cinematography from Theodor Sparkuhl & William C. Mellor, with stunning low-key lit interiors and red filters on location exteriors (those dramatic clouds!), award-worthy any time.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  One year later, even M-G-M figured it was commercially safe to give downbeat victory-thru-defeat heroism to Robert Taylor with  BATAAN/’43.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/bataan-1943.html