Patrick Murtha
Practically Family
- Messages
- 651
- Location
- Wisconsin
My two favorite World War II films were made during the war: John Ford's They Were Expendable (1945), with John Wayne and Robert Montgomery, and Lewis Milestone's A Walk in the Sun (1945), with Dana Andrews. One reason I like these is that they are contemporary, so that there is no self-conscious postwar myth-making, no "greatest generation" crap (and I'm choosing that noun carefully). They Were Expendable, though it contains exciting and authentic action sequences, is ultimately quite downbeat (as the title suggests), and the final images of men abandoned to their fate are both terrifying and poetic. A Walk in the Sun achieves its own poetry by digging into the minutiae of soldiers' experience; the film, based on a distinguished novel by Harry Brown, is beautifully realistic and non-triumphalist.
I haven't yet seen William Wellman's Story of G.I. Joe (1945), but I understand it is in the same class.
I haven't yet seen William Wellman's Story of G.I. Joe (1945), but I understand it is in the same class.