Battle Hymn (1957)

This is the apparently true story of Colonel Dean Hess as the upright clergyman turned fighter pilot . After accidentally bombing , during WWII , an orphange as a fighter pilot a Col. , Rock Hudson, becomes a God minister . Problem is , he is plagued with guilt and wishes a real redemption . Later on , he leaves his pregnant wife , Martha Hyer, and returns to the Air Force in 1950 to train Korean pilots in Seoul ; there he meets a motley bunch , such as the army sergeant companion , Dan Duryea in a rare likeable character , the officers Don DeFore , Jock Mahoney , the sympathetic cook Alan Hale Jr and the African-American James Edwards , among others . Then , at the quarters show up a group of 37 orphaned children wanting shelter from Commie attacks and bombings .Along the way Hess winds up building a home for the local orphans . This is a true story in which the real Hess served as technical advisor . Pure sentimental slop , it is a stirring and sometimes moving tale , accompanying some spectacular aerial scenes and impressive dog-fighting . Main cast is pretty well . As Rock Hudson gives an acceptable acting as a chaplain whose wartime bravery earns him a string of honours ; however, he suffers strong remorses . This is Hudson's third modern-day adventure in the East , the others were : Spiral road and Thunder of God . Rock was Sirk's fetish including important titles as Taza , Magnificent obsession , Written in the wind , among others . His wife is well played by the attractive Martha Hyer and Anna Kashfi, Marlon Brando's spouse , plays the oriental girl who helps and falls for him . Magnificent support cast with plenty of notorious secondaries such as the usually veteran bad man Dan Duryea , Don DeFore , Jock Mahoney , Richard Loo , Carl Benton Reid , Alan Hale Jr , and Philip Ahn as the old man philosopher . It contains a colorful cinematography in Technicolor by Russell Metty, though a perfect remastering being extremely necessary . Sensitive musical score including oriental sounds and choral music by Frank Skinner. The motion picture was well directed by Douglas Sirk . He was a fundamental filmmaker who gave prestigious movies , usually collaborating with similar technicians as cameraman Russell Metty , Production Designer Alexander Golitzen , Producer Ross Hunter and writer George Zuckerman . Sirk directed a lot of classic melodramas such as : Never say goobye , Interlude , Summerstorm , The first legion , The lady pays off , Tarnished Angels , A time to love a time to die , Magnificent obsession , All that heaven allows , Written in the Wind . But he also directed other genres as WWII : Mystery submarine , Hitler's madmen ; Thrillers and Film Noir : Shockproof , Thunder on the hill , A scandal in Paris , Lured ; Historical : Attila with Jack Palance ; Adventures : Thunderbolt and Lightfoot with Hudson and Barbara Rush ; and even a Western : Taza , again with Rock Hudson.

When the film begins, you see a flashback of Dean Hess (Rock Hudson) as a pilot during WWII. By mistake, a bomb falls off his P-51 and hits an orphanage. He's haunted by this and this might explain why he became a minister after the war. However, he's still haunted by this mistake and when the Korean War breaks out, he volunteers to serve. His job is setting up an airbase for the South Korean Air Force, although much of his energy ends up being spent helping the many orphans displaced by the war. In some ways, the film reminded me of the story "Lord Jim"--a guy makes a mistake and spends his life trying his best to do good and somehow atone for his past. It makes for an interesting film and Rock Hudson is just fine in the lead. Worth seeing and very well made.

Beyond Rock Hudson being, quite possibly, the perfect movie star- handsome movie star and P-51 Mustangs, there's pretty much nothing to recommend here. Battle Hymn doesn't know what it wants to be--a war movie, a testament to the healing power of Christianity, or a vanilla-ized biopic of a fighter pilot turned minister.Here's a pretty easy rule to understand: If you try to be a bunch of things at once, you'll probably fail at all of them.Battle Hymn is so completely bland in its treatment of USAF Colonel Dean Hess' search for how to jibe being a minister with being a warrior that about all you can really hang on to are the cute Korean kids milling and jabbering about and those incredible Mustangs. I saw Battle Hymn as a kid on TV. Once again, age has not been kind to a movie I liked (or in this case, sort of liked) way back when.Skip it.

Douglas Sirk's career at Universal throughout the fifties was a constant battle. It was a battle to make quality movies despite the often dire screenplays and less than talented casts he often had to put up with. Miraculously he most often was victorious despite the odds. "Battle Hymn" was one of his defeats. It remains his least likable film.In his book "Sirk on Sirk" Michael Halliday sheds some light on this. Sirk had broken his leg badly and had to direct from a wheelchair which severely limited him. But the main reason for this somewhat heavy handed film was the presence of Dean Hess on the set and his overseeing each scene.The film is a biography of Dean Hess himself. A man who turns to the church after the trauma of bombing a German orphanage and killing 37 children, Hess leaves his position of preacher in small town Ohio and volunteers for service in Korea. It's an odd choice for a man of his past, but "Killer Hess" as he was known, gets the opportunity to save Korean orphans in the process, putting to sleep his inner demons and putting things right in the world.Sirk was very put off by Hess' presence on the set and more so by his input. He was clearly a man of much ambiguity, something that fascinated Sirk. Yet Sirk was unable to really express this in meaningful way on the screen. He wanted to give Hess a drinking problem as a way of expressing his pain, but Hess would hear nothing of it. He clearly wanted to be portrayed as a holier than though hero. The result is that the film has an awful self congratulatory feel about it.Sirk was fascinated by characters who conceal within themselves a deep conflict. To him these were the most interesting of all. In all the movies Sirk made with Rock Hudson, he always cast him as the stabling influence and a foil to those unstable characters around him. Robert Stack in both "Written on the Wind" and "Tarnished Angels" is a perfect example of a split character playing against Hudson as the basically good, well grounded opposite. It's of course extremely ironic since in real life Rock Hudson was surely terribly conflicted by his concealed homosexuality while idolised by the masses as a model of masculine heterosexuality. Perhaps that is part of Sirk's affinity for him. Yet Sirk felt that Hudson's simplicity and basic goodness were suited to playing uncomplicated characters. "Battle Hymn" is the only film in which Sirk cast Hudson as a conflicted character. Had his character been better written there may have been a chance to pull it off. But as it stands, it's a competent and respectable performance, but something of a missed opportunity for Hudson.The rest of the cast acquit themselves well. Anna Kashfi is particularly effective with her ethereal presence. James Edwards deserves a mention, since his role as a black fighter pilot was certainly ground breaking for its time.There are however some really cringe inducing moments such as the aforementioned James Edwards breaking into "Swing Low" after an air raid and the final scene of the Korean orphans singing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" for Hess as he returns to Korea with his wife. These moments are meant to be uplifting, but seem now to be in somewhat poor taste.The Korean children in the film were actually Korean orphans and they are a delight. Sirk had great affinity with young children who in turn gave memorable performances in his movies.But when all is said and done, "Battle Hymn" is a film best forgotten, unlike his other war film, the remarkable "A Time to Love and a Time to Die" which he would soon make.