A Walk in the Sun (1945)

Produced and directed by Lewis Milestone with loads of money secretly provided by Samuel Bronston (and now available on a mysterious but excellent DVD with no manufacturer credit whatever), A Walk in the Sun seems less realistic today than when first released back in 1945. It is too glib. True, a big effort has been made to portray all the miniature details of this spectacular raid on a remote but well-armed Italian farm house that stands in the way of an allied advance, but that is just the problem. Too much is crowded into the script, and the players, by and large, don't come across as real infantrymen, but as actors vigorously playing at real infantrymen. True there are exceptions and one of them fortunately is Dana (pronounced "Deena") Andrews. Another is Lloyd Bridges. And yet another is Huntz Hall – of all people – who plays his brief scene in a surprisingly realistic manner. All told though - and take it from one who served in the army for over 3 years - this movie is not really all that realistic, but it sure puts on a good front!

It's 1943 Italy. A group of American soldiers land on a beach near Salerno. The men dig in but their CO has been killed. As they move inland, they are tasked with blowing up a bridge.The problem with all the talking is that they are indistinguishable from one another. I had a tough time trying to lock in on some of the characters. Maybe back in the day, people recognize some of these faces. Without knowing who these characters are, it is a bunch of random soldiers talking. The night shoots are also very dark which only adds to the confusion. One of the soldiers almost falls asleep waiting around and that's kind of how I felt. It's a lot of random talk punctuated by some random action. Action can happen off-screen and some can be brutal. It's suppose to show the fog of war and the mundane of a soldier's existence. It's meandering without the tension. While I appreciate the attempt, it doesn't make for a compelling movie. It would be so much better if I know who these soldiers are.

If IMDb is to be believed this movie was released in December, 1945, some seven or eight months after the War In Europe ended so that in one way any anti-war message built into it was superfluous. Director Lewis Milestone who was, in fact, a fine all-rounder with a long career, will always be closely associated with All Quiet On The Western Front which dealt with the futility of war albeit World War One so it was perhaps natural that he repeat the lesson with World War Two. This movie is notable for its matter of fact acceptance of war as a natural recurring phenomena and one that makes little or no attempt to either glamorize war or paint a horrific picture of it. The main thrust is the six-mile trek by one platoon from a beachhead in Salerno inland to the farmhouse that they have been assigned to take and hold. En route we meet and get to know the typical Hollywood 'bomber crew' cross section of personnel with very little actual combat until the last couple of reels when they do, in fact, attain their objective. Certainly worth a look.

A Walk in the Sun (1945)The first third of this film is amazing. It' remarkably disturbing and dark, about a bunch of soldiers landing at night in Italy, World War II. The sun does eventually rise, but it's an eerie and claustrophobic and surprisingly gentle twenty minutes. The cast is really perfect, without any overly macho guys, just some ordinary men with feelings, feelings for life, for each other little by little, and for a kind of fatalistic fear that turns into acceptance at times, until events force them into action.Once toward halfway, the movie becomes a more conventional, a large rambling group of foot soldiers a bit lost as to what to do as they walk along, in the sun, in Italy. They talk without a lot of open fear, including a bit of chitchat even as they confront enemies of one kind or another. There is an air of ordinary resignation through it all, as if the movie makers knew the audience could only handle a kid gloves kind of truth about the war, which was still raging when it was released. Even though there is an inevitable sense that the Americans were winning (they were landing in Italy, not being pushed off to sea), there is also the sense that these really nice guys might die, suddenly, because of events beyond their control.By the final third a military objective clarifies, a small one, but a potentially deadly one. When it plays out, it's more about war, and winning. The enemy is never shown, and the brutality is limited to the last two minutes, but it's a devastating two minutes, and probably too difficult for audiences to watch at the time while the war was going on. Though filming was finished in January 1945, the film wasn't released officially until December, with six months of peace already healing some of the wounds, and didn't see wide release until the following year, long after war films had stopped being made. Director Milestone did get Army approval for the film in 1945, and it does seem accurate in its awfulness, even now. It's right before the climax that the film returns to it extraordinary, inner conscience, following Dana Andrews crawling though the weeds to the farmhouse they intend to overtake. How long would it take to crawl around the world? A hundred years? A thousand years?For the best this film has, it's essential, a major piece of war filmmaking.