The Proud and Profane (1956)

William holden was perfect for the role....totally insensitive to everyone, probably a lot like his real life...i enjoyed watching the dirty rat destroy the life of a vulnerable beautiful woman...yes a bullying coward done to perfection

In an attempt to reprise her Academy-Award nominated performance in From Here to Eternity, Deborah Kerr donned a short blonde hairdo and played a soldier's widow assigned to a tropical setting in the Pacific to help soldiers in WW2 in the film The Proud and the Profane. She's very prim and proper, just as she was before succumbing to Burt Lancaster's charms in 1953, but this time around, she goes head-to-head with a stern, mustached William Holden. Given their leading lady and similar settings, it's awfully hard not to compare the two films, and From Here to Eternity is much better. I don't really like William Holden anyway, and in this unlikable role, I found him even more difficult to endure. Thelma Ritter plays a volunteer nurse, and she's exactly the same as she is in every movie: cold, rude, argumentative, and abrasive. I tried to separate her performance from the written words of her character to see which I found objectionable, and as usual, Thelma Ritter's acting was the problem. Another actress could have put a touch of warmth and compassion in the role, and if she had, the underlying emotion would have added a wonderful layer to her character. Deborah Kerr seems to be the only one who tried to act in the film, and while she does do a good job, the story falls short of From Here to Eternity and South Pacific. If you like Deborah Kerr, or classic WW2 movies and you've already seen all the good ones, go ahead and rent The Proud and the Profane. It probably won't end up being your favorite, but not every movie you see has to be excellent, right?

There's no question about Deboarah Kerr's beauty. It has an ethereal quality, as if she weren't made of flesh at all but wisps of rose-scented smoke. Her appearance is enhanced by a certain wistful quality. Her voice has a mild but constant tentative tremor, even when she's P'd off.But Noumea and Guadalcanal in 1943 is no place for a girl like this. She's enlisted and comes to Noumea in search of someone who knew the circumstances of her husband's death, killed on Guadalcanal. He was and officer with an elite group of paratroopers in the Marines. (They're never buck privates.) Yet no one seems to remember him. And here she is, at the primitive but combat-free base on Noumea, impelled to greet the wounded debarking from a ship from Guadalcanal. She feels helpless. What can she do -- offer a stick of gum to a soldier who has just had an arm amputated? And at her first encounter with a victim of combat fatigue, she runs off and pukes.The driving force behind Kerr is Thelma Ritter as the seasoned veteran, nurse, guru, mentor, wisecracking New Yorker. Every scene she's in belongs to her.But -- cherchez l'homme. William Holden is some kind of commanding officer with the returning troops. The first shot of him, with military mustache, shows us a stern, frowning, hard charger holding a swagger stick. And we know this is one highly principled and dedicated Marine officer. We know he's tough and has little room for romance. We know, too, that there will be romance anyway because William Holden is a star and so is Deborah Kerr.It helps to know that the story is from a novel by Lucy Herndon Crockett. We can anticipate almost everything that takes place -- the growing attraction, the doubt, the open conflict of sensibilities, the tears, the resolution. Not just because Lucy Herndon Crockett is a woman novelist but because she has three names. And, after all, if the delicate Deborah Kerr could turn into a slut at the first whiff of Burt Lancaster's pheromones three years earlier in "From Here to Eternity", why not do it again? Holden strides purposefully down the gangway and Thelma Ritter stops him, asking "Colonel, is there anything more we can do for your boys." He brusquely replies, "Yes, don't call them boys and leave them alone." Then he marches away without another word.Not for long though. After the usual preliminaries, Kerr finds herself preggers and when she tells Holden, he accidentally knocks her down and the baby is lost. He's disturbed. She's almost destroyed. She won't forgive him. He humbles himself. She forgives him.Not much new here but it's enjoyable to see the stereotypes animated again: horsey, aristocratic, haughty woman; part-Indian slum kid who advances through the Marine stratosphere because of hate. Both of them too full of pride because they've been hurt, but both come together at the end as the love theme swells in the background and the image of Kerr's face, radiant with hope, fades and we see the Paramount Studios mountain.

During WWII, a Red Cross volunteer comes to the South Pacific seeking information about the death of her soldier husband. Kerr is fine as the lonely woman struggling to cope with her loss. This is a strange role for Holden, who usually played characters with integrity. Although the actor is always worth watching, here his character is basically a dishonest heel. It's hard to believe that someone like Kerr, no matter how vulnerable, falls in love with him. Not surprisingly, Ritter steals the film as a tough but caring nurse. The screenplay and direction by Seaton, who worked with Holden on four films, is nothing special, but it's not bad either. The scenery is nice.