The Purple Heart (1944)

First, let me start by saying that I was ten years old when this film was made. I knew nothing of the war. In retrospect, I have some confusion and a touch of anger when reading some of todays reviews. Most war films offer a message to make their point. Films such as Platoon,numerous Vietnam epics, Korean War films such as Pork Chop Hill.and The Steel Helmet all deliver messages in fine fashion.As a lad of eighteen, I was influenced by Sands of Iwo Jima to join the Marine Corps.Im sure it had the same effect on a lot of other teen agers. Now to The Purple Heart. Made during the war years. it tells of a bomber crew downed in China after a raid on Tokyo. Dana Andrews is the stalwart Captain who delivers the Message at the trials conclusion. As they march out to their doom, strains of Wild Blue Yonder swell in the background. Sure its propaganda, but things like that were needed during the war years. The cast, including Richard Loo as a Japanese General are uniformaly excellent.Under Lewis Milestones direction, this movie becomes a minor classic. To those who nit pick about the errors in these films, take a break! Enjoy them as a vital part of history. Many of them served a purpose and served them well.

Filmed in 1944 this movie has all the hallmarks of a jingoistic propaganda movie for the home front that was getting weary of the war. The racism and stereotyping is hardly subtle. A crew of a downed plane from the Doolitlle raid (the first attack on Japanese soil by the Yanks, all done to show the Japanese they were vulnerable) is put on trial for war crimes. They are tortured to reveal from where their raid originated. The Japanese Army wanted to humiliate the navy for allowing the raid (which came off American air craft carriers) and the men are pawns in the in fighting.The airmen are individually tortured off screen, and returned to their cells, all showing damage from the ordeal. Who will break? As this is a propaganda vehicle I'll leave you to guess if any of them do. In the end Dana Andrews gets to make a "we're coming to get you, you bastards" speech on the witness stand and the men are marched off to their doom.The acting is fine if overwrought. The script is clogged with "home sweet home" memories. Poems are recited, and battle hymns sung, and it's all too cloyingly ludicrous in 2007, or post 1970 for that matter. But I'm sure it left no dry eye in the audience, and it must have swelled the recruiting stations.Interesting is the fact that the crew is accused of bombing civilian targets. As if! No red blooded American would do that! Well we did. Not in this raid, but later in 1944-45. In addition to the 2 nukes we dropped we systematically, deliberately bombed major cities, causing fire storms and killing off 3/4 of a million Japanese civilians. As McNamara famously quotes General Le May, in "The fog of war": "if we lose we'll be tried as war criminals." We won, and the Americans marched on to the moral high ground!

From the beginning I was impressed with Lewis Milestone's direction. The film opens in a darkened courtroom (although the emblem of the rising sun can be discerned on the far wall). A man in uniform enters and switches on the lights. Another man enters with a pitcher of water and begins preparing for the ritual of the judges' entrance. The first man begins opening the window blinds. This leisurely accumulation of detail gives these moments a documentary feel that lends verisimilitude to the events that follow. Even when the American heroes respond to their captors with caustic patriotic speeches, there's still an aura of realism that makes it hard to classify this movie along with the cruder propaganda efforts of the times.

The Purple Heart was a very good movie for the times. The people who brand it "sappy" and "propagandistic", or the brain dead person who chortles about "patriotic lunkheads" enlisting in the armed forces because of this movie were not alive during that period. They know nothing about the horror of total war. The survival of this nation was in doubt, and men were dying or being captured by sadistic Japanese who murdered them while in captivity. Every parent dreaded the telegram delivery boy, thinking what it might mean. Ever heard of the Bataan Death March? This movie was a fact based story about captured Americans from the Doolittle raid, in which several American Airmen were tried as War Criminals, and some of them were executed. Such a show trial was not repeated, but it showed the beastiality of the Bushido warriors. Japan should hang it's head in shame. The performances were dead right for war time, and Dana Andrews was superb, there were few cliches, it was mostly truth. Mr Bartalotti was right, there was a great deal in a short time. A True achievement. For the silly few who worry about propaganda, remember we were at war, and remember Pearl Harbor.