MEMORIAL DAY MARATHON
Memorial Day Weekend | 23 Films
TCM’s 2023 Memorial Day marathon has a type of war movie for everyone. In addition to examples of what “war movie” usually brings to mind—a traditional combat drama set on the ground, in the air or at sea—there are plenty of titles that fall into other categories: three comedies (such as No Time For Sergeants, 1958), a caper film (Kelly’s Heroes, 1970), a light adventure (Desperate Journey, 1942), a home-front thriller (The Fallen Sparrow, 1943), short and long documentaries (1941’s The Tanks are Coming; 1945’s Appointment in Tokyo), British combat films (such as In Which We Serve, 1942), a biopic (The Wings of Eagles, 1957), and a silent film spectacle (Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1921). In addition to the numerous World War II tales, there are three movies set during World War I (such as Ace of Aces, 1933), five during Korea (such as Pork Chop Hill, 1959), one during Vietnam (Coming Home, 1978) and even one during the violent civil unrest of early-1960s Congo (Dark of the Sun, 1968).
All the same, the archetypal Hollywood war movie remains the dramatic combat film, which started to come into being as a full-fledged genre after the United States entered World War II in December 1941. While there had been plenty of war movies prior to that time depicting combat, Hollywood was now galvanized to turn them out in much greater numbers. This prompted filmmakers to assemble elements of World War I films, military training stories and service comedies of the previous decade and gradually reshape them into new dynamics of story and character for this new conflict and era (as well for the personas of new and established movie stars). As film scholar Jeanine Basinger wrote in her book “The World War II Combat Film,” combat stories settled on various narrative ingredients that audiences came to expect, primarily a distinct hero, group and objective. Typically the group, such as a platoon or squad, was comprised of a cross section of Americans—usually including a guy from Brooklyn and rarely including African Americans, as the armed forces did not integrate until after World War II.
Four of the most significant combat films made soon after the genre had fully formed itself are included in this marathon: Objective, Burma! (1945), The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), They Were Expendable (1945) and A Walk in the Sun (1945). All were filmed during the war, though only Objective, Burma!, a January 1945 release, opened while the war was still raging. All four were well-received and conjured a satisfying tension in their blending of exciting action scenes with increasing sadness over the human toll of war. Gone was the pure jingoism of many earlier war movies designed to buck up the nation; a level of darkness was now starting to infuse the genre.
Objective, Burma! is a sort of microcosm of that very shift. For much of the story it does have a propagandistic tone and flagrantly depicts the enemy as barbaric, but after the success of the paratroopers’ mission behind enemy lines midway through the story, getting home becomes problematic and the second half of the film grows more pessimistic. With Raoul Walsh directing, Objective, Burma! is a marvel of expertly crafted action sequences, and it moves like wildfire over its 142-minute running time, with Errol Flynn well cast as the noble group leader. The movie is loosely based on the special operations unit known as Merrill’s Marauders (named for U.S. General Frank Merrill), though the film to this day draws controversy in the U.K. for being “Americanized,” since there were actually many British troops serving in Burma and the Allied characters here are all American. This theater of the war would also form the basis of Merrill’s Marauders (1962), directed by Samuel Fuller and also showing in this movie marathon.
The Story of G.I. Joe, directed by William Wellman, is based on the newspaper columns of the real-life, beloved war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who embedded with troops in both the European and Pacific theaters and captured the lives of ordinary soldiers in humanizing, down-to-earth reports. Pyle is well played by Burgess Meredith, and as the title implies, the movie succeeds in creating a vivid impression of day-to-day life among troops in combat. As Jeanine Basinger wrote, “The Story of G.I. Joe has the power to take one completely out of the excitement of war, and down into the muck and mud and the human misery. In doing so, it creates a kind of myth and mystery about the experience.” Pyle was killed in combat on a Pacific island on April 18, 1945, an event that shocked a nation of readers who felt like they knew him. President Truman saluted him by proclaiming, “No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told.”
They Were Expendable, one of the most thoughtful, mournful and beautiful of all World War II combat films, also had a screenplay based on a real person: Lt. John Bulkeley, who was a close friend of John Ford, this movie’s director. Bulkeley was renamed John Brickley for the film and played by Robert Montgomery. As the leader of the Navy’s new PT Boat squadron in 1941, Brickley, along with his executive officer played by John Wayne, is desperate to prove to the Navy brass that the small boats are valid, worthy equipment. But the Naval commanders are only mildly impressed, and after Pearl Harbor the squadron is relegated to messenger duty in the Philippines. Eventually they get a few shots at real combat, picking off Japanese shipping, but the reality of the oncoming Japanese force starts to overwhelm the entire American presence on the islands, and the PT boats’ importance fades in the eyes of the Navy. A respite from the business of war comes in the form of a touching, believable romance between Wayne and Donna Reed, who plays an Army nurse.
But as its bleak title implies, They Were Expendable is largely about loss and death, with the characters’ sense of duty and dignity lending quiet heroism. The film also illustrates the daunting pressures and loneliness of wartime leadership, especially in its depiction of Brickley. Robert Montgomery, who gives one of his finest performances and even directed a few scenes when Ford fell ill, had served with distinction as an actual PT boat commander in the Pacific. Director Ford is credited as “John Ford, Captain U.S.N.R.,” as he had served in the Field Photographic Branch of the OSS during WWII and directed some famous war documentaries. Several other names in the credits also appear with their military ranks, and the entire production has a feel of great authenticity.
A Walk in the Sun, as poetic a look at World War II combat as its title would imply, is set back among infantry troops, here landing in Italy. Directed by Lewis Milestone, who had made the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 15 years earlier, the film has some very well mounted action scenes but otherwise deglamorizes the war by concentrating on the daily life of the ordinary foot soldier—which involves things like waiting, not having much information about where they are going or why and the feeling that what they are doing is simply “a walk in the sun” and not something glorious. Bringing to life the film’s character studies are actors Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, John Ireland and Norman Lloyd, with Burgess Meredith providing narration.
In the three and a half years after the release of A Walk in the Sun, Hollywood turned out just one true combat film, Fighter Squadron (1948). When combat movies returned en masse in late 1949, their tone was different. War movies tended to be more reflective, and mixed reality into their stories as never before. After all, millions of service people who had experienced the actual war—instead of only war movies—were back home and moviegoers again. The genre evolved to take into the account the fact a larg portion of the audience knew what real war was like, and the others had been conditioned by years of war pictures. The result was increased emphasis on realism, to satisfy the veterans, while maintaining the genre’s main conventions that audiences had become accustomed to. Operation Pacific (1951), a submarine drama starring John Wayne, Patricia Neal and Ward Bond, acknowledges this new attitude almost literally. Combat takes up about half the film (the rest is more of a marital drama), and there are plot references to numerous real-life submarine incidents that the public would have known about at the time. But there’s also a sequence in which two American subs meet in the middle of the ocean and exchange 16mm prints of movies to screen on board for the crew. One of the movies is Destination Tokyo, a 1943 submarine movie starring Cary Grant. When it is screened, one seaman falls asleep and another says, “The things those Hollywood guys can do with a submarine!”
When the Korean War broke out, Hollywood shifted many of its combat stories to the Korean setting, while preserving the model of the genre. In other words, these were still “WWII combat films,” only now a variation set in Korea. Two of the finest such films in this marathon are The Steel Helmet (1951), which emanates the unique toughness and vividness that marks the best work of its director, the actual combat veteran Samuel Fuller, and Men in War (1957), a searing portrait of the mental and psychological toll of combat. Director Anthony Mann made this picture after his series of topnotch psychological westerns starring James Stewart—work which fully prepared him to apply an even greater intensity to this masterful combat film. Starring Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray, it gives a sense of stark realism combined with a feel for the madness of war.
In the 1960s, Hollywood applied its war-story focus to all-star, epic recreations of actual battles, with such films as The Longest Day (1962), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and Battle of the Bulge (1965), which was directed by Ken Annakin, starred Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw, Robert Ryan and Dana Andrews, and was originally released in Cinerama. Later in the decade, the genre inverted itself, with such films as Play Dirty (1969), Kelly’s Heroes and The Dirty Dozen (1967) gathering convicts or somehow corrupt characters to form the group and carry out commando raids. Warfare was presented increasingly like a game, and with murkier depictions of right and wrong, good and evil.
