Originally posted by Ack-Ack
Great movie and one of the 1st World War II movies to attempt to portray the infantryman in a realistic light. It's dated because it was supposed to be released in '45 but Japan had surrendered and the movie studio stopped all production on war films. Don't recall what studio ended up releasing it in '46 and released it again sometime in the '50s.
We now return you to you regularly scheduled thread.
ack-ack
I think you hit the nail on the head -- "it was one of the first to attempt to portray the infantryman realistically." It definitely does that, treating the guys less like stereotypes and more like real people, with character development and realistic situations. Can't think of an earlier movie that had the grunts sitting around waiting for their platoon leaders to stop farting around and get going, when everyone knew time mattered.
And that's probably why it felt a bit dated. The "realistic" school has been pushed pretty far by now, with Private Ryan and Band of Brothers making pretty tough competition for anything in the 40's.
All the same, great movie. In the intro spiel I saw with the movie the reviewer said that some consider it one of the greatest war movies ever made, and while I'm not sure I buy that it seems that it might be one of most groundbreaking ones, compared with its era.
And like he said, we can now return to the regularly scheduled thread.
