The Unbreakable Shell

John Wayne does three things well.

He talks with a languid toughness that manages to sound both intimidating and wise at the same time and whenever he struts across the screen as a soldier or cowboy he comes across as completely legitimate, despite the painful obviousness in many of his performances.

In 1949’s Sands of Iwo Jima, Wayne puts his best boot forward – and collected an Oscar nomination in the process – when he offers up equal doses of stoicism and sympathy in his now-legendary role as the no-nonsense Marine Sergeant Stryker. It is not an exaggeration to say that the very stereotype of the hard-as-nails drill instructor originates with Wayne and this performance. It is also not an exaggeration to assert Wayne being Wayne in this film is precisely what saves an effort that otherwise would be a profound piece of propaganda celebrating the legend of the Marine Corps.

Because as I said, this is not altogether incredible stuff.

There is a kind of paint-by-numbers with these World War Two epics: The platoon or company is always the center of our attention and it is typically comprised of souls with immediately identifiable accents and at least one personality trait that enables the viewer to remember something unique about that character when he is spotted among the rest of the cast. Part of this is economy, because nobody needs a film with a dozen developed characters, and part of it is filmmakers giving the audience what they expect from the genre (see Saving Private Ryan). Sands of Iwo Jima may be decades old and made within living memory of the actual event, but quite a lot of World War Two films had already appeared by 1949, many of them with Wayne in them, and Hollywood knew what people wanted. More complicated war films, with less obvious tracks, would not come until America began to grapple with how to depict the Vietnam conflict on the screen.

In the case of this film, the American triumph on the tiny island of Iwo Jima signified by the iconic flag-raising ceremony on the summit of Mt. Suribachi was known to virtually every American. The photograph, taken by Joe Rosenthal, had not only graced magazine covers and posters, it had also been used extensively as propaganda piece to raise war bonds (see Flags of My Father). The decision to graft a challenging, if somewhat one-dimensional and episodic plot, on top of a film building to an inevitable event therefore deserves some credit. Stryker could have been more boorish and more boring, and in the hands of a lesser actor he might have been.

Wayne makes him believable and he does not with his bark but with the pained scowl he gets whenever he is confronted by another’s failure to perform or on the occasions when the awfulness of failure attempts to impose itself on his life and the fate of his men. There is a telling scene when Wayne encounters a baby belonging to Julie Bishop after a brief romance in her home. The father is gone, either dead or disinterested, and Wayne is painfully reminded of his own estrangement from his child, and haunted by the possibility that he too may one day leave a woman without a man and a child without a father, should he fall combat.

The scene plays well on Wayne’s running confrontation with John Agar, the arrogant, college-educated son of an officer under whom Wayne served. Agar is the smart-aleck recruit who presents his sergeant with a problem. This would feel stale and prosaic were the father/son motif not the foundation of the turmoil. Wayne watched an officer he loved as a father die, and now the son of that officer is under his care. What is he to do? The answer is make certain the son is ready.

On the American side, the battle of Iwo Jim claimed upwards of 6,000 men and 19,000 casualties, including the lives of most of the men in the famous flag-raising photograph. All but 200 or so of the 20,000 Japanese soldiers on the island died in combat. The latter of the two statistics speaks to what manner of battle the American Marine faced on the island – the enemy, almost literally, was willing to fight to the last man, and nearly did so. America's triumph should be viewed in martial terms that take into account those horrific numbers, but also in the more human tones painted in this film. When Wayne, rather inevitably, falls, his men find a letter on him addressed to his estranged son, saying all the things he wanted to say but could not find the strength to do so while he was alive. It is a cliched moment perhaps, but it still makes the audience feel nonetheless. Here is a tireless warrior, a man among men who trained other men to do great things. And here, laid bare, in a letter he knew could only be posted after he died, is his soul. He was unbreakable as a Marine, but even Marines are people, too.

A Gloriously Troubled History

The pitch for Battle of Britain probably sounded incredible.

I can imagine Guy Hamilton, flush from his success with Goldfinger, crooning to some studio head about how they would hire just about every notable British actor working during that period, find entire wings of contemporary World War Two aircraft and lump them altogether to make an epic film about one of the past century’s most important – and narrowly decided -- battles. And as far as all that is concerned, Hamilton succeeded...

Laurence Olivier, Trevor Howard, Robert Shaw, Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, Michael Redgrave and Susannah York all appear in the film, as do vintage Spitfires, Hurricanes and Messerschmitt aircraft. With a $12 million budget and more than 100 total planes employed, the film broke new ground for depicting aerial combat in cinema, and set the standard for such filming until toppled from its perch by a rash of 1980s movies about jet fighters (Top Gun being the most notable).

Indeed, a great deal of the film’s ultimate weakness lies in Hamilton’s singular obsession to explore what could and could not be captured in the air on camera. The result is a film in which what happens among the clouds outweighs the drama on the ground below, and the audience is forced to suffer through repetitive battle sequences that become almost indistinguishable from one another. Silly explosions of red paint standing in for blood do not help matters, either.

Following the plot is treacherous business, especially if you are not a history buff. To be sure, the film does its best to chronologically present dramatizations of actual events that occurred when the Nazi Luftwaffe attempted to destroy Britain’s air force in 1940, but the picture fails to package what is undoubtedly an exciting narrative in a logical way that makes sense. Part of this difficulty, no doubt, lies in the formlessness of the Battle of Britain itself -- key decisions and critical confrontations transpired during a period of several months, not a few days or several weeks. The other part lies in a horrible lack of dramatic structure.

More specifically, by choosing to include as many characters as it does, we end up never really knowing or caring about any of them. Shaw, for example, is never even named (he is simply called “skipper”), while Michael Caine appears and then expires so quickly, one is left to search the credits for his given and surname.

Another Briton, William Shakespeare understood history is not a five-act play, with a beginning, a middle and an end, which is precisely why his histories focus on the human dramas – either real or imagined – of the people involved in the noteworthy events. Nobody really knows how Brutus felt about Caesar, before or after Caesar was knifed in the Roman Senate, but watching a play about Brutus agonizing over whether his loyalty was to the state or to his friend makes for great entertainment. To borrow a cliché, it also helps bring history “alive” in a tangible way audiences of any era can relate to.

An attempt in Battle of Britain is made to follow a troubled romance between Plummer and York, but the filmmaker’s heart never really seems in this effort, and as a result, these scenes seem clumsy and out of place. Worse yet, coming as they are – sandwiched between battles or meetings of historical importance – they feel foolish. The film should have chosen to stay at the tactical level (as movies like Patton or Midway do) or taken the time to invest in people and events affected by the battle in the skies. Trying to have it both ways means doing neither well.

But for all these fumbles, those who delight in detail can find plenty to relish here. From the planes themselves, to the period-accurate BBC broadcasts and the humorous and believable scenes of boys fighting over which German planes are streaking over the sky or handing a downed RAF pilot a cigarette, the mood of the picture feels right. The Anglophile in me wanted more Churchill (he is merely glimpsed), perhaps with his actual speeches (their text bookend the film and are never read aloud or replayed), but the decision to keep the great man at one remove probably served the plot better.

As for the aerial combat, blood bursts aside, the action stands the test of time rather well. If I have one complaint in that department it is that the dogfights are too difficult to follow and too numerous to carry the weight the filmmakers want them to. As an audience, it is also never really clear what factor turned the battle and allowed Britain to win (after all the ballyhooing about being such an underdog). I know why, of course, but not from this film...

In sum, Battle of Britain remains beloved by a generation of British filmgoers. Its solitary sin is that like Icarus it flew too near the sun, in that its ambitions outstripped its abilities. Even so, it is difficult to imagine another effort doing as well this one does at manhandling a complex and important clash into a discernible narrative. History is funny like that. It is just too big and too complex for movies.

A good retrospective story on the now-legendary production can be found here.

Up Scope!

If there is such a thing as a submarine film genre, Run Silent, Run Deep invented it.

The 1958 thriller starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster as a pair of World War Two naval officers trying to survive each other’s opposing viewpoints during a cruise in the Pacific is a virtual fountain of all the standard material one finds in nearly every undersea adventure: The tense monotony of the sonar pings, the men staring earnestly at gages or listening to propeller screws in headphones and, of course, the Captain shouting “Clear the bridge – Dive! Dive!”

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that this film, chock full of what would eventually become clichés, very easily could have drifted into awfulness and ended up a mediocre ancestor of bigger and better movies. The fact Run Silent, Run Deep remains irresistibly entertaining and watchable, the fact it more than stands up to the test of time and the very obvious advances in photography and special effects – consider that not one frame of the film was shot underwater – rests on great acting and a smart script that deftly invigorates a rather formulaic plot.

Gable’s performance as a commander who yearns for a chance to revenge himself on the Japanese destroyer that sunk his sub is particularly impressive. There is nothing debonair or effusive here from the man who at one time was called The King of Hollywood. Gable’s portrayal of P.J. Richardson as a desperate man full of grit and silent fury is as pitch perfect as Lancaster’s solemn and stentorian turn as Lieutenant Jim Bledsoe. That the two men are set against each other – Richardson convinced the Navy Board to give him command of the submarine destined for Bledsoe – and then gradually reconciled during the film’s action might be predictable, but it is great fun to watch.

Richardson’s pursuit of the Japanese destroyer is inevitably compared by critics to Ahab’s maniacal pursuit of the whale in Melville’s Moby Dick. Richardson is certainly as single-minded as Ahab. At one point in the film, he barks he “never even thought of failing.” At another he warns his near-mutinous first officer that “this boat has one – and only one – Captain.”

But for all this passion, Richardson eventually realizes when he has gone too far and he allows his ambitions to cool, both of which are distinctly un-Ahab-like. Additionally, Richardson gets his “whale” when Bledsoe allows him to give the order that ultimately sends the Japanese submarine to the bottom of the ocean. Ahab’s chase did not end quite as well.

At just a little more than one and half hours long, this is a taut film that wastes no time on the unnecessary. The script swims along at a wonderful pace that never leaves the viewer dulled or displeased. That it manages to do so without the over-reliance on technology later submarine films would suffer from is a credit to this film’s innovative movie-making and powerful storytelling.

While Run Silent, Run Deep is not destined for dissection in film school, it remains a solid piece of drama that more than outshines similar efforts in more recent years. Put simply, they do not make them like this anymore – and that is a damn shame, if you ask me.