Screen Savers Movies » War

The Raid (1954)

John DiLeo — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:01:19 +0000

The Raid is a Civil War movie that takes place in upstate New York, Canada, and Vermont. That’s one of the many surprising things about this Twentieth Century-Fox picture, a film that has rarely been heard of since the time of its release. Based on true events, The Raid is situated one thousand miles from the front and near enough to the war’s end to provide a false sense of security to the Vermont town in which the story unfolds. There are no villains in this piece; nothing is made convenient for us as to whom we should be rooting for. The main characters, Union and Confederate, are sympathetic and afforded multi-dimensional treatment as they face up to the ravages of war. The Raid builds to a climax that could hardly be termed commercial in that it finishes without a comfortably resolved ending; it raises questions but it doesn’t have the presumption to supply facile answers. Without letting romance or notions of victory seep into its final moments, The Raid uncompromisingly dramatizes this incendiary piece of our history.

Learn more about The Raid

The Seventh Cross (1944)

John DiLeo — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:01:08 +0000

In July of 1944, MGM released The Seventh Cross, a film that departs from the period’s war movies in ways that make it one of the more penetrating and stirring made at that time. Set in Germany in 1936, this unusual film has a compassionate message about innate human decency in an indecent world, an especially surprising theme because all of the film’s characters are German and because the war in Europe still hadn’t been won when it came out. Using ordinary German citizens as heroes yields a complexity of content just about unheard of in 1944. The film reminded audiences that there were good Germans living among the Nazis. The Seventh Cross doesn’t stint on Nazi horrors, but its main goal wasn’t to inflame audiences on that score. The movie’s uplifting message, about the cumulative power of many small acts of goodness, may sound simplistic and sentimental, but The Seventh Cross is far more restrained than the typical war picture of those years. While many of those movies became instantly disposable with the war’s end, the strength of the humanistic content in this film did not expire with Hitler’s demise.

Learn more about The Seventh Cross

The Train (1965)

John DiLeo — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:01:31 +0000

The Train tells a humane, disturbing story, yet it leaves the viewer to decide what to make of what transpires. Can inanimate objects, however irreplaceable and valuable and beautiful, bear the cost of human life? How do you ask people to sacrifice their lives for pretty pictures? The French characters in The Train aren’t interested in the paintings’ financial or artistic worth but, rather, in the art’s representation of “the glory of France.” How does one distinguish between French masterpieces and France itself? Don’t, say, Manet and Matisse, define France to its populace and the world? The paintings are symbols of what the French are fighting for: to retain their national identity—their past, their pride, their very soul—from those who would pilfer it. The Train grapples with these issues without dispensing pat answers.

Learn more about The Train

They Came to Cordura (1959)

John DiLeo — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:01:26 +0000

“What is courage? What is cowardice?” These lines appear onscreen before They Came to Cordura begins. The nature of bravery is an essential component of any war film but rarely has it been examined as directly, or as penetratingly, as it is here. Directed by Robert Rossen, Columbia’s They Came to Cordura was disliked by critics and ignored by audiences in 1959, but its contemplative, relentless burrowing into its themes should find more appreciative audiences today since moviegoers are now more accustomed to characters consumed with self-examination (and interested in analyzing others). As war movies go, this one is talky, but in its verbiage it offers an unusually probing look at human behavior under inhuman circumstances, specifically combat and its ever-after repercussions.

Learn more about They Came to Cordura

Three Kings (1999)

John DiLeo — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:01:53 +0000

When Three Kings, a movie about the 1991 Gulf War, was released in 1999 no one knew that there would be a subsequent war with Iraq, beginning in 2003. Yet the film is certainly prescient about what was to come. In defending America’s decision to leave the region, one character asks another if he’d like, instead, to occupy Iraq and have another Vietnam. Topicality isn’t why Three Kings is so good, though it remains a fascinating marker of the times. The movie is blatantly critical of the first President Bush, by name, which probably precludes Bush-family fans from seeing it as anything more than a scolding from liberal Hollywood. Yet its points are made on human terms and with humor that is dark and idiosyncratic but not smug. Three Kings, a good candidate for the best American film of its year, was well received by critics, though less so by the public, and its reputation has been steadily on the rise. Politics aside, it’s a bold, inventive genre-bender, a war film that combines ironic comedy, heist thriller, action-star antics, and farcical situations, set against a surreal landscape and a gravely serious situation.

Learn more about Three Kings

Mann of the West

John DiLeo — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:05:53 +0000

Well, we can cross one movie off our list of hoped-for DVDs! The Criterion Collection has had the good sense and taste to release director Anthony Mann’s magnificent western THE FURIES (1950). Whether you are a collector or a Netflix user, it’s one you should not miss. In my book SCREEN SAVERS, I focus on 40 under-appreciated movies. If I had added just one more movie, it’s quite likely that THE FURIES would have been next in line. The Mann western that I did include in the book is the outstanding and equally overlooked DEVIL’S DOORWAY (1950), which will be screened on TCM’s night devoted to SCREEN SAVERS on September 22nd. THE FURIES, made earlier that year, is a western noted for its volatility, the suddenness of its violence, and its unmistakable strain of incest. Operatically extravagant, it’s a film in which love and hate are so closely allied that they are barley distinguishable. It’s certainly the best of Barbara Stanwyck’s eleven western features and also the final top-notch movie of her extraordinary career. She plays the daughter of widower Walter Huston, one of the most powerful men in the New Mexico territory of the 1870s. His cattle ranch, The Furies, is a vast empire. The closeness shared by father and daughter turns ugly and violent, mainly due to the effects of their outside romantic entanglements, with Stanwyck eventually vowing to destroy daddy and claim the ranch for herself.

This is the movie with the electrifying scene in which Stanwyck flings a pair of scissors at Judith Anderson’s face. Anderson plays a marriage-minded widow set on nabbing Huston, but she’s a threat to Stanwyck who instantly detests her. Stanwyck was past forty when she starred in this movie, yet she’s remarkably convincing playing much younger. She’s a blonde here, looking far more attractive than she did when she blonded herself for DOUBLE INDEMNITY six years earlier.

Stanwyck has a brief yet memorable run-in with a tart who says, “I’m new in town, honey.” To which Stanwyck replies, “Honey, you wouldn’t be new anyplace.”

This was Walter Huston’s final film, and it was released four months after his death. He and Stanwyck are sensational together, bringing out the sizzling best in each other. Two great stars, a phenomenal western director, glorious Oscar-nominated black-and-white cinematography, a ferocious and intelligent script, a superb supporting cast…what more could you want? Maybe, at last, THE FURIES is on its way to becoming the classic it has always been to those of us who love and admire it.

Three Kings (1999): What Did We Win in the Gulf War?

John DiLeo — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:10:24 +0000

When Three Kings, a movie about the 1991 Gulf War, was released in 1999 no one knew that there would be a subsequent war with Iraq, beginning in 2003. Yet the film is certainly prescient about what was to come. In defending America’s decision to leave the region, one character asks another if he’d like, instead, to occupy Iraq and have another Vietnam. Topicality isn’t why Three Kings is so good, though it remains a fascinating marker of the times. The movie is blatantly critical of the first President Bush, by name, which probably precludes Bush-family fans from seeing it as anything more than a scolding from liberal Hollywood. Yet its points are made on human terms and with humor that is dark and idiosyncratic but not smug. Three Kings, a good candidate for the best American film of its year, was well received by critics, though less so by the public, and its reputation has been steadily on the rise. Politics aside, it’s a bold, inventive genre-bender, a war film that combines ironic comedy, heist thriller, action-star antics, and farcical situations, set against a surreal landscape and a gravely serious situation. Three Kings is quite a ride because it takes u-turns, detours, and maneuvers dead ends, colliding with bald reality in a way it never could have if its central characters had behaved like conventional soldiers. It’s similar to Gunga Din (1939), another dizzily comic war film in which three soldiers are swept inside the chaos of war. But Gunga Din and other Rudyard Kipling-based adventure films (like John Ford’s 1937 Wee Willie Winkie) were paeans to British imperialism, whereas Three Kings is no hymn to American foreign policy.

The Train (1965): The Art of War

John DiLeo — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:01:02 +0000

The Train tells a humane, disturbing story, yet it leaves the viewer to decide what to make of what transpires. Can inanimate objects, however irreplaceable and valuable and beautiful, bear the cost of human life? How do you ask people to sacrifice their lives for pretty pictures? The French characters in The Train aren’t interested in the paintings’ financial or artistic worth but, rather, in the art’s representation of “the glory of France.” How does one distinguish between French masterpieces and France itself? Don’t, say, Manet and Matisse, define France to its populace and the world? The paintings are symbols of what the French are fighting for: to retain their national identity—their past, their pride, their very soul—from those who would pilfer it. The Train grapples with these issues without dispensing pat answers.

They Came to Cordura (1959): Heroic Icon Plays a Coward

John DiLeo — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:54:18 +0000

“What is courage? What is cowardice?” These lines appear onscreen before They Came to Cordura begins. The nature of bravery is an essential component of any war film but rarely has it been examined as directly, or as penetratingly, as it is here. Directed by Robert Rossen, Columbia’s They Came to Cordura was disliked by critics and ignored by audiences in 1959, but its contemplative, relentless burrowing into its themes should find more appreciative audiences today since moviegoers are now more accustomed to characters consumed with self-examination (and interested in analyzing others). As war movies go, this one is talky, but in its verbiage it offers an unusually probing look at human behavior under inhuman circumstances, specifically combat and its ever-after repercussions. They Came to Cordura has a massive, superbly executed battle sequence, yet the film stands out more for its willingness to tackle uncommon psychological issues than for its action. It’s a cerebral war movie without clear-cut heroes or cowards, and it emphasizes introspection, ambiguity, and conscience over victory and glory.

The Raid (1954): The Civil War Comes to Vermont

John DiLeo — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:46:41 +0000

Put aside images from Gone With the Wind (1939) for the moment because one of the most powerful, unsettling, and resonating films made about the war between the states is set a world apart from Miss Scarlett, magnolia blossoms, and mint juleps. The Raid is a Civil War movie that takes place in upstate New York, Canada, and Vermont. That’s one of the many surprising things about this Twentieth Century-Fox picture, a film that has rarely been heard of since the time of its release. Based on true events, The Raid is situated one thousand miles from the front and near enough to the war’s end to provide a false sense of security to the Vermont town in which the story unfolds. There are no villains in this piece; nothing is made convenient for us as to whom we should be rooting for. The main characters, Union and Confederate, are sympathetic and afforded multi-dimensional treatment as they face up to the ravages of war. The Raid builds to a climax that could hardly be termed commercial in that it finishes without a comfortably resolved ending; it raises questions but it doesn’t have the presumption to supply facile answers. Without letting romance or notions of victory seep into its final moments, The Raid uncompromisingly dramatizes this incendiary piece of our history. Coincidentally, the film begins in much the same way that The Seventh Cross does.