Battleground (1949)

This is the best movie ever made about a democratic society going to war against fascism. The movie perfectly captures the fear and courage of American soldiers in war, fighting not to conquer like the Germans or destroy civilization like the terrorists, but to defend their fellow man. There's no sunshine patriotism in this movie. No flag waving or false heroics. But the lofty ideas behind the nation that made men such as these is there hidden like the sun behind fog and clouds. And at the end, the glory embodied in the men blazes true and shines as brightly as the sun when the weather lifts.

Fmovies: I watched this movie all the time with my Grandpa growing up. He was a vet of the US Army in the Pacific and he told me that this was the only movie where a M-1 rifle and artillery actually sounded real. That is because both were the real sounds they made. The artillery was actually recorded during the war and used in the film.

The characters you can connect with. The circumstances were anything but ideal to fight a war in. You see Layton grow into a vet before your eyes. You see men scared, terrified, and there for each other. Until "Band of Brothers" came out this was my favorite flick about WWII, and it's definitely the best of the "old school" war movies.

I didn't expect much of this -- I was wrong. Wellman rates pretty low on the Andrew Sarris "auteur" scale, and, frankly, most of his movies are pretty dull fare (ever watch "Blood Alley" or, despite its reputation, "Nothing Sacred"?). But this is a first-rate war film, as gripping as Walsh's "Battle Cry" or "Objective: Burma," or Dwan's "Sands of Iwo Jima." The cast could not be bettered, with outstanding work from Van Johnson, James Whitmore, John Hodiak, Marshall Thompson, Jerome Courtland, Ricardo Montalban, Douglas Fowley. It doesn't have the breadth of the three above-mentioned films -- there are no away-from-the-battlefield scenes that give the characters more dimension -- some might say "dilute the intensity" -- but "Battleground" is very intense and involving. Astonishing that it was made entirely on an MGM sound stage.

Battleground fmovies. Battleground (1949) - Director: William A. Wellman A couple of years had passed since the end of the war and Americans were once again ready for another "Give em Hell Harry" approach so MGM took a few of its current heart throbs (Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban), surrounded them with plenty of scraggy-faced character actors and accidentally turned out one of the best WW II movies out there.

Basically the story revolves around a squad of the 101st Airborne Division being trapped in the besieged city of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Much credit must be given to notoriously brass-balled director William Wellman. Wellman was famous for being a take-no-prisoners kind of guy and must have bullied the soft as silk MGM-ers into getting the kind of picture he wanted, or else. Among other things, the film is famous for its realistic looking (for the time) winter scenes. Surprisingly the entire movie was shot on the backlot and sound stages. (B&W)

Dedicated to the battered bastards of Bastogne, this major player in the war film genre is directed by William Wellman & tells the story of a U.S. Army division involved in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The terrific cast features George Murphy, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban, Van Johnson and James Whitmore. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and won two - one for Robert Pirosh's bold and fluctuating screenplay and one for Paul Vogel's realism inducing black-and-white cinematography.

Battleground is an important war film in many ways. Coming as it did at the tail end of the 40s, it was not required to be a flag waving morale booster for a country at war. Free of this burden, Wellman & Pirosh (an actual veteran of the Bastogne engagement), crafted a grunts eye view of the war. Forcing us the viewers to spend the whole of the movie with one army squad (the 101st Airborne Division), we get to know them, their fears & peccadilloes etc. Pirosh cleverly telling it as it was, scared men doing their duty. It's that we have been with them as their persona's have been laid bare, that makes the battle sequences even more potent. The jokes have stopped, the camaraderie and harmless rivalries replaced by men crying for their mothers or in some mud hole fighting for their lives. This snow covered and fog shrouded part of Belgium a bleak canvas for the harshness of war (amazingly shot on the lot). It's a stunningly structured film, one that doesn't resort to type, it subverts the many war film plot developments that are rife in genre pieces that both preceded and came post its release.

The cast are uniformly strong, and all get get ample time to impact on the narrative. Something that isn't always the case with ensemble pieces. Somebody else was strong too, Producer Dore Schary, who had to fight an unconvinced Louis B. Mayer (MGM head man) to get the film made. Schary's faith in the piece was rewarded as the film became a critical darling and a box office winner. It's not hard to see why for this is a realistic and gritty look at the hardships of war and those that fought in it. Influencing many that followed it by entertaining without gusto histrionics, Battleground is still very much a template war film. 8.5/10

This is my favorite film about the Battle of the Bulge. The characters are absolutely real, and the story and screenplay are the actual experience of Robert Pirosh who was a member of the 101st Airborne and also the author and screenwriter of the film. Without getting lost in blood and gore, you nonetheless understand the death and carnage going on all around, and you feel you actually know these men. Robert Pirosh and Director William Wellman manage to bring the celebrated American sense of ironic humor to the film. That sense of humor, graveyard though it be, is one of the things that helps us, as Americans, get through times like those, and like these.

Most touching scene: The utter sadness when Pvt. Layton learns that his buddy, Pvt. Hooper, was killed by a mortar shell. William Wellman filmed Marshall Thompson from the back. The fall of his shoulders and head when they said "We didn't even find his dogtags" is an eloquence beyond words.

Most memorable repeated phrase: Pvt. Holley's "Oh, no!"