They Were Expendable (1945)

This is one of John Ford's best. There is a factoid circulating that this film, released in 1945 when we were about to end the war, was a flop because no one wanted to hear about a defeat in the Philippines, but Tad Gallagher's research shows this not to be true. It was a success, and for good reason.

It's got about everything you'd expect in a war movie released during that year, and it's finely done. Beginning with the photography and location shooting, in which Florida provides a first-rate substitute for the Philippines. No bravura acting is apparent, and none is called for. Montgomery is stolid as the squadron commander. Wayne, as his exec, follows orders competently and even is rather moving when he recites Robert Louis Stevenson's epitaph during a funeral scene, foreshadowing his famous scene when he's given the gold watch in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." Marshall Thompson plays an inexperienced new man, not for the last time. Ward Bond is a hearty boatswain's mate. Donna Reed, looking enchanting, is Wayne's aborted love interest. She doesn't have much screen time, but good use is made of what she has, and after all, it's hard to bang a full-blown romance into this kind of film.

It's pretty downbeat for Ford, when you come right down to it. One after another the "cardboard boxes" that, along with a handful of submarines, constituted MacArthur's navy are lost. Blown-up, wrecked, requisitioned by the Army, or just disappeared. The editing is fine too. Wayne's 34 boat is strafed and damaged by Japanese airplanes and he manages to beach it in a deserted area. He and his men struggle ashore through the surf. The planes return and they bomb it and strafe it until it erupts in flame, sending a geyser of seawater into the air. As Wayne emerges from cover there is a shot of him staring bleakly at his burning boat, then the seawater cascades over his figure forming a black-and-white rainbow as it does so. The eruption of water and its finally falling on Wayne's figure couldn't have been better times if a stopwatch had been used, a fine example of technical expertise.

Made as it was during the war years, it couldn't be more realistic than it is. Sometimes this is a weakness, due not to Ford and his crew but to the strictures of the time. The MTBs were glamorous duty. They were developed during WWI, when ships were mainly designed to be big enough to outshoot other big ships, and torpedoes hadn't proved themselves. Well, they did during the first war, delivered by torpedo boats that were small and fast and could duck under the big guns to deliver their weapons. (The destroyer was originally meant to be a "torpedo boat destroyer.") In WWII they served in every theater and were valuable assets. But they weren't suitable for blue-water work and were mostly used in sheltered waters. "They Were Expendable" shows them attacking under fire at high speed, in some very exciting shots. In real life, as Richard Tregaskis has reported, the engines delivered about 40 knots when new -- fast, but not that fast. A bit faster than a new destroyer, about the same speed as a torpedo. But under conditions in which maintenance was difficult or impossible, as they were here, the efficiency of the engines dropped and so did the boat's speed. The usual technique was not to attack at full speed with flags flying, but to sneak up as quietly as possible on an enemy ship, launch the torpedoes, t

Fmovies: Very few, if any, WW2 films are better than this. I first saw it several years ago on a wet miserable Saturday afternoon in winter and subsequently taped it at the next showing. I have seen it several times since then.

Despite not living through this difficult time I can imagine it capturing how the US forces felt in the early days of the Pacific war. As the film states, these are the men who laid down the initial sacrifice that others built on. They were no doubt aware of this, and that escape before the Japanese arrived was their only real chance of survival.

John Ford created a basically solemn film in keeping with the times. Action is pretty minimal but this does not detract from the film at all. Solid performances from all the caste and one of John Wayne's best performances. Some of the action sequences could have been better (but it was made over 50 years ago), a bit too much of men jumping on and off MTB's, and the dinner scene between Wayne and Donna Reed did nothing for me. A downbeat ending with some crew going off to help plan for later battles and others marching off to almost certain death, but it is in keeping with what the US forces faced at the time.

Recent good WW2 films such as Saving Private Ryan and Thin Red Line show what can be achieved now with a big budget and huge technical advances, but it doesn't make them any better than this film.

I only hope it comes out in DVD in the UK. 9 out of 10.

The best war films pull no punches. They also make the point that -- irrespective of natural sentiment and political bias -- war is by nature an aberration, lacking any rational basis for justifying its recurrence through the centuries. War is essentially uncivilized, and can be excused only when a disputant being attacked can define a clear and present danger against which no alternative obtains.

Lesser war films tend to extol the virtues of war, glamorize heroism in battle, play on the viewer's emotions, blow things up for the sake of thrills, exaggerate false sentiment, betray a jingoist point of view, and most reprehensible of all cloak themselves in Orwellian speeches that seek to manipulate an unwitting audience into action.

This film is simply one of the best of the best. Except for one or two sequences it relies on believable, non-heroic characters involved in acts of concentrated heroism under the most stressful and suspenseful conditions imaginable. Its tone is that of having been filmed in actual wartime using many actors who themselves were recent combatants. Yet it covers a full range of cinematic possibilities, from a sensitive script to an excellent musical score.

I will not dwell on all the aspects of authentic, almost documentary, elements in this film. I spent the war on the home front, and thus do not know of all the technically correct parts that others here have commented on. My own recollection was that most of the ordinary joes were always referring to Douglas MacArthur as "Dugout Doug," a derogatory swipe at his flight to Australia and reluctance to go on the offensive for some time thereafter.

Like other great war films such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Paths of Glory, this one takes its place right up there.

They Were Expendable fmovies. This movie is so exceptionally well-written, acted and directed. Although I am a big fan of some of John Wayne's other war pictures such as The Flying Tigers and The Fighting Sea Bees, these films are not exactly realistic and make it look like Wayne and his friends could have almost single-handedly beaten the Japanese! But, with They Were Expendible, the over-the-top heroism and exploits are instead replaced with grim determination against the odds and a quiet dignity. Because of that, to me, the impact of this film was much more lasting and heart-felt. Realism is key to this picture.

Oh, and by the way, Robert Montgomery gets top billing because when the film was made he was the bigger star--Wayne's rise to the top in Hollywood was still to come. I really see this more as Wayne's film as his part seemed BIGGER and he seemed to get at least as much screen time as Montgomery.

This would be an excellent film for teens, as it focuses on glory and heroism without glorifying death or trivializing our sacrifices.

Rather than re-hash Tom Martin's excellent review of the film, I would rather provide some personal reflections.

This really is the most human of all the late-era WWII films, minus much of the blatantly propagandistic speeches that mar so many movies from that era. Rather, the dialogue is beautifully understated. Robert Montgomery's "looking for the Arizona too" comment to Wayne sums up the feelings of its time much more than a five minute speech on how important it is to win the war could ever do.

The cinematography is top notch, as it is in most of Ford's films. Watching this I believe we can definately see how Orson Welles would be influenced by his work over the years.

Robert Montgomery's work here is fantastic; again, as Martin states in his review, probably his best work in front of the camera. He seems war-weary (and in one of the Duke's biographies this is probably how Montgomery really was at this time, as he had seen quite a bit of action during the war before the film was made). John Wayne's character provides us with proof that he truly was a great actor. Watch the scene where he sits in a bar listening to a broadcast from San Francisco about the fall of Coregidor; his emotions are completely shown by the camera; no "let's get them dirty so-and-so's" speeches here, this is pure, wordless acting.

All in all, a great film; the best of the WWII era, and certainly one of the best of the 1940's. No hesitations here on my score: 10* out of 10.

One of my earliest recollections of late night TV as a child was of boats speeding across the water with guns blazing and explosions going off all around them. I was mesmerized by how real everything looked even though it was in black and white. For reasons I didn't understand at the time, I saw those scenes several times as a small child. Obviously, my father enjoyed the movie! Didn't know who was in the movie, just knew I liked the big tall guy with the baseball cap. LOL Years later my father spoke of the movie as one of his favorites, and one Saturday night while up late working on model airplanes or ships, They Were Expendable came on and I realized that the guy in the baseball cap was my favorite actor John Wayne. A movie without all the patriotic jingoism of the day, just real people fighting a losing battle and, like Douglas MacArthur, hoping to "return" one day to fight again. Decades later a friend gave me a 2nd or 3rd edition hardbound copy of the book the movie was based on, a story of real people and real events, and I found that John Ford did the book proud. As I've gotten older and wiser, this movie has gotten better and better, with those special effects explosions still amazing me after all these years.