Battleground (1949)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It is a performances centric movie

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The Battle Of The Bulge, December 1944. The US 101st Airborne Division are holding the strategically vital town of Bastogne against overwhelming odds. We follow a squad of soldiers of the 101st as they battle the Germans, the elements and lack of supplies, equipment and ammunition. Superb WW2 drama. Very gritty and realistic - no gung ho heroics, no Hollywoodisms. Quite novel for its time in that most movies were still very much in WW2 propaganda mode. Great work by Van Johnson in the lead role. Good supporting performances. James Whitmore got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his efforts.

Lots of war movies follow a familiar pattern: there are lots of standard characters (southern guy with a harmonica, timid replacement soldier, grizzled sergeant, bookish guy with glasses, old veteran who's being discharged but has to fight one more battle, coward who does something heroic, small town Midwestern kid, Italian guy from New York, love interest who dies, etc.), the war is a noble cause, and the U.S. Army or Marines win in the end despite all adversity. "Battleground" hits all the standard clichés, yet it's irresistible because it's based on actual events and it has a wonderful cast.Simply put, this is the story of the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, told by one small group of soldiers who must resist the enemy at all costs. The weather is horribly cold and foggy, the men are running short of supplies, and the pressure on them is relentless. The film has a lot of standard characters but is so well done that you'll forget that you've seen it all before. Among the cast are stalwarts such as James Arness, Richardo Montalban, Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Marshall Thompson, James Whitmore, Richard Jaeckel, Don Taylor, and many others. Leon Ames is particularly effective as a wise and experienced Army chaplain. The film effectively captures the misery that these men endured those many years ago, and it's very entertaining as well. Try to catch it and honor the few remaining surviving heroes of those long-ago days at Bastogne.

This film doesn't quite shift up a gear into 'war classic' category as the audience don't really feel any emotional connection when people start getting killed. The film holds the interest whilst you watch and it's fairly entertaining but there's a bit too much comedy for my liking and some of the characters are irritating. For example, Ricardo Montalban (Roderigues) keeps shouting all the time - he should keep quiet in a war situation with the enemy all around. What a douche-bag! The Texas boy, Jerome Courtland (Abner) uses corny language and repeatedly sings a corny song– he's obviously been told to play a stereo-typical country simpleton. There is also not enough action given that the film is 2 hours long.There are some nice looking scenes in the foggy forests and the film should have used this to better effect as we are encouraged to wait for the mist to clear to see what is going on. It does happen but it could have happened on more occasions to crank up the tension.Characters go through changes and by the end of the film, the fresh faced wise-cracking troops are dishevelled. There is some man-to man combat as 3 of the troop go on a scouting mission and it is nicely directed as all violent killings are carried out just outside of our vision, so the film scores for good direction during this part.Strangely, I find that the memory of this film is better than the experience of actually watching it. Maybe it's worth a second viewing.

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 Divsion}, 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