Corregidor (1943)

good back-story, and good acting

Best movie ever!

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Corregidor is an object lesson in how to make a cheap movie on a given subject. Contrast it to the two films made at MGM about the same period of World War II, Bataan which starred Robert Taylor and later on They Were Expendable which John Ford made at MGM. If ever there was a contrast between the lavish Tiffany Studio of Hollywood and a poverty row outfit like Producer's Releasing Corporation this is it.Additionally They Were Expendable had a romance between John Wayne and Donna Reed just as this film has a triangle romance with nurse Elissa Landi caught between doctors Otto Kruger and Donald Woods. In Corregidor the whole thing is rather forced with some awful dialog. With a master director like John Ford it was understated and effective and done in Ford's sentimental style.This was Elissa Landi's farewell film. Five years later she would be dead of cancer. Both Donald Woods and Otto Kruger were in a lot of far better films than Corregidor.Still the acting is sincere and it does raise it above the average of the usual product from PRC.

The Battle of Corregidor involved hundreds of thousands of troops and tons of airplanes, tanks and ships. Tiny little Atlantis Pictures tried to capture it...on the cheap. Instead of hundreds of thousands of troops, you might see a dozen or so. And instead of modern equipment, they use a lot of stock footage--though at least many of the planes are actually Japanese (unlike many other US films which used Dauntless or Texan aircraft and tried to pass them off as Japanese Mitsubishi fighters). I say many because sometimes the clips are all wrong...but at least they're more right than wrong! As for the backgrounds, they are VERY cheap and the jungle set is almost laughably bad.The story involves a couple of doctors who, one minute are going to break up and the next they get married. Soon their honeymoon turns crap when the Japanese attack...and they spend the rest of the film trying to survive. She's really in love with another guy--so you can guess where it goes next. Otto Kruger, Donald Woods and Elissa Landi are fine in the movie, though the trio aren't exactly leading stars (especially Landi)...which isn't surprising with an Atlantis film. They simply couldn't afford a Clark Gable, Jimmy Cagney or Pat O'Brien. So is it any good? Not especially. Mostly the Japanese just line up waiting to be easily shot...and if Corregidor was really that easy the United States/Filipino forces would have won that battle!! But at least the Japanese aren't drooling animals like they were in many other American films of the day* (entertaining...yes...but not exactly realistic). Everyone tries their best but with the film's many limitations it manages only to be slightly entertaining and not much more. *I've seen some Japanese and German wartime films and the Americans are every bit as subhuman or one-dimensional in them as well.

Good subject (Corregidor under siege) crapped up by an apparently nonexistent script, a ridiculous story, cartoon-like fighting scenes, and monkey-ugly villains.Every scene has something wrong with it. The defenders are running out of water, but everybody is clean shaven and they all have clean uniforms--with neckties! They are on emergency rations, but everybody looks very well fed. And near the end, the nurses make a getaway on the last plane out of Corregidor (pretty good trick when there weren't any planes left on Corregidor). This plane is a flying boat, which is what is sounds like--a big, floating target extremely unlikely to have survived the siege. This was a commercial plane that didn't have any guns, except this one did--a water-cooled machine gun in the tail--without water. And of course, this is where the tail gunner, one of our heroes, is killed successfully defending the getaway plane against an attacking Japanese plane piloted by a monkey look-alike.Production values are nonexistent. Good films have been made on limited budgets, but this isn't one of them.

This is a very humanistic film. It shows the bravery, suffering, humor and strength of both men and women who were defending an island in the Phillipines called Corregidor in the first five months of World War II. I think it was meant to be a tribute to those men and women and I think it works as a tribute. Unfortunately the DVD copy, as most reviewers have mentioned, is not very good. I am not sure if the problem is in the print used or the transfer. It is possible that the print had faded, so there was little that could have been done. It would be nice to see a good print if one exists with a good transfer.The movie is a little bit of everything, some light, romantic scenes, some comradely kidding scenes, some strong gutsy speeches, and a lot of battle action. Hanging over these elements and keeping them from being enjoyable is the notion that this was ultimately a hard, military defeat. Surprisingly, an almost equal number of Americans and Japanese are seen dying in the battles.When this film was made in 1943, the war still going on. Corregidor was only recaptured in 1945. 800 Americans were killed and some 11,000 American and Philipinos were still prisoners of war when the film was made. The Japanese lost 900 men. A simple operation that was supposed to take only a few weeks, ended up taking them five months. The time and manpower they lost was crucial and hoped set up the defeats the Japanese suffered in the next few months of the war. This is actually a much grittier, more heartfelt and less romantic view of this battle than the popular John Ford/John Wayne movie made about it two years later, "They Were Expendable". That was a satisfying Hollywood movie that was more of a celebration than a tribute. There is little in that film of the gloomy atmosphere that appears in this film.The script by Doris Malloy and great low-budget filmmaker Edgar Ulmer is fine. Direction by veteran director William Nigh (this was number 106 out 120 films) is crisp. The battles in the second half of the film do seem to dominate the human characters. None of the battles are spectacular and they become a bit monotonous and even boring. Perhaps that is better than the glamorous and exciting battles that one so often finds in Hollywood war movies. It gives the film a somber, rather than a Gung-Ho tone and message. This is not a great movie, but it is a good one worth watching, even on a DVD copy of a bad print.