"I don't think the girl was really in love with [Warner] Baxter. Of course you couldn't really tell much from the picture because June Lang couldn't act, and it was pretty hard to get across an emotion of any kind." (Hawks.)
Filmed around existing WWI night scenes from a French film called Les Croix du Bois, with a script by William Faulkner and Joel Sayre. Weary platoon commander Warner Baxter (his brandy and aspirin habit based on a real soldier Hawks knew) and newcomer Fredric March fall in love with the same woman. Baxter's father (Lionel Barrymore), over sixty, somehow manages to enlist. It's a good anti-war picture made about the French, for a change. Great scene where soldiers hear German tunnelers beneath therm - '"If they stop tunnelling, that's when the bomb will go off". Much typical Hawks bravery, professionalism and laughing in the face of death. Appalling print doesn't help show off Gregg Toland photography. Film has air of authenticity (Hawks himself served in France in WWI).
Great touches: steel helmets (when threat is from under them), man hand grenading own troops, wind blowing transfer order into fire. I take it the title is ironic.
With: Gregory Ratoff, Victor Kilian, Paul Stanton, John Qualen.
No comments:
Post a Comment