Spoilers. When I saw this years ago it struck me as not having enough battle scenes in it. Now with my blood testosterone leveling off I think I have a better handle on it. Most war movies of the period seemed to include three elements whenever possible: combat, romance, and banter between battles. This one has all of them, although the romance has to be squeezed in with a shoehorn.
The banter is sometimes funny. A handful of soldiers are sitting around in a cramped, miserably wet shelter dug out of the rock. One removes his boots. One by one the others quietly sniff and throw suspicious glances at one another. Ernie Pyle, crouched there fully dressed, looks back at the others and says, "It wasn't me." (Nothing to do with boots!) There is also a certain corny sort of sentimentality associated with at least one of the characters, a beat-up exhausted non-com who tries repeatedly and without success to play a home-made record from his son. (First time I remember seeing a scene like that was in "Destination Tokyo.") I was sure the record would be played for every tear it was worth after the father's death, but that's not what happens at all.
There is only one real scene of combat and it's well done. Howard Hawks may have seen it before making "El Dorado." Mitchum does a journeyman job as Captain Walker, tough and humane as all company commanders in these movies usually are. Yet, he's so good, particularly in a scene alone with Pyle on Christmas Eve, that he brings more to the part than the minimal requirements. Burgess Meredith as Pyle is equally good. He can rattle the rafters when he overacts, but he doesn't do it here. He's quietly believable as a humble war correspondent more concerned with writing about the guy in the mud than about the generals. "The G. I.," he ruminates, "He lives so miserable. He dies so miserable."
Ernie Pyle wasn't a great writer. He didn't have the ego for it. He left that up to more florid artists, like Hemingway, who described in one of his articles how he had to take over command of a landing craft at Normandy from a green officer in order to make sure it landed in the right place. Or Walter Cronkite, who could use a leader on a story like, "I Just Returned From a Mission to Hell." But if Pyle was no literary artist, he wasn't a dismissible hack either, especially when his circumstances are taken into account. A hack might write something like, "The shells roared overhead like freight trains." Pyle wrote: "Artillery shells rustled overhead." ("Rustled.")
The poor unpretentious Pulitzer prize winner took a bullet in the forehead on Ie Shima, in the Pacific. And Captain Walker is killed too. Not dramatically, nor heroically, but offscreen, just another body being brought in by mule, already in rigor. The scene is played on screen exactly as Pyle wrote it, with some of the men coming to Walker's body, staring at it before moving on, one or two of them telling Walker how sorry they are. No one sheds a tear. This is a man they liked and respected, but they've already seen so many dead bodies. It's a scene that can't help moving a viewer. The men then shuffle off in silhouette over to the top of a dark, brooding hill, with no triumphant military music to accompany them. It is a striking image of the futility of war.
And it ought to be. The Italian campaign which is followed in this film was a disaster. The peninsula, the boot of Italy, has mountains that resemble the skeleton of a fish, with multiple hills running east and west out of the spine of the Apennines. Nobody could design better defensive terrain if they tried, and the Germans were very good. The allies, represented not just by Americans and Brits, but by French, New Zealanders, Gurkhas, Poles, and Canadians, gained nothing worthwhile. In the initial invasion they tried to outflank the enemy with an amphibious landing behind their lines. It failed. The allies slogged on through terrible weather to the next formidable line where they were stopped. They tried to outflank the enemy with an amphibious landing behind their lines. It failed. At the Gustav Line, the Allied advance was stopped at the foot of Monte Cassino, a thousand-year-old Benedictine monastery, which we mistakenly believed was being used as an artillery observation post. We finally bombed the monastery to smithereens, and after the dust settled the Germans immediately moved into the rubble and used it as an observation post. When, finally, it seemed we had gotten behind the German lines, instead of forging west and trapping their troops, the general in charge of the Fifth Army turned north instead and raced towards the open city of Rome so he could have the honor of being the first to enter it. And so it went. Some of this tragedy was captured on film by John Huston in "The Battle of San Pietro," which went through some problems because it showed dead American soldiers instead of just dead German soldiers. But none of this could appear, except by implication, in "The Story of G.I. Joe." However, the final scene is suitably bleak. It might be Death himself leading that dance over the top of the hill.
The banter is sometimes funny. A handful of soldiers are sitting around in a cramped, miserably wet shelter dug out of the rock. One removes his boots. One by one the others quietly sniff and throw suspicious glances at one another. Ernie Pyle, crouched there fully dressed, looks back at the others and says, "It wasn't me." (Nothing to do with boots!) There is also a certain corny sort of sentimentality associated with at least one of the characters, a beat-up exhausted non-com who tries repeatedly and without success to play a home-made record from his son. (First time I remember seeing a scene like that was in "Destination Tokyo.") I was sure the record would be played for every tear it was worth after the father's death, but that's not what happens at all.
There is only one real scene of combat and it's well done. Howard Hawks may have seen it before making "El Dorado." Mitchum does a journeyman job as Captain Walker, tough and humane as all company commanders in these movies usually are. Yet, he's so good, particularly in a scene alone with Pyle on Christmas Eve, that he brings more to the part than the minimal requirements. Burgess Meredith as Pyle is equally good. He can rattle the rafters when he overacts, but he doesn't do it here. He's quietly believable as a humble war correspondent more concerned with writing about the guy in the mud than about the generals. "The G. I.," he ruminates, "He lives so miserable. He dies so miserable."
Ernie Pyle wasn't a great writer. He didn't have the ego for it. He left that up to more florid artists, like Hemingway, who described in one of his articles how he had to take over command of a landing craft at Normandy from a green officer in order to make sure it landed in the right place. Or Walter Cronkite, who could use a leader on a story like, "I Just Returned From a Mission to Hell." But if Pyle was no literary artist, he wasn't a dismissible hack either, especially when his circumstances are taken into account. A hack might write something like, "The shells roared overhead like freight trains." Pyle wrote: "Artillery shells rustled overhead." ("Rustled.")
The poor unpretentious Pulitzer prize winner took a bullet in the forehead on Ie Shima, in the Pacific. And Captain Walker is killed too. Not dramatically, nor heroically, but offscreen, just another body being brought in by mule, already in rigor. The scene is played on screen exactly as Pyle wrote it, with some of the men coming to Walker's body, staring at it before moving on, one or two of them telling Walker how sorry they are. No one sheds a tear. This is a man they liked and respected, but they've already seen so many dead bodies. It's a scene that can't help moving a viewer. The men then shuffle off in silhouette over to the top of a dark, brooding hill, with no triumphant military music to accompany them. It is a striking image of the futility of war.
And it ought to be. The Italian campaign which is followed in this film was a disaster. The peninsula, the boot of Italy, has mountains that resemble the skeleton of a fish, with multiple hills running east and west out of the spine of the Apennines. Nobody could design better defensive terrain if they tried, and the Germans were very good. The allies, represented not just by Americans and Brits, but by French, New Zealanders, Gurkhas, Poles, and Canadians, gained nothing worthwhile. In the initial invasion they tried to outflank the enemy with an amphibious landing behind their lines. It failed. The allies slogged on through terrible weather to the next formidable line where they were stopped. They tried to outflank the enemy with an amphibious landing behind their lines. It failed. At the Gustav Line, the Allied advance was stopped at the foot of Monte Cassino, a thousand-year-old Benedictine monastery, which we mistakenly believed was being used as an artillery observation post. We finally bombed the monastery to smithereens, and after the dust settled the Germans immediately moved into the rubble and used it as an observation post. When, finally, it seemed we had gotten behind the German lines, instead of forging west and trapping their troops, the general in charge of the Fifth Army turned north instead and raced towards the open city of Rome so he could have the honor of being the first to enter it. And so it went. Some of this tragedy was captured on film by John Huston in "The Battle of San Pietro," which went through some problems because it showed dead American soldiers instead of just dead German soldiers. But none of this could appear, except by implication, in "The Story of G.I. Joe." However, the final scene is suitably bleak. It might be Death himself leading that dance over the top of the hill.