In what would be possibly the first “introspective” war movie—a precursor to later philosophical war films like Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line—A Walk in the Sun, now re-released in this freshly minted Blu-ray format, was directed by Lewis Milestone. He was certainly no stranger to realistic but thoughtful portrayals of men in battle (All Quiet on the Western Front being his first artistic directorial triumph), and A Walk in the Sun was made while World War II was still raging and released in 1945. But as gritty and realistic as the film eventually gets (for its day, anyway), the opening sequences of the featured platoon of American GIs (of the so-called Texas Division) landing in Italy in 1943 will seem hopelessly hokey to most modern audiences.
Where part of the authentic appeal of Milestone’s All Quiet was the clever absence of a distracting soundtrack, A Walk in the Sun is bookended by some cornball balladeering that sounds anachronistic and tonally awkward for the mood of the rest of the movie. The platoon is led by the all-business Sgt. Tyne (Dana Andrews) who shares command duties with Sgt. Ward (a young Lloyd Bridges), a former farmer.
Once these men get on the march, we see the director’s obvious attempt at humanizing these soldiers as something more than just your usual cannon fodder. It’s a slow-moving talky, smoky affair (everyone demanding cigarettes every few seconds—“give me a butt!”), but you do get to witness some unique personalities rise to the fore as the soldiers talk away their fears and anxieties in light, nervous chatter, or sometimes more contemplative exchanges about what all the madness around them really adds up to.
Then, of course, once they get orders to hit a German-held farmhouse, the action bit of the film begins in earnest, and the chatter of men is replaced by the chatter of opposing machine-gun fire, with the platoon sustaining some serious damage. But where All Quiet ends with an unmistakable antiwar message, A Walk in the Sun is understandably more conventional in its portrayal of warfare and the righteousness of personal sacrifice in a war that perhaps meant more than the so-called Great War fought a quarter-century earlier. Recommended for film collections with an emphasis on war, World War II, and history.
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