User Reviews

As a rule, war movies made in wartime are propaganda; critical and realistic movies about war appear after the fact. An exception is THE STORY OF G.I. JOE, easily the best film about World War II made during the war, and one of the best American war movies of any era. It's not about famed correspondent Ernie Pyle so much as seen through his eyes; his compassionate observations create a portrait of an infantry company in North Africa and Italy, and a tribute to its commanding officer Captain Bill Walker (Robert Mitchum.) The film culminates in a set-piece based on Pyle's essay, "The Death of Captain Waskow."

Unlike most WWII movies, with their stentorian narration, maps and speeches and clear-cut missions, THE STORY OF G.I. JOE is reticent and nearly formless. There are many scenes of soldiers marching along roads, or waiting around in damp caves; one patrol after another sets out and returns without accomplishing anything in particular. Except for Dondaro, the resident "wolf" who thinks of nothing but dames, the soldiers don't fall into the usual stereotypes. Nor do they look like movie stars; they have real, varied faces. They're just a bunch of ordinary guys, with no obvious ethnic or regional characteristics. One is obsessed with his failure to get into the air corps; another incessantly tries to play a record of his son's voice. (This repetitive motif gets tiresome, but pays off in a big way. Freddie Steele is wonderful as the rough-edged, hard-working sergeant desperate to get back to his wife and child.) There are sentimental touches, especially the presence of a small dog whose whining and whimpering underscores tragic moments, but even this doesn't cloy. The dog is actually an effective symbol of the men's emotional vulnerability, their need for comfort and companionship. A little sentimentality is allowable because the film overall is uncommonly realistic. Like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, it's a war movie in which nearly every major character dies, and it conveys equally well the reality of the soldier's life: as the hero in ALL QUIET says, "Our bodies are earth and our thoughts are clay, we eat and sleep with death."

There is a touch of stylized lyricism in the film, and also a good deal of wry humor. Many of the comic lines are copied directly from the cartoons of Bill Mauldin, whose depiction of scruffy, un-heroic, grousing dogfaces was attacked by General MacArthur, but is brought faithfully to life in THE STORY OF G.I. JOE. There is very little action, and the film will disappoint anyone who seeks out war movies for the excitement and explosions. The few battle scenes have the quality of tasteful newsreels; they look realistic but aren't very engaging because they don't focus on the characters we have come to know and care about. Most of the deaths take place off-screen, and are accepted with numb resignation. Understatement is a rare quality in a war movie, and it's what makes THE STORY OF G.I. JOE so powerful. In one wordless scene Pyle sits in a cave while men return from a patrol, collapsing wet and exhausted. Pyle keeps turning nervously to the entrance as each man comes in, and you realize he is waiting to see who doesn't come back. Burgess Meredith is appropriately self-effacing as a man who admires the infantry soldiers so much he feels compelled to suffer alongside them, ashamed of his own safety and of his fame.

Mitchum is characteristically cool, sleepy-eyed and low-key, but his emotional sincerity and the nobility of his character belie his reputation for irreverent cynicism and his dismissal of his acting abilities with comments like, "Look, I got three expressions: looking left, looking right, and looking straight ahead." (He gives a similarly heartfelt performance in HEAVEN KNOWS MR. ALLISON, again as a soldier.) Here, beneath his tough, no-nonsense exterior he's soft-hearted and humane, anguished by his responsibility for sending men to their deaths. There's always a suggestion of sadness in Mitchum's mask-like face (he very rarely smiles) and in his deep weary voice, and both work beautifully here. His character is constructed subtly of small pieces: the way he responds to the crack-up of his faithful sergeant, the humorous scene where he strong-arms a quartermaster into getting turkey and cranberry sauce for his men on Christmas, and above all his conversation with Burgess Meredith as he exhaustedly swigs grappa while writing letters to the families of the dead. This was the scene Mitchum did to audition for the part, and his performance made William Wellman cry. Wellman later said it was one of the most compelling things he ever saw, and he wished he'd had the sets complete, so he could have incorporated the test into the finished film.

By the end of the film, you so love and admire this man that the sight of his corpse, brought down from a mountain by mule, is enough to convey the true heartbreak of war. One soldier sits beside him and strokes his hand; when he has to leave, he straightens the captain's collar and gently touches the side of his face before limping after the company. The fact that this mourner is a character we have not liked up to this point—the conceited, irritating Dondaro—and who has not had a warm relationship with the captain, somehow makes the scene even more touching, saving it from emotional overkill. The field of white crosses behind Pyle's head in his reaction shot is a mute rebuke to triumphalism—an astonishing comment to make just months before the end of the war.

A nicely done tribute to Ernie Pyle, Well-cast w/ Burgess Meredith playing the great reporter. Clearly Spielberg has seen this-one look at Private Ryan and you'll see why I say this. They threw in some pretty accurate detail here-rubble, shrapnel, mud, beards, Willie and Joe types all around, chaos, waiting, etc. It just rings true by and large.

I thought Mitchum was fine here, he played his role steadily and low-keyed, my fave scene of his was where he talked about how he was a writer, too--and begins listing the names of those who've fallen.

Of course, he winds up amongst those names at the end, which is a shame but hardly a surprise.

Check it out, the Monte Cassino part of the Italy campaign is the centerpiece and nicely done too.

*** outta ****

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 quote uttered by Captain Walker in the film,

"The new kids that come up, that's what gets you. The new ones, some of them have just got a little fuzz on their faces. They don't know what its all about. Scared to death. You know, Ernie, I know it ain't my fault that they get killed, but it makes me feel like a murderer. I hate to look at 'em, the new kids."

was based on something told to Ernie Pyle by Sergeant Buck Eversole of the 34th Infantry Division, as reported in a biography of Ernie Pyle in the book "Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches."

BTW: the story of "Captain Walker" as show in the movie was essentially true, even about how his men felt about his death, but the real captain was named Henry Waskow.

I enjoyed this foray into WWII, particularly coming from the era of the actual war. Burgess Meredith, who for my money always looked old no matter what year he was acting in, does a good job as the war correspondent. I was also a fan of the fact that the movie didn't hide the dangers of war or give a sense of the majestic war experience. This one is down and dirty, and that's a good thing. I would like to add the following comments:

1) I don't see this movie having validity OVER Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg created one of the most memorable (good or bad, you could argue) movie experiences ever with the opening D-Day sequence. His is part of the "war is hell" feeling, as is this movie, and they really shouldn't be judged. One person's experience or view isn't going to be the same as another's, even if it regards the same experience.

2) I saw that some people felt this was Robert Mitchum's best performance. If I didn't know going in that Mitchum received his only nomination for this role, I wouldn't have guessed it from watching this movie. Mitchum's two best characters were a couple of the scariest villains ever in movies: the sadistic preacher in "Night of the Hunter", and the serial killer in the original "Cape Fear". Neither of those were nominated for Oscars, which is a shame.

I welcome your comments.

Ernie Pyle was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and war correspondent best known for his stories about ordinary American men fighting World War II. President Harry Truman said, "No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen."

As for this movie, when they were picking someone to play Pyle, he told the filmmakers, "For God's sake, don't let them make me look like a fool."

Producer Lester Cowan picked Burgess Meredith, who was a captain in the Army at the time and could not be released from active duty. That order was overruled by presidential advisor Harry Hopkins and General George C. Marshall approved Meredith's honorable discharge.

The spent time with Pyle in New Mexico as the writer recovered from surviving an accident bombing at the start of Operation Cobra in Normandy He believed that Meredith was the best actor for the role other than Leslie Howard, who had recently died in a plane crash.

Director William A. Wellman, a decorated combat pilot during World War I who served in the Lafayette Flying Corps of the French Air Force and earned a Croix de Guerre with two palms for valorous action, asked the Army for 150 soldiers and demanded that they spoke most of their own dialogue, as well as live and train with the actors.

C Company, 18th Infantry, U. S. Army, has never been in actual combat. As they head to the front lines, Lt. Bill Walker (Robert Mitchum) allows Pyle - who has never seen combat first-hand - to accompany him. Despite a bloody defeat at the Battle of Kasserine Pass, by the time Pyle finds the unit again months later, they've become efficient killing machines. But this movie doesn't shy from the horrors of war, as a battle near Monte Cassino keeps the men in caves, eating from cold ration cans for Christmas, slowly going insane in the face of war. As a man who Pyle watched get married dies in combat and another suffers a breakdown, the writer learns that he has won the Pulitzer, which seems like no comfort. After reuniting with the unit after the battle, he sees a long line of mules carrying the dead, the last one carrying his friend Walker, which causes the men to weep openly.

Pyle sums it up by saying, "For those beneath the wooden crosses, there is nothing we can do, except perhaps to pause and murmur, 'Thanks pal, thanks.'"

Pyle was pretty honest about the movie, saying, "They are still calling it The Story of G. I. Joe. I never did like the title, but nobody could think of a better one, and I was too lazy to try." Sadly, he was killed in action on Ie Shima during the invasion of Okinawa two months before the premiere of the movie about his life.