Landung in Salerno

This war drama ranks among the best in its genre. An outstanding ensemble cast and intense story makes for an interesting look at the realism of war. This film follows a platoon of American soldiers from the time they land in Europe until they complete their mission...capturing a German occupied farmhouse in World War Two Italy. The talented and diverse cast includes:Dana Andrews, John Ireland, Lloyd Bridges, George Tyne, Huntz Hall and Richard Conte. Kudos also to director Lewis Milestone.

Hardly many war films are like this, nothing really happens here but it's still exciting. American infantry platoon lands at Salerno, Italy in 1943 and has orders to capture and hold a farmhouse some miles ahead. The men don't know nothing about what is waiting for them. Will the enemy open fire right at the beach and kill all of them? Will there be mines? Who is their enemy anyway, Germans or Italians? Will they get strafed by enemy aircraft of will 'our boys' control the skies? These are questions that a regular infantryman may ask from himself. They don't know what is waiting for them and they try to guess what the overall situation is. The movie is lots of talking, waiting and walking by the Italian countryside. The soldiers must be alert at all times and there may be false alarms too. Action comes suddenly and is also quickly committed.

This is another of those war movies that can be called 'realistic'. In many post-modern war movie realism is seen as a synonym of lots of blood and dying soldiers yelling 'mommy' and such. I don't call that realism - these men know exactly how to deal with disturbing things that war contains. They ignore things that they cannot emotionally handle and this must also be the way those things were handled in real war. This may well be seen as a dull movie, but it also shows the war as it really was. There is no pathos at all in this movie and that is why many people like it.

I really enjoyed the book "A Walk in the Sun", finding it printed in its entirety in "The Giant Book of WWII Stories". It is a classic story and an equally classic movie. The movie sticks quite closely to the book with only a few changes. Some of the dialogue is lifted straight from the pages of the novella. It is the story of a platoon in WWII trying to capture a farmhouse. The characters are all strong and what they talk about while in the middle of a war is what grips you. I highly recommend both the book and the film.

One of these fine days, the landing at Salerno which believe it or not was more difficult than the invasion of Normandy will get a full screen treatment like The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan. The combined allied force was in a pitched battle for 21 days until the issue was decided. A lot was going on away from the sidebar action that is depicted in A Walk In the Sun.

The sidebar action involved a platoon that lands a few miles away from the beach with the objective of blowing up a bridge and taking a strategically located farm house. The lieutenant is killed even before the landing and the various sergeants take over. One of them, Herbert Rudley cracks under the strain, and Dana Andrews assumes overall command of the mission.

A Walk in the Sun is not so much a war story as a war character study. It's interesting to contrast this film with Lewis Milestone's masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front. Both involve citizen soldiers going to war and both are studies into the types of people making up a platoon. Milestone's sympathies are with both, but he does recognize the necessity for the trip to Europe made by these Americans in Italy.

Best in the film in my opinion is Richard Conte, the cynical wisecracking GI from, where else, Brooklyn. According to Hollywood, there wasn't a platoon in any theater of war in the forties that did not have a GI from Brooklyn. Huntz Hall, taking leave from the East Side Kids, also has a small part as one of the GIs in this platoon.

The film was made as the war ended in Europe. No mock heroics here, just the greatest generation demonstrating why they were just that.

One of the best war movies ever made, directed by Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front), this movie is distinguished by its depiction of war from the soldier's individual point of view. Unlike most war movies, this is infantry combat as seen through the eyes of several members of a platoon as it walks through the Italian countryside in 1943 on its way to seize a German observation post. In all the action sequences, you never see anything that the individual soldier (German, Italian or American) depicted on the screen doesn't see. You only see what is happening around him as he sees it. I've seen them all, and no other director ever approached war filming this way. And I can tell you personally that this is the way it was in combat. The only errors in the entire movie involved grenades: you don't blow bridges with them and you don't pull their pins with your teeth--that's the best way I know of pulling out a tooth w/o a dentist's helping hand. A landmark movie made during the war and only released after the war ended in 1945 because of the final scenes. Matched only by William Wellman's "A Story of GI Joe," this is the best film on infantry combat produced from World War II. Yes, yes, I've seen "Saving Private Ryan." Except for the shock of the first 20 minutes, it's Steven Spielberg's three-star remembrance of his boyhood comic book war stories.