Der Kommandeur

It's a good twenty years since I last saw this movie on TV and I retained very pleasant memories of it, so much so that when I saw it on DVD a couple of days ago I snapped it up. Watching it again I was equally impressed but I turned to this site with some trepidation fearing that a modern audience may find it slightly risible but I was delighted to read the many raves to which I now add my own. Several commentators have noted a thematic similarity with 'Command Decision' released one year prior to this but no one seems to have realized, or at least not mentioned, that these two movies paved the way for a spate of 'stress' type movies in the 50s, Paul Newman in 'The Rack', Tony Hopkins in 'Fear Strikes Out' (actually a true story of the Red Sox's Jim Piersall and his stress-related breakdown) and ironically Peck himself, some fifteen years later would deal with stress from the other side of the shrink's desk in his eponymous role in 'Captain Newman, MD'. But I digress; several commentators have also mentioned the framing device and again I'd like to endorse the positive comments. The movie opens in 1949 in a London street when civilian Dean Jagger leaves a London Hatters (looking remarkably like Bates in Jermyn Street) and after exchanging what seems like an innocuous bit of dialogue with two shop assistants but is really there to illustrate the difference between Americans and English, he goes on his way, stopping briefly to look at his reflection in a neighboring shop window and find himself face to face with a Toby Jug that clearly has vivid memories for him. Having purchased the Jug he is next seen cycling in the country and walking through an abandoned airfield. Although not essentially a visual film - because the talk is the important thing - helmer Henry King obtains a beautifully lyrical effect by leaving his camera on Jagger's face as the sound of airplane engines grows louder and louder and the grass begins to sway dramatically and all at once we are back in 1942 on an airfield at the heart of the still unproved, ergo still controversial 'daylight' bombing raids over Germany. Quickly, economically, we are made privy to the situation that prevails; the station has been having a lean spell, okay, they may be overworked but there are too many planes not making it back, too many elementary mistakes. Colonel Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill) is idolised by the crews not least because he flies nearly every mission himself and is clearly all but burned-out. Brigadier General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck) realizes as much in an informal conversation with his friend, Davenport, and passes on his misgivings to Major General Ben Pritchard (Millard Mitchell). Finding it difficult to believe Pritchard goes to see for himself and what he DOES see leads him to relieve Davenport of command and replace him with Savage. It's a thankless job for Savage, go in playing the heavy because the humane approach doesn't cut it in wartime. We've been here before a thousand times and we KNOW that in the end the martinet is going to crumble and win the love of the guys but as I've said before in these pages and will no doubt say again, it's all in the wrist. Peck, a fine and underrated actor gives arguably his greatest ever performance here, and he gave many great ones but in no sense does he 'carry' the film because he doesn't have to. EVERYONE involved, even Merrill and Marlowe, normally wooden actors, rise to the occasion and deliver career-best performances. Jagger's performance earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and if he wasn't perhaps the Best Supporting Actor that year it is safe to say that there were none BETTER. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this film is that even now, some sixty years later when stress, combat fatigue, maximum effort, etc have long been identified as medical conditions we can still watch this film with first-time eyes and enjoy it to the full. 9/10

This movie is the only one I have seen that truly depicts how the air war was conducted in the 8th Air Force. It is patterned after the events which actually occurred at the 306th Bomb Group in England in 1943. In real life, General Savage (played by Gregory Peck) was General Frank Armstrong, former commander of the 306th Bomb Group; The first bomb group to fly over Germany.

No gungho up and at 'em men. No false heroics. A great war film, but also an anti-war film of great intensity. Just ordinary men (and boys) doing the job they knew they had got to do. Greg Peck magnificent as the general forced to stiffen the morale of his bomber group, and who he himself eventually cracks under the strain. Dean Jagger outstanding and thoroughly deserving his oscar as best supporting actor. A truly great film, 10 out of 10 in my book. There are still disused airfields like that shown at the beginning only a few miles from where I live (although they were RAF bases). In 1943-45 as a young schoolboy I lived further down south in England and often saw the American Fortresses going to, and returning (not all of them!) from their daylight raids over Germany . A fine tribute to those American airmen wo gave their lives over Europe.

I first saw TOH about 30 years ago, and, yes, it was at a management training course. Video wasn't common then; so it was projected onto a screen, I remember, which was a bonus. I wasn't sure about management principles, but it went straight onto my ten greatest films list, where it remains. A few reasons why I think it's a great war film.

Following the intro with Dean Jagger, the action gets off to a good start with the B17 crash landing, a man staggering out to vomit, a reference to a wounded man's brain being visible and an account of Bishop's bravery. This is strong stuff for 1949.

It avoids a lot of war film clichés. There's no love interest (there's even a nod to the fact that the men weren't always faithful to their loved ones back home). There's no attempt to create a group of men who represent the breadth of society back home. You know the sort of thing - the New York cabbie, the young farm boy, the Texan, the idealistic schoolteacher, the journalist, the architect who's now bombing things that he once built. And it's about failure, it's about men destroying their bodies and their minds for something they don't understand. It reminds me of the colour-sergeant's reply to a soldier in Zulu, who asks 'Why us?'. 'Because we're 'ere, lad. Just us. Nobody else.' If I wanted to sound pretentious, I'd use the word 'existential'.

It's about leadership and is similar to Nortwest Passage. Both Spencer Tracy in that film and Peck in this are aware that they are putting on an act. One of the great scenes is Peck arriving at the base. He's sitting in the front of the car. They stop and Peck offers his driver, whom he calls 'Ernie', a smoke. He thinks for a while, then grinds out his cigarette, says, 'Right, sergeant.' His driver snaps open the rear door and Peck becomes the general. Northwest Passage again - Tracy says 'I'm not a man now, I'm an officer responsible for men. If you meet me when I'm just a man, you might have to use a little charity.' Other nice touches: the way the fur-lined RAF boots become the symbol of leadership. The way the real-life footage is dovetailed into the main action, a tribute to the war-time cameramen as much as the editor. Notice how they filmed detail like empty shells falling to the aircraft floor.

So how could a film about military leadership help a local government manager, of all people. I couldn't bust people or demote them easily, rearrange their duties with a stroke of the pen. I would have loved to set up a leper colony, but the union wouldn't let me. But Peck's stressing of the need for pride in one's group is something that can be transferred to any walk of life.

Without any question, indisputably the greatest WWII film ever (except, perhaps for "Bridge on the River Kwai"; but that's a WWII story only in the same sense that "Moby Dick" is a book about a whale). There are no weaknesses in this movie. The screenplay is perfect, rooted as it is in the historical reality of the U. S.'s attempt to prove the superiority of Daylight Precision Bombing over the Brits favored strategy of night bombing. The terrible human pressures it placed on young American pilots AND their leaders has never been so well-portrayed on film. Dramatic tension is perfectly manipulated, and the characters are well-drawn, sympathetic and fully developed. Every member of this superb cast gives this great material the great acting it deserves. The usage of actual WWII bombing footage adds to the sense of reality. The psychological drama - what "maximum effort" does to people - is at the core of the story and supercedes the mere military aspect. And the device of the framing scenes - Harvey Stovall (Dean Jagger) recollecting the story while standing in the abandoned airstrip - is brilliant. It gives the tale an overwhelmingly bittersweet feeling of "long-ago" nostalgia. It is so powerful that Spielberg must have consciously had 12 O'clock High in mind when he used the same device in Saving Private Ryan to make that whole film a flashback, just as this one is. To hell with the flashy flamboyance of Citizen Kane; I would have to give 12 O'clock High a better shot at being "the best movie ever made". One mark of the film's realistic portrayal of psychological issues in warfare is that for many years it was required viewing in many military leadership classes. Film buffs &/or devotees of WWII history who haven't seen this one are living a deprived existence.