Cry 'Havoc'

During WWII, the various Hollywood studios made a bazillion war films aimed at bolstering the courage and resolve of the American public. Among these pictures were several whose stars were women--often involving nurses or entertainers working with the USO. Warner Brothers' entry into the genre was "Cry 'Havoc'", one that featured a motley crew of non-nurses pressed into service during during the fall of the Philippines. Among these women are the usual stereotypes, such the world-weary and cynical (Ann Sothern) and the stripper (Joan Blondell) and many, many others. The bottom line is that with the likes of Sothern, Blondell, Margaret Sullavan, Faye Bainter, Marsha Hunt, Ella Raines, Frances Gifford and many others, you can't help but have an excellent film. Not quite the distinguished female staff from "The Women"...but rather close...and each woman, on her own, would have been more than capable of carrying a picture.

So is it any good? Of course....the writing, sensationalism and schmaltz all work together to tell the women's side of the war...and tell it very well. It also helps that the film is NOT an ultra-positive look at the fall of Bataan but is rather realistic.

By the way, look for Robert Mitchem who has about a 5 second cameo...saying "I'm alright"...and then promptly dying.

The context of this film is certainly interesting, even for a WWII film. In April, 1942, a very large American force surrendered to the Japanese at the end of the Battle of Bataan in the Philippines, thus precipitating the Bataan Death March, a Japanese war crime. The play that formed the basis for this film was written in September, 1942, and it tells the story from another angle, that of a group of American nurses in the area. However, the Death March had not been disclosed to the American public until January, 1944, after this movie was made and released, and as such, it focuses just on the doomed, lost cause that resulted in a massive surrender. Had the film been made after January 1944, it's a safe bet that the Japanese would have been depicted very differently at the end, given the rage in America over hearing about the atrocities.

The film is dominated by a practically all-female cast, but if you're looking for something that is authentically from a woman's perspective and by today's standards, this ain't it. There's a lot of pithy comments about interactions with soldiers, a silly love triangle with an unseen male officer at the center of the film, and subplots like the finding of a piece of soap leading to bathing and frolicking in a lake. I chalk all this up to trying to lighten a pretty dark story, which was a big American loss, and presumably in there to boost the morale of those watching it.

On the other hand, it's more than a little sobering for me to see a generation looking at itself and saying this is what we're going through, a life and death struggle with nations that are truly acting as evil agents in the world, and we must keep up our spirits. Joan Blondell is great in scenes with wounded or dying soldiers, and it's touching when the nurses categorize a bunch of belongings from the dead, tossing bag after bag of them into a pile. There is a sense of being trapped and doomed, with a lack of medicine and supply shipments bombed. One of them articulates the magnitude of the war, and another provides a good description of the island's strategic importance, making the case that the stand the Allied forces made was important to slow down the Japanese spread across the Pacific. I liked the topical little touches, such as the whistling and humming of the song 'Blues in the Night,' and the snappy dialogue from Ann Sothern, who turns in a strong performance. It's not a great film or even a very good film, but for another window into the period, the setting, and Blondell and Sothern, I found it enjoyable.

Favorite quote: What did you do in burlesque? Um. You know what you do to a banana before you eat it? Well, uh, I do it to music.

Cry Havoc was based on a play by Allan Kenward which the Shuberts produced on Broadway and ran for a grand total of 11 performances over the Christmas/New Year's days of 1942-43. But what flops on Broadway can sometimes be a great success on screen and vice versa.

In this case the subject matter had already been thoroughly covered in the Paramount film So Proudly We Hail and Cry Havoc runs a distinct second to that film. Like the Paramount film, Cry Havoc deals with nurses in the Phillipines after Pearl Harbor and their experiences during the Japanese attack.

Margaret Sullavan was fulfilling the terms of an MGM contract with this movie. Afterwards she would concentrate on the stage and would only do one more film years later, No Sad Songs For Me. She plays the no nonsense army nurse with several new charges rushed up to the Bataan front among them Joan Blondell and Ann Sothern. Fay Bainter played Sullavan's superior and she also was winding up her MGM contract as well.

There are no substantial male roles in this film, they're seen briefly in fighting roles and of course as casualties. If you don't blink you'll see Robert Mitchum utter a couple of words and then die. Sullavan and Sothern have a rivalry going over an unseen army lieutenant.

In fact on the set they had a rivalry going as well. According to a recent biography of Margaret Sullavan, she and Sothern did not get along so their scenes together had some real bite. Sullavan felt that Sothern was slipping into her popular Maisie character for which she was doing a B picture series for MGM.

Cry Havoc should be seen because anything that has Margaret Sullavan should be seen as she left us way too few films for posterity. But this really is quite inferior to So Proudly We Hail.

Assorted characters trapped in a perilous situation, each with his or her own motivations, backstory, hopes and fears, the sort of story ("The Flight of the Phoenix," for instance) that I find irresistible. Thirteen characters, all women - men are entirely peripheral, practically stage props - find themselves trapped in a perilous situation. For that, any danger could do. Here the peril is war. Will they survive? Will they escape? We know (dramatic irony) that even if they survive they will not escape. Very little action occurs. It is not required. We understand the situation. No need to show it dramatically. The story, originally a stage play, is character driven. The situation encompasses everything. How will the women react, each according to her own character, its weaknesses and strengths? That is the strength of "Cry Havoc." That is what makes it compelling. If you prefer a war movie with non-stop action, or a wartime love story, switch to another channel.

It is a women's picture in the true sense, akin to "The Women," "Stage Door," "Tender Comrade," "Caged." Men make fleeting appearances. There is no love story. True, the unseen Lt. Holt is a presence. But he is not a focus. He serves merely to create dramatic tension, to illuminate the characters of two women, Smitty (Margaret Sullavan) and Pat (Ann Southern), whose mismatched personalities clash. The women reveal themselves as they confront the enveloping menace. Andra (Heather Angel) displays courage, Connie (Ella Raines) fear, Sue (Dorothy Morris) intensity, Flo (Marsha Hunt) serenity, Nydia (Diana Lewis) insouciance. The desperate Smitty alone and the commander Capt. Marsh (Fay Bainter), resigned to her fate, realize what is to come. Luisita, the only Philipina in the group (dancer and actress Fely Franquelli) also seems to know. Surrender approaches. Only she hides her face in despair.

We know more now than the screenwriters knew then. We know what awaits: the death march, mistreatment, possibly rape, evidence that only became apparent at the war's end. The Japanese, perhaps for that reason, but surprisingly for a war movie in wartime, are not completely demonized. They are hardly virtuous. They bomb hospitals. They strafe unoffending people bathing in a stream. Still, I have seen far worse denigration in other films. At the end a voice calls out in accented English for the women to surrender. It is not a caricatural voice, not lewd or sinister. The enemy, like the wounded soldiers and Lt. Holt, are a backdrop. The psychological focus remains on the protagonists, their characters, their response to a perilous situation.

"Cry Havoc" was not alone in 1943. Hollywood's other nurses-on-Bataan movie, "So Proudly We Hailed," came out in the same year. It cannot match "Cry Havoc." "So Proudly's" long, rambling tale, told through a flashback with a clinical, newsreel-like voiceover narration, is principally propaganda (the title gives it away) sweetened with a love story. The enemy are emphatically demonized. Men, and how to attract them, are the nurses' constant preoccupation. The story sends its heroine (Claudette Colbert) on an unblushingly sappy, soap-operatic journey. Husband is reported killed. Claudette succumbs to a morbid catatonic depression. She stares unblinking, for weeks. (It's not even clear when or how she enables herself to eat.) She wills herself to die. Of course, husband pops up alive and well, well enough to write her an interminable cloying letter, which we endure until the music mercifully swells to conclude proceedings. Nurse Olivia (Veronica Lake) hates the enemy with such implacable vehemence (her husband had the misfortune to be at Pearl Harbor) that she blows herself up to kill them, hand grenade tucked into her pocket. One film develops character, the other caricature. One, like Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" (Heather Angel was also briefly a passenger on that raft), transcends a war movie. The other remains a wartime curiosity.

Today this film is viewed as lackluster and stagey, but at the time it was released it told a powerful story that needed to be told. MGM always made good use of it's stable of fine supporting players, and this film did a remarkable job. Marsha Hunt, Frances Gifford, Diana Lewis, etc. all got a chance to emote along with the biggies ... Margaret Sullavan, Fay Bainter, Ann Sothern, etc. Other films that should be viewed in the same era include Bataan, So Proudly They Hail, Purple Heart, Wake Island, etc.