They Were Expendable

This is one of John Ford's best. There is a factoid circulating that this film, released in 1945 when we were about to end the war, was a flop because no one wanted to hear about a defeat in the Philippines, but Tad Gallagher's research shows this not to be true. It was a success, and for good reason.

It's got about everything you'd expect in a war movie released during that year, and it's finely done. Beginning with the photography and location shooting, in which Florida provides a first-rate substitute for the Philippines. No bravura acting is apparent, and none is called for. Montgomery is stolid as the squadron commander. Wayne, as his exec, follows orders competently and even is rather moving when he recites Robert Louis Stevenson's epitaph during a funeral scene, foreshadowing his famous scene when he's given the gold watch in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." Marshall Thompson plays an inexperienced new man, not for the last time. Ward Bond is a hearty boatswain's mate. Donna Reed, looking enchanting, is Wayne's aborted love interest. She doesn't have much screen time, but good use is made of what she has, and after all, it's hard to bang a full-blown romance into this kind of film.

It's pretty downbeat for Ford, when you come right down to it. One after another the "cardboard boxes" that, along with a handful of submarines, constituted MacArthur's navy are lost. Blown-up, wrecked, requisitioned by the Army, or just disappeared. The editing is fine too. Wayne's 34 boat is strafed and damaged by Japanese airplanes and he manages to beach it in a deserted area. He and his men struggle ashore through the surf. The planes return and they bomb it and strafe it until it erupts in flame, sending a geyser of seawater into the air. As Wayne emerges from cover there is a shot of him staring bleakly at his burning boat, then the seawater cascades over his figure forming a black-and-white rainbow as it does so. The eruption of water and its finally falling on Wayne's figure couldn't have been better times if a stopwatch had been used, a fine example of technical expertise.

Made as it was during the war years, it couldn't be more realistic than it is. Sometimes this is a weakness, due not to Ford and his crew but to the strictures of the time. The MTBs were glamorous duty. They were developed during WWI, when ships were mainly designed to be big enough to outshoot other big ships, and torpedoes hadn't proved themselves. Well, they did during the first war, delivered by torpedo boats that were small and fast and could duck under the big guns to deliver their weapons. (The destroyer was originally meant to be a "torpedo boat destroyer.") In WWII they served in every theater and were valuable assets. But they weren't suitable for blue-water work and were mostly used in sheltered waters. "They Were Expendable" shows them attacking under fire at high speed, in some very exciting shots. In real life, as Richard Tregaskis has reported, the engines delivered about 40 knots when new -- fast, but not that fast. A bit faster than a new destroyer, about the same speed as a torpedo. But under conditions in which maintenance was difficult or impossible, as they were here, the efficiency of the engines dropped and so did the boat's speed. The usual technique was not to attack at full speed with flags flying, but to sneak up as quietly as possible on an enemy ship, launch the torpedoes, then get out quickly. Also the torpedoes malfunctioned frequently, and the launching mechanism used gunpowder which flashed when ignited and revealed the boat's position. By the end of the war the boats had reverted to a more primitive system in which the weapons were simply dumped overboard. But that has nothing to do with the movie except that these observations reveal the major action scenes to be what Gallagher calls a boy's matinee program. It didn't happen that way.

Nevertheless, this is an honest movie. We lose, although we've done the best we can. And one of our boys can't kill a dozen of their boys. And you can tell Ford is behind the camera. Lots of booze. A reverence for authority. (MacArthur, whom his biographer, William Manchester, called "a remarkable man", is seen only from a distance, kind of like a spiritual vision seen in the clouds. MacArthur's complexity couldn't be dealt with, and shouldn't have been.)

It's a well-done film, thoughtful and exciting. The enemy aren't referred to as Nips, nobody calls them names or tries to explain their motives. Hemingway may have enjoyed it if he ever saw it because it is a very nice illustration of "grace under pressure." See it if you can.

One reveiwer critices this film about lack of action he misses the point,all the characters are well developed which makes the ending so painfull. The acting is first rate every part is played with a great belief,,there are so many great scenes that touch the heart.The men are bonded together by their actions and when the bonds are broken through death or orders it hurts us all. Donna Reed is gorgeous to look at ,only a small role but well acted. At the end of the film you feel a lump in your throat and a tear forms in your eye,I love this movie.9/10

Released at the end of World War II, with the ink on the final surrender documents still fresh, "They Were Expendable" is a rousing yet sobering look back when American service personnel faced total defeat at enemy hands. It's not a question of "if" for them, just "when," and this is director John Ford's way of paying tribute.

We open in December, 1941, as Lt. John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) is trying to make his superiors see the value of the squadron of PT- boats he commands, presently stationed on Cavite in the Philippines. The brass is not impressed, but then the Japanese begin their offensive and Brickley and his men are put to the test. Can these "high-powered canoes" be counted on to help turn the tide of Japanese cruisers and destroyers?

Not really, not for long.

Surprisingly for a film made while the war in the Pacific still raged, there is an overall tone of resignation bordering on despair, beginning with the title. A lot of things turn out expendable in this movie, not just the PT-boats and the rest of the American forces in the Philippines, but comradeships formed within the squadron, too. Brickley's second-in-command Rusty Ryan (John Wayne) even has to shed a promising romance with nurse Sandy Davyss (Donna Reed) as the exigencies of war take precedence.

The message of "do-and-die" is presented early by Brickley's commander: "You and I are professionals. If the manager says sacrifice, we lay down a bunt and let somebody else hit the home runs."

Wayne is the reason people watch "Expendable," but Montgomery is why it sticks. A combat veteran just back from the war, he keeps it real with a low-key performance. There's no shouting when he issues commands, just firm authority. No longer the pretty boy of 1930s cinema, Montgomery is haggard-looking here, with bags under his eyes, a five-'o-clock shadow, and a noticeable paunch. He's not trying to impress anyone, which is why he is so impressive.

"Who are you working for?" is something he asks Rusty at key moments in the beginning and at the end of the film. This is the moral of the picture, reminding us of the sacrifice being laid.

For Ford and screenwriter Frank "Spig" Wead, that sacrifice takes precedence over story. "They Were Expendable" is an episodic, sometimes rambling affair, with more than a bit of hyperbole about what the PT-boats accomplished. Much time is taken up with the squadron's part in the evacuation of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, whom Ford treats as such a holy thing he is never referred to by name. He's simply called "certain key personnel" and draws admiring stares from all. It's understandable given MacArthur's credited role in turning the war, but it does grate.

The pathos is deep, but never overwhelming. A deathbed scene between Brickley and one of his officers, whom we earlier see being introduced to the rest the squadron on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, is a masterful study of actorly control by both Montgomery and Paul Langton. Several key players in the Ford acting troupe have standout scenes, and with Ford manage to incorporate needed doses of humor in small but strategic ways.

I really like Wayne in this movie; already a star, we see him here beginning to emerge as an actor, whether grousing about PT-duty early on, making a hash of an attempt at telling Sandy he loves her on a bad telephone connection, or reciting verse over two dead comrades. While Montgomery sets the tone of the film, Wayne provides the crucial backbone for it to work.

In a way, the great strength of "They Were Expendable" is also a weakness; that it was made when the subject was not only fresh but still an open wound. It was hard for Ford and his cast to be as objective and detached from the matter as great art often is, to find a way of dealing with the hard truth that the fight for the Philippines was not just a defeat but a useless one where PT-boats proved of minimal help. All the talk of duty gets frustrating when one thinks of the overwhelming futility behind it.

"They Were Expendable" best works as a requiem, speaking of loss and man's hope for nobility in the face of same. It reminds us of whatever bad turns fate has in store for us, we need to be strong and face them out with determination, not necessarily because it will do any good but because it is the best we can do.

There are two films here, one wrapped around the other. The one that begins and ends the film is breezy, action-oriented, mostly shot outdoors. Better than Sands of Iwo Jima, but other than that fairly average WWII fare, even taking into account the fact that it is a largely accurate retelling of a tremendous defeat.

The other film is mostly shot inside, either in the hospital or at social events, and is far darker and more moving. While Ford gives us some of his standard hokum, such as the trio hiding underneath the cottage, this section looks much harder at death, defeat and helplessness.

The indoor setting is key, Ford had shot in shadows before, as in Grapes of Wrath, and he did again in My Darling Clementine. But the scenes in the hospital are even more evocative: they remind us that the war has only begun and that the worst lies ahead. And while some commentators have complained that this movie is too slow, in this section the slow pace makes the feeling of imminent loss that much more poignant. I'm thinking in particular of the scene when Donna Reed does her hair in the mirror before coming to the table. Here we not only get to feast our eyes, along with the officers waiting at the table a few feet away, at the impossibly beautiful Donna Reed, but we get a sense of what a struggle it must have been to try to maintain any sort of normal life in wartime.

I don't suppose it would be possible to have sustained this note throughout the movie--no string quartet can be all adagio--but I wish the bookend sections had measured up to the middle section.

Very few, if any, WW2 films are better than this. I first saw it several years ago on a wet miserable Saturday afternoon in winter and subsequently taped it at the next showing. I have seen it several times since then.

Despite not living through this difficult time I can imagine it capturing how the US forces felt in the early days of the Pacific war. As the film states, these are the men who laid down the initial sacrifice that others built on. They were no doubt aware of this, and that escape before the Japanese arrived was their only real chance of survival.

John Ford created a basically solemn film in keeping with the times. Action is pretty minimal but this does not detract from the film at all. Solid performances from all the caste and one of John Wayne's best performances. Some of the action sequences could have been better (but it was made over 50 years ago), a bit too much of men jumping on and off MTB's, and the dinner scene between Wayne and Donna Reed did nothing for me. A downbeat ending with some crew going off to help plan for later battles and others marching off to almost certain death, but it is in keeping with what the US forces faced at the time.

Recent good WW2 films such as Saving Private Ryan and Thin Red Line show what can be achieved now with a big budget and huge technical advances, but it doesn't make them any better than this film.

I only hope it comes out in DVD in the UK. 9 out of 10.