The Naked and the Dead

"The Naked and the Dead" is a film based on a novel by Norman Mailer, which was based on his experiences fighing in the Pacific during WWII. I expected the movie to stink, as Mailer hated the final film and thought it the worst movie he'd seen. After seeing it, I assume he felt that way because they bastardized his story...not because the film was bad in any other way.

"The Naked and the Dead" is a HUGE counterpoint to the average war film made during WWII. The WWII era movies were all very patriotic...and featured men who were dedicated and loved serving their country. The film, on the other hand, shows that overwhelming patriotism is NOT what all soldiers feel...most just want to do their job and survive. And, in a HUGE departure from the war era films, some are just sadists who love killing!

The story is set on some island in the Pacific and for much of the film there are two parallel stories. One is about a company of soldiers serving under a competent but sociopathic sergeant (Aldo Ray). He knows is job, is good at it but also is obsessed with killing...even birds, captured prisoners and his commanding officer!! The other is about a lieutenant (Cliff Robertson) who is serving as the adjutant for a sadistic jerk of a general (Raymond Massey). Eventually the two stories intersect.

I hate films that glorify war or make it look fun...so I appreciated this movie because it never even came close to doing either! The acting and script are very good...though I have no idea what the source novel is like by comparison. Apparently Mailer thought the difference was huge.

By the way, one part of the film I hated. A man is bitten by a poisonous snake...something that I am sure happened occasionally. First, the men cut open the wound and try sucking out the poison (something you should NEVER do). Second, the guy literally died in a minute or two...something that just doesn't happen...even with the most dangerous of snakes. It was a sloppy scene, that's for sure.

A platoon of marines led by callow, idealistic Lieutenant Hearn (Cliff Robertson) and battle-hardened, cynical Sergeant Croft (Aldo Ray) are sent on a dangerous recon mission by vainglorious but insecure General Cummings (Raymond Massey). Published shortly after the end of the war, Norman Mailer's book was a crude, unflinching, and critical view of war in the Pacific theatre. The much more superficial movie version, released 10 years later, returns to the usual Hollywood redemptive war narrative in which the good, while they may suffer, are ultimately rewarded, and the bad, while they may seem to succeed, are ultimately punished. The movie limits the book's philosophical dialogue between egalitarian Hearn and rank-conscious Cummings but then tacks on a final 'uplifting' exchange that is not (and could not be) in the book. The marine platoon is a little less stereotypical than in earlier war-era films but the soldiers still seem more like 'characters' than people. Ray is good as hard-assed Sgt. Croft (although the character has been toned down a bit from Mailer's sadistic sociopath). The film's combat scenes are a mixed bag: the scenes of fighting between the platoon and the Japanese defenders aren't bad (although the marines seem to be able to lob a hand-grenade pretty far), but the 'showpieces' rely largely on non-period footage and equipment (with the Japanese using easily recognizable American equipment). While pre-CGI filmmakers can be forgiven for not always being historically correct, I tend to watch these kinds of films for the 'combat' scenes and find the anachronisms distracting and disappointing. By the end of the 1950's, despite the Cold War jingoism, there were a number of good antiwar films but the producers of this film seem to have been unwilling to give vision to Mailer's harsh voice. Note: there are a number of IMDB reviewers more familiar with the book than I who have commented in depth about the differences between the two versions (which inevitably includes 'spoilers').

Raoul Walsh's films of the 1950's are uncharted territory, much like the South Pacific island where most of the action in Naked and the Dead unfolds. Many of the films aren't available or are rarely seen. Of those that are, I'm only familiar with a series of Clark Gable films serving mostly as an excuse for Walsh, through Gable, to flaunt his reactionary values, missing body parts, and old-sea-salt virility. In none of these films was there any indication that Walsh could deliver something of the scale and complexity of Naked and the Dead, which more than equals mid-period lulus like The Roaring Twenties.

Walsh was an arbitrary choice to film Norman Mailer's novel. Mailer wrote the book as a young man with a name to make and awards to win. In 1958 Walsh had nothing left to prove to anyone -- even when he was Mailer's age, I can't imagine him going for Mailer's bludgeoning tactics. Though I'm no Mailer acolyte, you do miss his chutzpah at first, as the movie has a laid-back feel more appropriate for a beach volleyball film. An amphibious landing that brings echoes of D-Day is carried out near the beginning of the film, during which we're told that 130 men have died, but we don't see a single limb get blown off. We just get a couple shots of smoke rising out of the forest as the ships land. You start to worry that Walsh, like in those Errol Flynn war films of the 1940's, has brought his crew down to Pasadena to film in a state park with three potted palm trees.

However, the interplay between the actors -- Walsh favors long-takes with eight or nine guys just shooting the s--t, stirring hooch and whining about their superiors -- is enough to keep you watching. Eventually it dawns on you that Walsh has seen much more of life than Mailer. He is long past the need to sadistically linger on the more dramatic moments of war. You can feel Walsh feeding off his group of actors, basking in their youth while lovingly depicting their trials of life, the same ones he underwent half a century ago. The approach is very much like Scorsese's in The Aviator in its tendency to concentrate on hope and promise, a refusal to wallow in the ugly. Right to the end Walsh resists the impulse to ratchet up the tension -- like a conductor guiding his music with a steady pulse, the movie just keeps plodding along, and a horrific death is given no more emphasis than a running joke about Raymond Massey's character getting a daily bunch of flowers.

In the final hour, his method pays off. The landscapes open up in spectacular fashion, just as each character moves inexorably towards an action that will define them within time like a pin in a map. An authenticity grips the movie and won't let go. The way Walsh has of letting major events happen offscreen begins to feel ominous and evocative of unseen forces, worthy of Jacques Tourneur, and the underpopulated battles take on massive grandeur in the imagination. A culminating sequence featuring rows upon rows of tanks and mortars battering an invisible enemy is what all directors want to achieve -- a moment that goes beyond words into an expression of pure cosmic power, millenia of sorrow and rage blending into a firework display for the gods.

Think of this as The Naked and the Dead, and you'll be disappointed. Think of it as what Terence Malick wanted to do with The Thin Red Line, and you will see exactly where he went wrong, and where Walsh succeeds. Walsh blows the world up good, but unlike the lords of war, he does it for love, not personal gain. And he takes us all out equally.

*Analysis of the characters in the film

The main point in the film is the conflict between Hearn and Cummings. Hearn is the representative of humanity and moral, and Cummings is the opposite against him. There are several events showing the conflict. Firstly, Cummings summons Hearn afterward and chastises him for the remark, then cautions him against treating the soldiers humanely and urges him to accept that war means killing and death. Cummings suggests that Hearn instills fear and hatred in his men, but the lieutenant rejects Cummings' notion as immoral. Secondly, Cummings tells Hearn that in this moment of great destiny for America the only morality is power.

There are also several branch lines about the platoon. Most of them are tragic. For example, Gallagher is devastated to learn that his pregnant wife has died in childbirth. Croft, who is painful because of the infidelity of his wife, turns out to be calloused and brutal, and does not hesitate to personally execute a Japanese prisoner during the initial landing. Wyman, who is bitten by a poisonous snake and dies quickly at a river crossing. When Hearn's group is fired upon from the grove, Wilson is wounded. Despite Croft's protest, Hearn orders him to be taken back to headquarters, but the corporal dies moments later. Roth sprains his ankle during the dangerous climb and then later freezes in fear on a narrow precipice. Intending to spur Roth on, Croft calls him a "lousy Jew," causing the soldier to bolt and fall to his death.

Fearing Croft will lead them to their deaths, Red challenges him but backs down when the sergeant threatens to kill him. At the peak, Croft investigates the other side of the hill alone only to be shot and killed by another Japanese patrol. What leads these people to the deathful disaster is not the cruelty of war, but the fear which is produced by people himself.

At the end of the film, Cummings visits the recovering Hearn in the infirmary a few days later. Hearn tells the general that Ridges and Goldstein's dedication saved his life and bolstered his belief that man's innate decency will survive the viciousness of war. Maybe this is an optimistic expectation to reveal the commitment about humanity.

*The theme of the novel

The story is not simply a narrative of a long war, but something deeper. It reflects a social and historical themes. The background of the story is a fictional and tropical island. There are two parallel clues: the war and the people in the war.

The story takes place on an island in the South Pacific, allowing readers to see the relationship between officers and soldiers in the American army, which is also a microcosm of American society. Therefore, "The Naked and the Dead" is over the scope of war literature. It is a symbolic to the contradiction between barbarity and humanity. The meaning of "Naked" in the title is "unshielded" and "non-protection". It can also be understood as "the explosion of human". The thought behind the novel is realism and social criticism. It also has a strong naturalistic color. By using the behaviour out of fear and horror to describe the people as "the Naked and the Dead", Mailer seems to warn the public that fascism may revive in this century. This is an innovation to those regular war theme novels.

"They are always living in the wild and irrational ...... and I am lost in the kaleidoscope of death inside." Perhaps there are always only two characters in Norman Mailer's novel: "the Naked", who lose the conscience of humanity, and "the Dead", the shadow of death shrouded.

*Differences between the novel and the film

When Norman Mailer saw the movie one night with his second wife, Adele, he complained to her that Hollywood "had ruined his story." Raoul Walsh, the director, is quoted in the article as saying the film would not stick too closely to the novel, as many of the incidents that were considered shocking at the time of the book's release had already appeared in other films. He had the script rewritten--often as the film moved through production--and added vivid battle scenes including flamethrowers and tanks, that were nowhere in the novel.

The apparent differences between the novel and the film were the characters. In the film, Hearn was wounded, not killed as he was in the book. The flashbacks featuring Hearn also sharply contrasted his cavalier civilian playboy behavior with his serious consideration of moral issues.

The ill-fated Sergeant Croft, who it was explained, was driven by an overweening urge to command because of the memory of an unfaithful wife. From his actions in the film, however, one was led to think that he just liked killing.

Roth, the Jewish soldier who was accidentally killed on patrol. In the novel, Roth was drawn as an intellectual who is ambivalent about his Jewishness but is unable to escape anti-Semitism. The film portrayed the cruel anti-Semitism of Roth's fellow soldiers but ignored the complexities of his own personality.

Wilson, a hard-drinking country boy who died in the book (but made it through the movie). Among the major changes from the book to the film, the ending of the film was the most affirmative. In the book, the idealist "Hearn" was killed and the sadistic "Croft" survived. Norman Mailer showed a pessimistic view of humanity, but the film weakened it. The film caught neither the spirit nor the intent of the original yarn and became just another war picture.

Mailer was so disappointed that he filed suit against RKO Teleradio Pictures and Warner Bros in 1963, seeking reversion of all rights to "The Naked and the Dead". The suit was dismissed.

*The film review

"The Naked and the Dead" has resulted in a professionally but derivative action drama, which is no more memorable than similar sagas of strife that have preceded it. Director Raoul Walsh has filled the screen with striking vistas in beautiful color, the chilling sound and the fury of conflict, but the hearts, minds and motives of men exposed to sudden and often useless death, which gave the book its awesome power, serve merely as sketchy background to battle in this uneven picturization that was unveiled at the Capitol yesterday.

The film was come up with an aspect recounted by a platoon, doomed to decimation in securing a small island in the Pacific in 1943. The resentment, passions, brutalities and backgrounds of the men were stated and restated but were generally left with the impression of actors' speaking lines. Here we can see the platoon is in brief and personal outline. They are lonely in a terrible world they never made. They are afraid, they hate the jungle, their rugged assignments, themselves and each other. They recall their sweethearts and wives often. Some are lucky and do survive but others not. It was nearly always as simple as that.

Although the Sanders' dialog is plentiful but short of nuances, the platoon's stealthy trek, its skirmishes with Japanese patrols and the massive, climactic assault have been directed with the terrifying realism. It was a great war film. A viewer cannot help but recall scenes of the burning of enemy troops as the lush grass is ignited by the hidden G. I.'s; the deathly throes of a private bitten by a snake; the tension of the men as they try to scale a sheer cliff, the sounds and the look of the jungle, which have been beautifully captured in this color film. Director Walsh and his associates have carefully drawn an impressively stark face of war from "The Naked and the Dead" but only seldom do deeply dissect the people involved in it.

I saw this movie on a local PBS station about the same time I was writing a Term Paper on the novel. I have already read the novel several times, but I still thought that the movie perspective might be helpful. Needless to say I was wrong. The movie turns a book about the futility of the individual's role in war into a boiler plate feel good war movie w/ a happy ending. One of the most important parts of the novel, where Hearn is betrayed despite his best efforts to be a "good" leader, is scrapped. Hearn not only survives, but the movie goes on the kill the ass hole, Sgt Croft. In the book we see a group of individuals who all want to singlehandedly make a difference and who all end up failing because modern war has grown beyond the control of the individual. In the movie we see a division of good guys and bad guys where where good guys win and the bad guys get what's coming. Finally I would like to point out that this movie is a waste of time or unpleasant to watch. If its going to be on TV by all means watch it, but if you've read the book brace yourself to be VERY disappointed.