Lo sbarco di Anzio

It's a not-entirely fictional story about the Ango-American landings at Anzio on Italy's west coast. It's diluted because the story behind those landings is far more interesting than what we see on the screen. Names, personalities, and motives are changed around so that hardly any echo of the real characters remains, although we get a lot of information about characters created in the screenplay.

Basically, Robert Ryan plays General Mark Clark who was in charge of the operation and was in overall command of the Fifth Army. He was an interesting guy for a general -- tall, vain, brave, half-Jewish, a large-featured face like the mask of Tragedy, carrying around a sidearm as a prop. Arthur Kennedy plays General John P. Lewis (modeled after Gen. Lucas), in charge of the landings themselves. Mitchum accuses him of being "timid" (three times) and in a way he was, although it wasn't entirely his fault. Arthur Franz has a small role as General Lucian K. Truscott, the junior general in command of the Third Division (Audie Murphy's division). All the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Here, basically, is how it worked. The Allies of half a dozen nationalities were being slaughtered throwing themselves against the German Gustav line, which ran across the Italian boot from sea to sea, commanded by the unconquerable Monte Cassino. The Anzio landings were designed to catch the enemy by surprise from behind and relieve pressure at the Gustav line. Mark Clark (who saw to it that any reference to the Fifth Army in the press appeared as a reference to "Mark Clark's Fifth Army") had supervised similar earlier landings at Salerno. They were successful, but just barely. The landings at Anzio were handed over to Lucas, whose orders included a drive inland, if possible, to the Alban Hills which commanded a perfect view of the beachhead and the main highway to Rome. Lucas had just troops enough to dig in and consolidate or to race pell mell to the Alban Hills, but not enough troops to do both. Lucas was advised by Clark, "Don't stick your neck out like I did at Salerno." (The line is directly quoted in the movie, but is given to Robert Ryan's fictional general.) So Lucas didn't stick his neck out. He went inland seven miles, stopped short of the Alban Hills, and dug in. Clark, who was on the beach, agreed with the decision.

And Lucas wasn't the cocksure but mistaken strategist played by Arthur Kennedy. The real General Lucas kept a diary and it's full of gloomy forebodings. The Germans, under Kesselring and Mackensen, were caught unprepared. Nothing stood between the allies and the Alban Hills, or Rome for that matter. But Lucas did nothing, and for good reasons. He didn't have the resources to take Rome and hold it. Except for the probe by Rangers, as shown on screen, and others by British troops, everyone dug in and waited for the German reinforcements to deploy, which happened apace. Kesselring was a very efficient tactician and had plenty of time to bring in troops in the stalled Allied beach head.

Instead of Anzio rescuing the troops at the Gustav line, the situation was turned around. In the end, some 24,000 American and 9,000 British casualties were evacuated from the beachhead. Clark fired Lucas and gave command to Truscott. When the German resistance finally collapsed, General Clark had an opportunity to drive eastward across the Italian boot and cut off the German troops to the south. He chose instead to forget about capturing the German army and to zip his own troops north along the highway to Rome so that he could "conquer" the open city. You know -- like Julius Caesar? The German army promptly withdrew north to their next massive defense line, where the Allied advance stalled again.

I leave it to the viewer to decide which story is more engaging, the historical one or the plot we see on the screen, which is mostly the story of seven survivors of the Ranger patrol who try to make their way back to Anzio, a story we've seen many times before. I wish I could at least say that the story presented on screen is well done but the fact is that it's not. This is one of Mitchum's lazier performances. Sometimes he sounds positively drunk. No one else stands out, including Peter Falk, who has the reactivity of a noble gas. Arther Kennedy is the smarmy General Whatever-his-name-is. And some other posters are absolutely right about the score. Whew! A simple-minded would-be catchy love song doesn't turn into a martial theme just because you throw some snare drums behind it and play it as a march.

What a missed opportunity.

Anzio is a weird film. Made at the height of the Viet-Nam War, it's clear this Italian film is trying to be anti-war. Robert Mitchuim, who looks like he hadn't slept for a month, and was on a week-long drinking binge, rambles on about the waste of war. He sounds like a drunk at a upscale cocktail party. Yet, the movie also uses the basic Hollywood heroics to attract the viewing public. The sniper shoot-out is done realistically and is somewhat exciting. Aside from that, the film is way to talkative, way too long, and the action in general is dull.

The best thing about this movie are the performances of Mark Damon and Reni Santoni as two U.S. Army Rangers. Peter Falk was stereotyped with this type of anti-establishment role in the late 1960s and played the exact same role in Castle Keep. Falk also looks beat, drunk, and bored. Arthur Kennedy and Robert Ryan are totally wasted and it's clear they were hired for their names. Earl Holliman gives a modest performance.

The Allied invasion of Anzio,which took the Germans totally by surprise,is the background for this war movie.Because of extreme caution on the part of the Allied commander (Arthur Kennedy)the invasion became a big military failure. The plot concentrates on a small group of men trying to survive behind enemy lines after their platoon had been almost totally wiped out by the Germans.

A totally unconvincing war movie,which is surprising considering the people involved in it. The acting is bad.Robert Mitchum seems to utter his lines as if he was reading a boring book.The dialogue is childish and typical macho-stuff,but there are a few action scenes that are well staged.

This War movie contains crossfire , thrills , large-scale action , battles , shots of troops , tanks and amphibious landings . This average film never pulls things together enough to rise above continuous images of military marches , tanks , smoke and shootouts . This would-be blockbuster is not a description of such an important event but it is a context in which the battle in Italy offers the concrete development , life and death , a few men in the first days after the Allied landing on the beaches of Anzio . Nothing memorable , nonsense scenes and undistinguished recounting with all-star cast though frankly wasted such as Peter Falk as Cpl. Jack Rabinoff , Earl Holliman as Sgt. Abe , Mark Damon as Wally Richardson , Arthur Kennedy as Maj. Gen. Jack Lesley , Robert Ryan as Gen. Carlson , Reni Santoni as Pvt. Movie and Giancarlo Giannini as Private Cellini , among others . Furthermore , a hackneyed screenplay and full of cliché . Evocative cinematography in Panavision by Giuseppe Rotunno, Federico Fellini's usual cameraman ; location filming for this movie was conducted in and around the environs of Rome, Italy . Atmospheric as well as thrilling musical score by Riz Ortalani , including an enjoyable leitmotif . The motion picture was middlingly directed by Edward Dmytryk and Duilio Coletti .

The motion picture was partially based on real events : As Operation Shingle (January 22, 1944) was an Allied amphibious landing in the Italian Campaign against German forces in the area of Anzio, Italy. This operation was aimed at outflanking the German army on the Winter Line and as such allow for an assault on the capital city of Rome . It was one of WWIIs bloodiest battles as the Allies smash through the German lines which have enclosed the Anzio beachhead . The operation was commanded by American Major General John P. Lucas (Arthur Kennedy) and was intended to outflank German forces of the Winter Line and enable an attack on Rome. The resulting combat is commonly called the Battle of Anzio.The success of an amphibious landing at that location, in a basin consisting substantially of reclaimed marshland and surrounded by mountains, depended completely on the element of surprise and the swiftness with which the invaders could move relative to the reaction time of the defenders. Any delay could result in the occupation of the mountains by the defenders and the consequent entrapment of the invaders. Lieutenant General Mark Clark (Robert Ryan as General Carson) , commander of the U.S. Fifth Army, understood that risk, but Clark did not pass on his appreciation of the situation to his subordinate, General Lucas, who preferred to take time to entrench against an expected counterattack. The initial landing achieved complete surprise with no opposition and a jeep patrol even made it as far as the outskirts of Rome. Despite that report, Lucas, who had little confidence in the operation as planned, failed to capitalize on the element of surprise by delaying his advance until he judged his position was sufficiently consolidated and his troops ready. While Lucas consolidated, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (Wolfgang Preiss) , the German commander in the Italian theatre, moved every spare unit to be found into a ring around the beachhead, where his gunners had a clear view of every Allied position. The Germans also stopped the drainage pumps and flooded the reclaimed marsh with salt water, planning to entrap the Allies and destroy them by epidemic. For weeks a rain of shells fell on the beach, the marsh, the harbour, and on anything else observable from the hills, with little distinction between forward and rear positions. After a month of heavy but inconclusive fighting, Lucas was relieved , sent home and replaced by Major General Lucian Truscott. The Allies finally broke out and turned his forces north-west towards Rome which was captured on 4 June. As four months and 30,000 casualties before the Allies finally march to Rome . As a result, the forces of the German Tenth Army at Cassino were able to withdraw and rejoin the rest of Kesselring's forces north of Rome, regroup, and make a fighting withdrawal to his next major prepared defensive position on the Gothic Line

It's a shame that the makers of a movie made about one of the bloodiest battles of WWII chose to make a semi-fictional work. The real story is far more gripping than this movie. Anzio was a four month struggle, which for the Allies, had no rear area. There was nowhere an Allied soldier could go that was out of range of German artillery and planes.

The real battle for Anzio was a true Allied effort with the British and Americans locking in a duel to the death with the best German troops Hitler could put in Italy. It was supposed to break the deadlock of the Gustav line by flanking but was doomed from the start because it lacked sufficient landing strength. True, the road to the Rome WAS uncontested on D-Day, but Kesselring himself said later he would have easily cut off and destroyed any such small force if it extended itself even to the Alban Hills, let alone Rome.

The story of the loss of Darby's Rangers is covered in other movies better; of the 767 Rangers sent on a mission, only six returned. It is but one of many stories of horrific sacrifice of young lives. Further south, in a diversionary mission designed to take pressure off the Anzio landing, the US 36th division lost 1600 men in a single night trying to cross the Rapido river. The British took terrible losses, especially in the German offensive of 18-19 Feb 1944, mainly due to their bad luck of being placed in the line in the area in which Hitler personally chose to concentrate the main German offensive, which came within about 1000 yards of breaking the last line of defense.

Such losses are unimaginable today, yet they were accepted then as the price that must be paid to rid Europe of Hitler.

There are no films that I know of that do justice to Anzio. One would be better served by reading any of the numerous books about Anzio or even reading the write-up at http://www.army.mil/cmh/brochures/anzio/72-19.htm -- it is infinitely more interesting than this movie.