Otto uomini di ferro

"Eight Iron Men" is a close-up picture of the American GIs of one squad in the later days of combat in World War II. This squad has been holding a patrol position in a bombed town where German snipers are in hiding. When one three-man patrol is returning to the squad's position, it's fired upon by a machine gun and one of the men slips and is pinned down. The rest of the film has the members of the squad trying to decide to rescue the pinned down GI, or not. With orders coming for them to withdraw behind their lines, there's some nice drama in this.

I think a couple of characters were overly played. Lee Marvin will be the most recognized of the cast as Sgt. Joe Mooney. He shows the turmoil of not wanting to leave a man behind and the risking of more lives to save the one man. To audiences who have never been in such a situation (including veterans like me with no combat time), "Iron Men" does seem very talky. But realizing that this squad has been holed up in this position for more than two weeks, it's not so unreasonable to think that they may talk about things other than their current situation. So, food, the girl back home, family and some fun times were all things that GIs in combat were likely to think and talk about with their fellow GIs.

While some GIs no doubt had a pinup picture of a famous movie personality, how many had fox holes or lodgings in combat where they could put a magazine photo on a wall? The movie-star pinup was one of those throwaway items that Hollywood seemed to toss into so many war movies after World War II.

This is an all-male cast and story, but Columbia managed to sneak some "hot" female type in the pinups and dreams of a couple of the GIs. And, in its usual style (or lack thereof), the movie promos highlighted the sexual allure, which really accounted for a small amount of film time. The cinematography and direction elevated this film.

My favorite line in this film is when Capt. Trelawny says to Sgt. Mooney, "You know, sergeant, before the war I used to be a car salesman. I used to smile all the time. Every time someone came in the door I gave 'em a big smile."

A mix of "Stalag 17" and television's "Combat" series (which it inspired), "Eight Iron Men" (1952) is my favorite war movie. Made when Director Edward Dmytryk was still paying attention to his acting for the camera direction, "Eight Iron Men" is Harry Brown's adaptation of his play "A Sound of Hunting". Brown would later write one of the more classic episodes of "Combat".

Dmytryk, noted for his action sequences, was smart enough to concentrate on the play's extremely clever repartee between the members of an infantry squad who are marking time in the ruins of a destroyed town in Europe late in WWII. Squad leader Sgt. Mooney (Lee Marvin) has somehow managed to keep his group intact up to this point of the war. His goal of leaving the town with all seven of his men is threatened when the squad's most inept member Private Small (George Cooper) gets himself pinned down in a shell-hole; a few yards away from a well-protected German machine gun nest.

With orders to pull back the squad is torn between disobeying or abandoning their buddy to the Germans. Their decision is further complicated by not knowing if Small is still alive. Once this situation has been fleshed out, Dmytryk builds up the tension as it becomes closer and closer to the time they must leave.

By the end of the film you feel like you know all the six of Mooney's multi-ethnic squad members. There is a comedian (Nick Dennis), a hot-head (Richard Kiley), a pragmatist (Arthur Franz), a cub scout (Dickie Moore), a war-weary dreamer (James Griffith), and a dame obsessed gold brick (Bonar Colleano).

Much like "Das Boot" and "Cross of Iron", the members of the squad have shared so many intense experiences that they have become closer to each other than they ever were to their own family members. This makes their choice even more difficult.

Like the best anti-war films, "Eight Iron Men" is full of hard-bitten cynicism as a group of humans try to maintain their dignity in an insane environment. The face of war is gritty-not glamorous in "Eight Iron Men" and the film is not for those looking for fast edits and flashy action sequences.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Plainly based on a play, and like the film version a few years later of 'The Long and the Short and the Tall' an obvious studio set reminiscent of the dug-out in 'Journey's End' provides the confined backdrop to the squabblings of the cast; which director Dmytryk's exaggerated compositions simply emphasise the theatricality of. You can understand the change of title from 'A Sound of Hunting' to the more rugged 'Eight Iron Men'; but anybody lured in by the posters flaunting Mary Castle from the ghastly dream sequences really was in for a big disappointment...!

The rain-soaked exteriors in a bombed-out town anticipate the later scenes in 'Saving Private Ryan' (which after the famous opening sequence also became very talky), and the cast, while then short on star power (Kiley & Marvin made it big later, the former on Broadway) is an interesting one to connoisseurs of old movies.

Producer Stanley Kramer and Director Edward Dmytryk deliberately chose a cast of unknowns who later did move on to varying degrees of success in the film industry, most notably Lee Marvin, for the cast of Eight Iron Men.

It's a tense situation for this squad in some small town on the Italian front in World War II. One of their number is pinned down by a machine gun and it's wearing on the nerves of the other seven. Especially when they get orders to pull back and leave him until replacements come.

The film shows the tension on all of them. Lee Marvin with his war experience in the Pacific Theater is a natural as the concerned sergeant. Other good performances are from Arthur Franz, Richard Kiley, Nick Dennis, and most of all Bonar Colleano whose career was mostly in the United Kingdom. This was one of the few American made films for the New York City expatriate.

Eight Iron Men is based on a flop play on Broadway by Harry Brown which ran only 23 performances in 1945 and featured Sam Levene and a most unknown Burt Lancaster. Obviously someone named Harry Cohn didn't want to pay Lancaster's going rate in 1952 to get him for the screen version.

Even without Burt, Eight Iron Men is a well made war drama and should not be missed.

Based on a 1945 play by Harry Brown, this dreary movie moves between standard banter between men in a somewhat stressful situation (the bombed out rubble of a house in Italy) who are ordered out but are reluctant to leave a pinned down member of the platoon, and dream sequences that are painful, and populated by Rita Hayworth look-a-likes. While an excellent example of the continuing development of the persona of Lee Marvin, and containing one of last performances of Bonar Colleano, who would be killed in an auto accident a few years later, it is really a vehicle for several Hollywood character actors whose faces but not names come readily to mind (Arthur Franz, Richard Kiley (pre LaMancha), Barney Phillips and James Griffith). Not available on DVD or VHS, it surfaces occasionally on TV in connection with Lee Marvin retrospectives. That is the only reason to see this film.