Bastogne

Dedicated to the battered bastards of Bastogne, this major player in the war film genre is directed by William Wellman & tells the story of a U.S. Army division involved in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The terrific cast features George Murphy, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban, Van Johnson and James Whitmore. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and won two - one for Robert Pirosh's bold and fluctuating screenplay and one for Paul Vogel's realism inducing black-and-white cinematography.

Battleground is an important war film in many ways. Coming as it did at the tail end of the 40s, it was not required to be a flag waving morale booster for a country at war. Free of this burden, Wellman & Pirosh (an actual veteran of the Bastogne engagement), crafted a grunts eye view of the war. Forcing us the viewers to spend the whole of the movie with one army squad (the 101st Airborne Division), we get to know them, their fears & peccadilloes etc. Pirosh cleverly telling it as it was, scared men doing their duty. It's that we have been with them as their persona's have been laid bare, that makes the battle sequences even more potent. The jokes have stopped, the camaraderie and harmless rivalries replaced by men crying for their mothers or in some mud hole fighting for their lives. This snow covered and fog shrouded part of Belgium a bleak canvas for the harshness of war (amazingly shot on the lot). It's a stunningly structured film, one that doesn't resort to type, it subverts the many war film plot developments that are rife in genre pieces that both preceded and came post its release.

The cast are uniformly strong, and all get get ample time to impact on the narrative. Something that isn't always the case with ensemble pieces. Somebody else was strong too, Producer Dore Schary, who had to fight an unconvinced Louis B. Mayer (MGM head man) to get the film made. Schary's faith in the piece was rewarded as the film became a critical darling and a box office winner. It's not hard to see why for this is a realistic and gritty look at the hardships of war and those that fought in it. Influencing many that followed it by entertaining without gusto histrionics, Battleground is still very much a template war film. 8.5/10

Before "Band of Brothers" came out, I considered this the best, most accurate depiction of an infantry unit in action ever, and I still think it has an edge over "Saving Private Ryan" and "Patton" as the greatest World War II movie(not mini-series) yet made.

The entire cast is not only fun to watch, but very believable in their individual roles, and as a veteran, I can attest to the fact that the swings between humor and deep thoughts in their conversations are dead on accurate. Anybody who's ever served in an infantry unit will tell you that for all the bickering back and forth, members of a squad, platoon, or company will always look out for each other. "Battleground" captures this perfectly.

One of the saddest things for me about this movie is how few people know of it. Except for the occasional airing on AMC or TCM, it rarely shows up on TV and that's a shame. It's well worth the time and effort to find this one.

I watched this movie all the time with my Grandpa growing up. He was a vet of the US Army in the Pacific and he told me that this was the only movie where a M-1 rifle and artillery actually sounded real. That is because both were the real sounds they made. The artillery was actually recorded during the war and used in the film.

The characters you can connect with. The circumstances were anything but ideal to fight a war in. You see Layton grow into a vet before your eyes. You see men scared, terrified, and there for each other. Until "Band of Brothers" came out this was my favorite flick about WWII, and it's definitely the best of the "old school" war movies.

"Battleground" is probably the best movie made about the Battle of the Bulge. After seeing "Band of Brothers", I bought "Battleground" and watched it for the fourth(?) time. I thought the characters were well done. I saw this movie for the second time when I was in the US Army, and it turned me off. I couldn't believe guys were measuring their chances of getting off the line by hoping for the million dollar wound, or some other malady. The third time I saw this movie, I had grown up and realized that, human nature being what it is, nothing about their behavior was abnormal. While I was growing up, Van Johnson was the model GI in all of his movies, as he is in this. I liked the entire cast in this movie. I think one of the best scenes was the Christmas gathering with the Chaplin. His "Was this trip necessary?" speech was one of the high points of the movie for me then and now. This movie, along with "Band of Brothers" are a must see.

This is the best movie ever made about a democratic society going to war against fascism. The movie perfectly captures the fear and courage of American soldiers in war, fighting not to conquer like the Germans or destroy civilization like the terrorists, but to defend their fellow man. There's no sunshine patriotism in this movie. No flag waving or false heroics. But the lofty ideas behind the nation that made men such as these is there hidden like the sun behind fog and clouds. And at the end, the glory embodied in the men blazes true and shines as brightly as the sun when the weather lifts.