Sangue por Glória

What do you get when you combine an over the hlll Cagney with a second-rate cast and first-rate director? A mess. And that's what this is; a mess. It is so cartoonish in spots that I expected Bugs Bunny to pop out on screen at times. Everyone is over the top, and the only good sequences are between the young man and the young French girl, but those are buried under a tidal wave of cornball, false bravado, tired sterotypes and corny dialogue (did I mention the film was corny?).

And despite all of this corn (which is substantial), parts of the film ring true. Especially the part where Marines go back for second and third servings of frontline crap. I happen to know for a fact this is true; as amazingly stupid as it might appear. My best friend during the Vietnam war was on leave with me in Okinawa for a month. I was in the Army, and he was a marine. He had been wounded twice. And he went back for a third time. After we were drinking for a bit, I asked him how could he be so stupid as to go back for a third time? He told me his friends were there, and that they depended on him. I had nothing I could say. So, some of this corn is true, but most of the film is baloney.

Marine buddies James Cagney (as Captain Flagg) and Dan Dailey (as Sergeant Quirt) carouse through World War I, and eventually become rivals for the affections of beautifully-proportioned Frenchwoman Corinne Calvet (as Charmaine). Newly arriving from Philadelphia, handsome 22-year-old Robert Wagner (as Private Lewisohn) is attracted to local 17-year-old Marisa Pavan (as Nicole Bouchard). The pretty, dark-haired girl's father is upset. Rivaling Mr. Wagner for handsomeness, Craig Hill (as Aldrich) asks the titular question, "What price glory?" Future TV stars William Demarest and Harry Morgan support the troops...

This successful stage comedy-drama became a huge "silent" film hit for Fox in 1926, winning Quigley Publications "Best Picture" award and rising high in everyone's "Ten Best" list for the year. This 1952 re-make did not score as well with audiences...

One of the original film's "all-talking" comedy sequels was the semi-musical "The Cock-Eyed World" (1929), which is how this project was initially envisioned. We have colorful cinematic sets, a few remaining musical performances and stage-lighting techniques. Director John Ford and the Fox personnel assembled were much more aware of the earlier films, helping to explain this misfire. The story began as an anti-war statement; while present, the point gets lost in the inebriated interplay between Mr. Cagney and Mr. Dailey. The actors are forced to alternate between broad "F Troop"-style antics and the accumulation of dead bodies.

***** What Price Glory (7/25/52) John Ford ~ James Cagney, Dan Dailey, Corinne Calvet, Robert Wagner

Ford might be best known for his Westerns, but he made nearly as many military pictures as he made Westerns (perhaps more if we were to count his cavalry pictures in the military genre). What Price Glory is a WWI picture starring James Cagney as a commanding officer. He's involved with the daughter of an innkeeper, Charmaine (Corinne Calvet), but he doesn't think he should marry her. He pushes off one of his underlings (Dan Dailey) on her, but later regrets it. There's also a nice romantic subplot involving a young Robert Wagner and a French teenager, Marisa Pavan. A lot of it works very well. I love Calvet. She's best known for her role in Anthony Mann's The Far Country, where she played the pig-tailed girl with the stocking cap who was always trying to sing for Jimmy Stewart. Oh, I know she's not a great actress, but she's so damn cute and charming. I love her character here, nice but opportunistic. The sets and cinematography are very good. The one aspect that really harms it is Dan Dailey. He gives a very weak performance and is very unsympathetic. 7/10.

So much has been said in the reviews to date that none of it bears repeating, but there are a couple of points one should be aware of before investing 1hr 45min into this movie. Though filmed in 1952, the style has the feel of a movie from the late 30's/early 40's with the slapstick violence, goofy foreigners, and hammy acting. I expect and tolerate these things from pre-WWII flicks, but is hard to take from something produced in the 1950's.

As far as the anti-war element goes, this version is more of a tragic story of war than a pacifist piece. No pacifist here, but if you are looking for this from What Price Glory you'll be disappointed.

In the mid-1920s, when What Price Glory? debuted as a play and was filmed for the first time, there was a popular anti-war mood, and cultural works attacking the First World War proliferated. In the early-1950s, with World War Two a recent memory and the Korean war still going on, war movies of every kind were at the height of their popularity, but there was no way they could be openly anti-militaristic. Hence, when Fox Studios decided to resurrect the classic story in 1952 it was largely a comical and de-politicised affair.

With a screenplay by Henry and Phoebe Ephron, this version of What Price Glory? uses virtually none of Maxwell Anderson's original dialogue. The job of direction was handed to John Ford, who was known for staging extended improvisations, creating little vignettes of military life with comical drunkenness and good-natured fistfights. In What Price Glory? this is done to the extent that it actually overshadows any semblance of plot. And not just the anti-war business; the romantic subplots seem weak and disjointed as well.

That's not to say there aren't some good things about this picture. The Technicolor cinematography by Joe MacDonald is often breathtaking, giving a haunting quality to the mist-shrouded battlegrounds. Ford was as always a good visual director, often using stark contrasts in depth to bring different ideas to our attention in the one shot. For example, as the troops march off to the front, a mass of drab browns and greys, we see Corinne Calvet in a bold red, white and blue dress – a human flag and a reminder of what the men are leaving behind them. And James Cagney is good fun in one of his purely comic roles.

But there is little else to recommend about this What Price Glory? Various scenes look to have been filmed with an emphasis on pathos, but they don't work within the structure of the whole thing. When a young Robert Wagner makes the central speech in which the words of the title are spoken, it seems barely to relate to the rest of the picture. And it's not the mixing of comedy with the realities of war per se that makes it fall apart – after all this is the basis of such classics as The Big Parade and MASH – it's just that the balance is wrong. It simply fails to take the war seriously enough, and the "serious" moments seem like flimsy little inserts. Of course, if it had been a tight and hard-hitting anti-war drama, it would most likely have fallen foul of the censors and/or stifled the careers of its creative team. As it was, this vague mish-mash of bar songs and army jokes was conveniently inoffensive.