Iwo Jima - O Portal da Glória

John Wayne acted in a number of war films: Operation Pacific, Back to Bataan, The Green Berets, and The Longest Day. No doubt, this is his best. It's one of the true classics.

Some may find it unrealistic due to its sanitized language and relatively meager gore (remember, it was made in 1949). But its themes are timeless: duty, honor, country. The skillful integration of battle scenes and real-life newsreel footage makes it seem almost like a documentary.

If you want a politically correct war film, try something else. If you want a well-made, well-acted, patriotic film, this is it.

I don't know about currently, but some years ago this film was being shown at the Marine Corps Basic School where second lieutenants are hatched. It's an unexcelled example of military life imitating art: a symbiotic relationship between the Corps' timeless self image and, by extension, that image reinforcing the reality of the Corps itself.

SOIJ is still one of the better WW II combat films, even 55 years after its release. The one factual glitch is the impossibility of a Tarawa unit (2nd Marine Division) being ashore on Iwo (3rd, 4th, and 5th Divisions.) Otherwise, I don't think I've never known a marine who had serious reservations about it.

I have seen this John Wayne classic war film many times, but only recently learned that three surviving original flag raisers (at the time the film was made) had cameo roles in it. Towards the end of the movie, after the beachhead and Mount Suribachi are secured, Sgt. Stryker calls for a squad to raise a flag. Watching from behind Stryker, we see three young men squat down in front of him. Stryker hands them an American flag and directs them to climb to the top of Mt. Suribachi and raise it. The three men playing the roles as themselves are: PFC Rene A. Gagnon, USMC; PFC Ira H. Hayes, USMC; and, PH3 John H. Bradley, USN -- three of the five original famous flag raisers captured on film in the famous scene atop Mt. Suribachi, and forever etched in stone in the Iwo Jima Memorial at Arlington, Virginia. The other two flag raisers were shot and killed later on the island.

Although Clint Eastwood's recent Flags of Our Fathers has told the real story about the flag raising at Iwo Jima, it hasn't diminished any of the impact that Sands of Iwo Jima has, either back when it was released or viewed today.

In fact because the three surviving flag raisers, Joseph Bradley, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes all were in this film it's even more proof of how the symbolic flag raising has become mythologized.

Of course the real heroism was in capturing the island that was less than a 1000 miles from the main islands of Japan and the airfields on Iwo Jima that could be used by our bombers for land based flights. It took about a month to do that, the flag was raised on the fifth day.

I read a history of the United States Marine Corps from it's formation during the American Revolution. Over the course of its history it was interesting to learn that the Marines many times were threatened with extinction, to be folded into either the army or navy right up to and including World War I.

Right after World War I a very farsighted man named John A. Lejeune became the Marine Corps Commandant and he saw that we would be in a war in the Pacific with the Japanese as our foes. He also saw that the survival of the Marines as an entity involved them training for a very specialized kind of mission, amphibious warfare. He started training them for that and come World War II they were certainly ready.

John Wayne as Sergeant Striker got one of his most memorable parts of his career in Sands of Iwo Jima. Striker is a tough as nails Marine Corps lifer whose got a job to whip a lot of recruits into shape for the later Pacific landings after Guadalcanal. He's also got one lousy personal life as his wife's left him and taken their son.

Wayne got his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor in this part. There's a couple of other films he should have gotten a nomination for, but that's another story. Among his competition in 1949 was Kirk Douglas for Champion, Richard Todd for The Hasty Heart, and Gregory Peck for Twelve O'Clock High. Note three of the nominees were for World War II related films. But the winner that year was Broderick Crawford for All the King's Men. At least Peck and Wayne both got Oscars later in their careers.

John Agar who was trying to carve out a reputation as being more than Mr. Shirley Temple back then plays the son of a former commander of Wayne's who has a problem with his Dad and takes it out on Wayne attitude wise as a surrogate father. Julie Bishop and Adele Mara play women drawn to both Wayne and Agar respectively.

Of the supporting cast who play members of Wayne's platoon, my favorite is Wally Cassell, the wisecracking city kid who finds a tank to help his platoon out during a sticky situation.

Flags of Our Fathers teaches us about how the flag raising symbolism became part of the Marine Corps heritage. Sands of Iwo Jima exploits that symbol in the best sense of the word. After almost sixty years, it's still a fine film with a grand performance by the Duke.

Rip-roaring re-creation of WWII in the Pacific. It's more a tribute to Marine Corps fighting spirit than a traditional flag waver, even though it duplicates probably the greatest flag raising scene in US history. Wayne's perfect as the veteran Sgt. Stryker who must ready his squad for combat. At this career stage, Wayne is not yet an icon. Thus he shows his under-stated acting skills that were largely replaced by his sheer iconic presence later on. As a result, his thespic talent is too often under-rated by critics. The storyline, aside from combat, involves Stryker's difficulties with two of his men, played by Agar and Tucker. Tucker is something of a physical rival, while Agar does his duty to a Marine Corps father while rejecting the Corp's spirit. There's also brief time with girls while the guys are on leave, and I especially like the sensitive way Julie Bishop's status as a reluctant hooker is insinuated along with a lot of subtle heart.

Of course, the film's dramatic centerpiece is the lengthy combat footage. Budget-minded Republic went all out here. They blend effectively real war footage along with well done studio set-ups and location re-creations. The latter is largely thanks to the Corps cooperation which involves hundreds of real marine troopers. In fact, that beach-head footage of the assault on Tarawa may be the most intense of any post-war combat film. It's truly scary, as it should be.

Anyway, after seven decades the film may have lost some of its topicality, but the human elements remain, along with a fine turn by America's favorite cowboy, this time as a steadfast and heroic soldier.