Le grand assaut

David Brian, John Agar, and Frank Lovejoy head a solid cast in Breakthrough a product of Warner Brothers B picture unit that skilfully employs real combat footage nicely integrated into the film

It's a simple plot as the film opens in Great Britain where the troops are gathering for the upcoming D-Day invasion. David Brian is a company commander and John Agar is new 2nd Lieutenant from Fort Benning who has in fact taken over the platoon Brian was formerly in charge of. A training foul up that could have been fatal gets Agar good and chewed out. However Sergeant Frank Lovejoy thinks Agar has the right stuff.

A bit of the plot from Twelve O'Clock High is also used in this film as well in regard to the conclusion.

A lot of familiar names and a lot of WW2 stock characters are used for the members of Agar's platoon.

The three leads are cast well and World War 2 film fans should be pleased.

To employ a properly military analogy this film feels like a tired, none too bright straggler rejoining his unit long after better, smarter soldiers with names like "Battleground", "Objective Burma" and "Air Force" have checked in. And the fact that it was written by the son of Hollywood's chief censor while a third of it is comprised of stock footage only adds to its general air of dopeyness and unoriginality. C minus.

Like most of Agar's early movies, the surrounding cast were of sufficient quality to hide, and even carry, Mr. Shirley Temple.

The WW2 period featured is one that is usually skipped over, despite the importance and difficulty of that time. The Allies were under pressure from a well organised defence, taking full advantage of the local terrain, this is all well communicated by this movie.

Lovejoy, as the cagey experienced Sgt., is a marvel to watch, as his character does for his Lt., so he does for Agar, a wonderful fusion of living the role.

A worthy entry for any war movie buff

The star of the film is John Agar, who starred the year before in Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne. Agar was also a friend of my grandfather, and in fact, taught me to play poker when I was eight years old. Unfortunately, though Agar was in three films with The Duke, thanks in large part to his 5-year marriage to Shirley Temple ("Who wants to shake the hand of the first man to put it to America's sweetheart?"), he also starred in a lot of B sci-fi movies during the 1950s. He also did another WWII flick called Hell Raiders because he thought it would never be released, and it shouldn't have been, but it was. Although he did guest appearances in many 1960s and 1970s TV series, like Rawhide, Combat!, and Charlie's Angels, I had reservations about this one before I saw it because of Agar's filmography. Turns out that my apprehension was well-founded. It's just not a good film, sadly. John was a genuinely nice guy, did a lot of volunteer work, and loved to entertain people, but never warranted any big film success after he divorced America's sweetheart (who was apparently a serious witch, with a capital "B").

I thought it was cool that one of the characters in the film was from Klamath Falls, a small town in Southern Oregon where my dad was born and raised, and where one of my aunts and some cousins still live. It was that fact, and John Agar, that earned this one an additional star from me. One other thing that I liked about it is that it portrayed the hedgerow fighting in Normandy more extensively than any film that comes to mind. That's important because the hedgerows made breaking out of Normandy into the interior of France extremely difficult for the Allies. Otherwise, it was a pretty typical low-budget war movie with poor acting, lots of dramatics, and technical errors.

It's refreshing to find an old B&W World War II flick that's more adventure than melodrama, despite the corny trope of the nicest guy on board showing-off a picture of his wife and kids, and winding up predictably dead...

There's also the comic relief; a kindhearted simpleton; a muscle-bound dolt; a nervous, really young small town kid; a wise, head-strong Sergeant; an educated Lieutenant who lacks actual fighting experience; and his jaded, too-experienced Captain, trying to get him ready to, in this particular story, lead men onto the beaches of Normandy...

All these examples aside, and despite pockets of timeworn dialogue, BREAKTHROUGH is original and entertaining enough to stand on its own merit, building up the plot within the action while in constant motion...

John Agar plays Lt. Joe Mallory, bullied by first-billed David Brian as Capt. Hale outside a practice run, and we soon enter the barracks where the privates reluctantly await their upcoming campaign: there's enough quirks and physical attributes to distinguish each person so that everything means more, later on, when the bullets fly...

In particular, Dick Wesson's Pvt. Hansen, doing imitations of Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart, which are cleverly written and genuinely funny: not just because the very nervous and young Richard Monahan, as Lt. Mallory... wearing foggy glasses and speaking in a high-pitched voice... needs something to keep him optimistic for what's ahead...

Frank Lovejoy is important enough as Sergeant Pete Bell, whose rock-hard countenance not only grounds the picture but his gravely voice convincingly narrates: from a crowded freight ship to Normandy Beach, thrusting the sand-crawling troops through heavy German gunfire, up and down pathways and hillsides where most of the suspense occurs, and the body count begins...

Unlike the more realistic SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, the soldiers don't drop like flies along the way. But there's a feeling that anything can happen, at any time, and that no particular man is safe...

Even when the survivors find harbor in a French village that seems too good to be true, winding up in a climax that would repeat itself thirty-six years later in Stanley Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET...

So someone must've been familiar with BREAKTHROUGH: a nice little WWII-programmer that blends stock footage without seeming phony, and there's always a place to go without malaise, allowing the audience to keep track of each and every move.