Les amants de l'enfer

People keep comparing this film with "A Fairwell To Arms" (1932). If that is true, then it can also be seen as a stepping stone to "The Americanization of Emily" (1964) — highlighting how changing American attitudes toward war have become gradually more cynical.

Seems like the "Emily" team — writers and director — might have been influenced by Sgt. Joe 'Pete' Peterson (Holden character), transposing Garner's Charlie Madison to be an updated version of same. 1932 > 1951 > 1964.

All three successfully integrate Romance and War, ably supporting the theme that Love is the stronger force. So why do we keep on making war?

It would be easy to pass off Force of Arms as just another post-WWII action/romance movie until you're a few frames into viewing it. Surprisingly realistic with actual combat footage interspersed with filming. Strong yet sensitively-understated performances by Holden, Olson, and, in a supporting role, Frank Lovejoy. An inspired and superior script helps convey the chaos of combat, its effects on those who are scarred by it, and the powerful force of love that can somehow emerge in the midst of the sheer will to survive. A classic that feels as real in 2017 as when it was filmed.

I really liked this movie. I fast forwarded through the love scenes though. I am a Holden fan and I seem to like his snide comments he always seems to make. His comments are usually like "gallows humor". In times of stress everything seems to take on a different view or meaning. I also liked where Holden seems to exhibit PTSD. He talks about the horror of the battlefield and his men dying for no reason. I liked this because I thought the US Government did not want anything but us the good guys and the enemy the bad. Most war movies show us never getting hurt and the enemy all dying, What tipped me off was the word "San Pietro". John Huston made a movie called that and it was banned by the Government and not shown because it showed people actually getting killed. Lastly, all the equipment looked real and used in the real manner even down to the mail room! Usually I can find many errors in guns and ammo. Another good movie to watch is, "Pork Chop Hill" with Gregory Peck. You actually see men using body armor and guns and ammo used in the proper manner.

The original story behind Force of Arms was written by Richard Tregaskis, war correspondent from World War II, best known for Guadalcanal Diary. Of course some would argue that Tregaskis borrowed a lot of the plot from the previous war that Ernest Hemingway chronicled in A Farewell to Arms.

Still it's a nice romantic story brought to life by the teaming of William Holden and Nancy Olson who did four films together back at this time. Nancy Olson in fact got an Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category for Sunset Boulevard which was their first film together.

After his company is relieved on the San Pietro front in the Italian theater, William Holden meets WAC Nancy Olson and a romance blooms. But it's back to the front, in fact Holden gets himself wounded twice during the course of Force of Arms.

Actual combat footage from the Italian campaign is used along with newsreels from the liberation of Rome where the climax takes place. There are good performances here also by Frank Lovejoy and Katherine Warren as the respective commanding officers of Holden and Olson.

This was Bill Holden's first great romantic role along the lines of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. It's a harbinger of what we would later get from him in films like The Bridges of Toko-Ri and Love Is A Many Splendored Thing.

It's a sadly neglected film, one of Bill Holden's better films and should not be missed.

Forget San Pietro. The real conflict in this early 50s combat film is between anti war cynicism and patriotic effusion. The later wins out, as it almost always would in a pre 1960s Hollywood war movie, but the fact that there is even a spirited contest between the two ideologies shows just how far in the rear view mirror WW2, our only morally justified foreign engagement, had receded by 1951, especially once Korea had taken its place.

So if only as a marker of American society's changing views on war and flag waving this film would be worthy of notice. It is also the last good work of its director, the great Michael Curtiz*, who has at least two films in the top Hollywood 100 of the twentieth century (three if you're a "Yankee Doodle Dandy" fan, which I am not) featuring very realistic, hard bitten battle scenes.

Unfortunately, as previous reviewer planktonrules noted, the film is marred by some of the worst, gushy, mushy, cloyingly romantic dialogue, in the love scenes between William Holden and Nancy Olson, this side of a Fanny Hurst novel. I mean, Holden is a legitimately great actor but not even he can survive such lines as "With you I will live forever", spoken sincerely. And Olson, a much less skilled thesp, is completely done in by the lovey dovey twaddle composed by scenarist Orin Jannings, a scribe with whom I am thankfully not familiar.

Bottom line: Give it a generous B minus 'cause I'm a big Curtiz fan.

*There are some who regard 1958's "King Creole", with Elvis, as good. I am not among them.