Les hommes contre

Francesco Rosi was arguably among the top few of great, and I do mean great, Italian directors. He blended fact with fiction and created in this film the most powerful argument against war that I have seen. There are no background stories to the characters involved, and no love stories to distract from the massacres on the field of battle. In ' Uomini Contro ' we see ordinary Italian soldiers at the mercy of their Austrian enemies, but also pitilessly at the mercy of their generals. The screen blazes with the hardcore horror of useless battles trying to conquer an unassailable hill. One battalion revolts at the orders of their ' masters ' and in the most terrible of all the film's scenes are executed. Nothing is spared the viewer including one of the men, trying to escape, dragging the stake he is bound to, and then shot in his legs before he is dragged back to be shot. The music overlaying this scene was so ecstatically beautiful that it seemed to be crying out to an order from a useless divinity to stop these atrocities. Alain Cuny, Mark Frechette and Gian Maria Volonte are excellent in their roles. And to my knowledge it was a film not widely shown.