Battleground - Film Review

directed by William Wellman, 1949

William Wellman is most well known, today, for his set-bound (but great) western The Ox-bow Incident, but in my opinion he should really be more well known beyond just that one feature. I really love Track of the Cat; its my favorite film of his by a wide margin, but perhaps easier to recommend are his two exemplary WWII films; The Story of G.I. Joe and this, made four years after the war’s end. A fictionalized dramatisation of the Siege of Bastogne, what Battleground does for war films in general is, in a way, a continuation of what Wellman did in The Story of G.I. Joe: inject a level of realism (and realism was an increasing concern in Hollywood in those days) into the sense of the war, in focusing on the grunts, and present it in a fashion which is honest, and defeat the idle heroism that most WWII films propagates.

Its anyone’s guess which of these two films is most successful in that regard; both of them are great works in their own right, but since its been a while since my last viewing of G.I. Joe, I’ll just stick to this one. Battleground is an ensemble piece; something Wellman excelled at, and perhaps its greatest assett is its naturalism, in this and other regards. I know I just got done blabbing about naturalism in another film last night; the languid masterpiece Intimate Lighting, but on this second viewing I was really drawn to just how leisurely this little film could be at times, and how much time it spends drawing the character of the boys. Our ‘heroes’, all of them average guys and fleshed out with amazing versimilitude (considering its an ensemble piece and runs two hours; this ain’t Edgar Reitz’s Heimat), spend most of the film in varying degrees of discomfort; mostly the cold, and most of that time they’re complaining, making fun of one another, or scheming to get out of there somehow (though nobody’s quite cowardly).

In all honesty, looking back, I realized at least half of the film’s dialogue was unshaven soldiers, in varying degrees of jokiness, wishing they were back home, or that they could catch pheumonia or a nice flesh wound to get them out of combat; the only thing keeping the rude jokes from flying is probably the production code. Instead, we get gags about clattering false teeth (and the fact that if he loses them, he gets to go back and get new ones fitted), one soldier’s attempts to scramble precious eggs in his helmet, and a Hispanic fellow who is overjoyed at the snow (which promises misery for the others). There’s also a wonderful degree of pathos to be found beneath several of the characters’ richly simplistic ‘quirks’...paricularly the older man, called Pop, who gets a discharge home due to his wife’s illness, but cannot leave due to his squad being surrounded by enemy forces. The film is irresistably honest about the laid back mentality of the soldiers, and we’re never given the opportunity to believe that these guys are enjoying any part of this fight, but have to make do with what they have to keep their spirits up and survive.



More than anything feels like a precursor to The Big Red One in its humor than, uh, Green Berets, and it moves through its slowly paced plot with a breezy effortlessness. Its also perfectly honest about the grime of warfare; the guys are almost *always* dirty and unshaven as I said, and there are a few scenes of surprisingly . The film’s beautifully deep, grainy Oscar winning cinematography reflects this, as does the nice clean print on the DVD. A sort of slice of life in WWII at points, in other words. Its entertaining; actually *fun* to watch, without ever making light of the dead seriousness of combat. And it is dead serious...danger lurks around every corner, so to speak, from the heat of battle, to the dropping of bombs in the town, to the phenomenon of German soldiers donning American uniforms to when the action scenes do come, they’re fast, furious and deadly, and there is more than one instance of one of the men attempting to escape the carnage. All the while the film, despite being the usual ‘manly bonding’ of war films of its time and up to today, eschews much of the usual melodramatic plot devices. There are no daring, heroic rescues, and every moment is frought with not knowing which direction death will come from next.



Its not a perfect film...some of the little character traits lead to outcomes that are far too ironic for the film’s own good, for example, though I won’t spoil any of them. And though its follow-through is well within the spirit of the film’s tone, there is one tiny bit of preachiness (the film otherwise wastes no time moralizing the war, except for showing how undiscriminatingly miserable it is to soldiers and civilians), where a chaplain delivers a multi-faith prayer to lift the fog (its actually less dopey than I made it sound, trust me, but still a weak point). And much of the final ten minutes or so are a little too going-through-the-motions for a war film, complete with a montage of victorious war action. But the film still shines...that rare old war film that is entertaining; not because the war is entertaining, but because of the soldiers we’re thrown into battle with. Battle sequences are harrowing not just because they’re exciting, but because we care about these men and because we know they are in real danger. Its definitely one of the best American WWII films of the classic era...its only real competition probably being Twelve O’Clock High from the same year, and Wellman’s own The Story of G.I. Joe. Well worth your time. Its stood the test of time surprisingly well.

88 / 100

Available on a rather barebones DVD from Warner in the states, with a nice, crisp transfer, and a few short films which have little to do with the movie. Its not very expensive, so don’t hesitate too much if you like a great WWII flick.