THE STORY OF G.I. JOE Movie Review

1945 William A. Wellman

When this fact-based fiction was released in 1945, it was called “the least glamorous war picture ever made” (Time magazine) and the record still stands. The film is an honestly emotional look at an infantry company's battles in Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy. As such, it's also about the transformation of young American men into veterans. That's a story that's been told many times, but seldom with such grace and poetry. The grace comes from a combination of William Wellman's direction, and editing by Albrecht Joseph and Otho Lovering that deftly weaves actual combat footage into the story. The poetry comes from Ernie Pyle.

Pyle (played here by Burgess Meredith) was a war correspondent whose columns usually focused on the foot soldiers. He traveled with them all the way to the front, shared meals with them, stayed with them, and, most important, listened to them. In this film—when they talk to each other, when they gripe, when they think out loud, when they just yak—they sound right. Like Pyle, Wellman never strays from their point of view. The whole film is shown through their eyes. There are no high-level staff meetings, no aerial shots of the entire battlefield, no discussions of tactics. Wellman sets that authentic tone early with a great series of shots of the men in C Company, 18th Infantry, as they lie awake in pup tents and listen to a radio broadcasting Axis Sally and Artie Shaw's band.

Like so many other combat films of World War II, the two central characters are Lt., then Capt. Bill Walker (Robert Mitchum), and Sgt. Warnicki (Freddie Steele). Their troops make the slow, painful transformation from green young men to grim veterans in a series of bleak landscapes that reflect their growing disillusionment. Pyle called these kids his “mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys” and Wellman is careful to make that part of the campaign all too real. In a completely literal sense, this is one of the dirtiest movies ever made. Seldom has the physical discomfort of war been so palpable. Wellman was one of the first directors to make his cast undergo a regime of “basic training” before the film was made. He was forced to do it because the actors are surrounded by 150 real veterans playing themselves.

The most important combat sequence concerns the company's house-to-house advancement through a bombed-out Italian town to a ruined church, where two snipers are hiding. The sequence is told virtually without dialogue. The viewer doesn't know what's going on or what the objective is until the men do. Most of the time though, these guys are either working their way toward the front, or simply waiting.

That's usually where the Hollywood professionals take over, and their work is superb. Meredith, a veteran himself, never strikes a false note, and his voice-over narration is used sparingly and effectively. Freddie Steele, a character actor whose face is more familiar than his name, is the archetypal grizzled non-com. But the film belongs to Mitchum. He was nominated for a Supporting Actor Academy Award (his only nomination) and it may be the best work he ever did. His acting here is so natural that at times you forget you're watching Robert Mitchum. He also manages to give the conclusion an emotional resonance that few war films, and even fewer films of the period, can approach.

Sadly, Ernie Pyle and several of the real soldiers who play themselves were killed in the Pacific campaign before the film's release.

Cast: Burgess Meredith (Ernie Pyle), Robert Mitchum (Lt. Bill Walker), Wally Cassell (Pvt. Dondaro), Billy Benedict (Whitey), William Murphy (Pvt. Mew), Jimmy Lloyd (Pvt. Spencer), Fred Steele (Sgt. Warnicki), William Self (Cookie Henderson), Jack Reilly (Pvt. Murphy), Tito Renaldo (Lopez), Hal Boyle (Himself), Chris Cunningham (Himself), Jack Foisie (Himself), George Lah (Himself), Bob Landry (Himself), Clete Roberts (Himself), Robert Rueben (Himself), Don Whitehead (Himself); Written by: Leopold Atlas, Guy Endore, Philip Stevenson, Ernie Pyle; Cinematography by: Russell Metty; Music by: Louis Applebaum, Ann Ronell; Technical Advisor: Ernie Pyle. Producer: Lester Cowan, Columbia Pictures. Awards: Nominations: Academy Awards ‘45: Best Supporting Actor (Mitchum). Running Time: 109 minutes.