SO PROUDLY WE HAIL Movie Review

1943 Mark Sandrich

It will be difficult for some contemporary viewers to appreciate the reality that the director and stars are trying to create here. Though the film is meant to be a gritty look at the horrors of the American retreat through the Philippines to Corregidor as seen through the eyes of three Army nurses, it is overly glamorous and glossy by today's standards. Beyond a few carefully smudged cheekbones, the women exhibit all of the carefully tended beauty that is the basis of the Hollywood dream factory. That may be a valid criticism, but it misses the larger point of this propaganda—that women have an important, independent role to play in the prosecution of the war.

Based on a real incident, the story is told through fairly clumsy flashbacks. On May 5, 1942, a transport plane lands in Australia carrying American nurses who have been evacuated from Corregidor. All of them have survived a harrowing experience. Their leader, Lt. Janet Davidson (Claudette Colbert), has been so traumatized that she cannot speak, and has to be carried off on a stretcher. En route home on a ship, a doctor asks the women to tell what they experienced so that he can get through to Janet. He has a letter for her from someone named “John.”

Seven months before, in November 1941, the group had left San Francisco. Flirty Lt. Joan O'Doul (Paulette Goddard) is ducking out on two fiances. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the women are diverted to Bataan and another nurse, Lt. Olivia D'Arcy (Veronica Lake) joins their unit. She's a stand-offish “frozen-faced ghoul” until she reveals her tragic secret. Meanwhile, Joan has struck up a relationship with a blond galoot named Kansas (Sonny Tufts), and Janet has done the same with the more serious John (George Reeves). When they arrive in the Philippines, they find that the Americans are retreating before a larger and determined Japanese force.

Producer-director Mark Sandrich, known mostly for such lighter fare as Astaire-Rogers musicals, handles the destruction of the Japanese attack with unusual directness. He tries to make the killing power of the bombs and shells as graphic as possible, and if the hospital scenes are not as bloodily realistic as they've been in more recent films, they try to address the desperate conditions under which the doctors and nurses work. Sandrich also deals honestly with the emotional cost on the medical staff of the often-futile efforts to save lives.

On the other side of the dramatic scales, much of the romantic banter has lost its appeal, and the Veronica Lake subplot is bizarrely out of step with the rest of the film, from its opening revelation to its jaw-dropping conclusion. (In some ways, her character can be seen as a prototype of the 1980s' Fatal Attraction—Basic Instinct killer blonde.) Again, it's true that the three stars are consistently gorgeous, whether they're clad in coveralls, khakis or black negligees. Without discounting that side of the film, it is still a solid piece of studio propaganda, not much different from others that were made at the same time. It's built on one of the key plot devices of the day—the military unit that is going into action just before the attack on Pearl Harbor—and its central message is the same, too: In this war, everybody contributes. It then goes on to state that women can be just as tough and determined as men in hard situations.

In 1943, few mainstream films had come to that self-evident realization.

Cast: Claudette Colbert (Lt. Janet Davidson), Paulette Goddard (Lt. Joan O'Doul), Veronica Lake (Lt. Olivia D'Arcy), George Reeves (Lt. John Summers), Barbara Britton (Lt. Rosemary Larson), Walter Abel (Chaplain), Sonny Tufts (Kansas), John Litel (Dr. Harrison), Mary Servoss (Capt. “Ma” McGregor), Ted Hecht (Dr. Jose Bardia), Mary Treen (Lt. Sadie Schwartz), Helen Lynd (Lt. Elsie Bollenbacher), Lorna Gray (Lt. Tony Dacolli), Dorothy Adams (Lt. Irma Emerson), Ann Doran (Lt. Betty Peterson), Jean Willes (Lt. Carol Johnson), Jan Wiley (Lt. Lynne Hopkins), Lynn Walker (Lt. Fay Leonard), Joan Tours (Lt. Margaret Stevenson), Kitty Kelly (Lt. Ethel Armstrong), James Bell (Col. White), Dick Hogan (Flight Lt. Archie McGregor), Bill Goodwin (Capt. O'Rourke), James Flavin (Capt. O'Brien); Written by: Allan Scott; Music by: Miklos Rozsa; Technical Advisor: Lt. Eunice Hatchitt. Producer: Mark Sandrich, Paramount Pictures. Awards: Nominations: Academy Awards '43: Best Black and White Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, Best Special Effects, Best Supporting Actress (Goddard). Running Time: 126 minutes. Format: VHS, Closed Caption.