A Walk in the Sun (1945)

Considering when the movie was made, it's a little curious that the narrator makes 1943 sound like a long time ago. But that's basically the only curious thing about this no-nonsense war piece. It even has Lewis Milestone of All Quiet on the Western Front fame at the helm.

Unlike AQotWF, it doesn't skimp on details to give you the impression of generic soldiers in any number of battles in any modern war. It starts pretty much in medias res, with an American platoon sailing to rural Italy under fire, having already seen substantial action elsewhere. Their objective: hike to a certain bridge near a farmhouse and blow it up. As war films go, that's a pretty small scope, running in real time or close to it.

Unsurprisingly, we don't see any civilians in the course of the story, hence no women. We don't get to see much of the enemy either, tho they're clearly out there. Mainly we just have the platoon, with a somewhat diverse set of personalities. Not much star power, but I knew the names of Norman Lloyd and Lloyd Bridges (funny to cast a Bridges with the given objective) and had some familiarity with Dana Andrews and Sterling Holloway.

The soldiers spend a fair amount of time not battling, sometimes curious about the prolonged peacefulness. As a result, we get treated to plenty of dialogue. It's pretty well-written, but you have to get used to certain phrases and topics coming up again and again. There's an awful lot of bumming of "butts" (cigarettes), with an etiquette that suggests entitlement. And by the fourth time one of them said something like "You guys kill me," I would've said, "Don't tempt me." Granted, I don't begrudge them their bitterness and sarcasm at this point.

With the Hays Code in effect, we never get any on-screen violence as shocking as in AQotWF. Not even a drop of fake blood. We do hear a bit spoken about how gruesomely a lieutenant has been injured.

I don't get the impression that Milestone, who hadn't headed the project at first, intended another anti-war treatise. This time he just wanted to portray it as realistically as he could and let us decide for ourselves whether we would accept it. The upshot is moderately good entertainment and certainly respectable. I only wish I could've felt closer to the soldiers so I'd care more what happened.