May 6 movie: Bataan. Excellent wartime movie set during the evacuation of Bataan. Robert Taylor stars as commander of a small group of men holding a bridge as long as they can against the oncoming Japanese. Great ensemble includes Desi Arnaz, Thomas Mitchell, Robert Walker in one of his first roles, George Murphy, Alex Havier as a Filipino soldier, and especially Lloyd Nolan as a man whose path had crossed Taylor's in the past. There's a grim exhaustion as the movie goes on, which makes their determination seem that much more courageous. Of course I have no idea whether that's realistic or not, never having been in a war zone myself. But it seems realistic, compared to some war movies where everyone is brave, energetic and fresh-faced no matter what happens.
I'd seen this movie once before, and remembered the basic ending: one by one everybody dies until just Taylor is left, and the movie ends with a close-up of him manning their last machine gun, shooting wildly as the camera closes in, giving the audience the point of view of the Japanese soldiers overrunning his position.
What I didn't remember, or maybe didn't notice the first time, is that the last scene begins with the camera panning across the other solders' graves & shows us Taylor in front of his own grave, which he dug behind the machine gun & put up a cross with his own name on it. The movie ends with him standing in front of his own open grave, firing the machine gun and shouting "Come on, you sons of bitches!" Now that is hard core.
Have you ever seen A Bridge Too Far? The sequences with 2nd Battalion, 1st Parachute Brigade, British 1st Airborne holding the north end of the Arnhem bridge for four days (instead of the planned two) against literally overwhelming opposition have that same sense of grinding exhaustion.
Of course, my favorite war movie is the 1993 Stalingrad; "Stalingrad" is German for "grinding exhaustion".
I haven't seen either of those, they both sound great! I put them both in my Netflix queue.
Stalingrad is one of the best films I've ever seen, but god is it harrowing. I'm tearing up just thinking about it.
I just watched Stalingrad. Harrowing is right. "Enjoy" would be the wrong word, but I'm really glad I saw it. Thanks for the recommendation.