My Favorite Films: Battleground (1949)

     Growing up I was raised on a steady diet of historical movies and TV shows from Walt Disney's Davy Crockett to The Longest Day to Little House on the Prairie. But the war movies were always my favorite. My brothers and I watched movies like Northwest Passage with Spencer Tracy, The Buccaneer with Yul Brynner and the aforementioned The Longest Day too many times to count. I attribute my life long love of history largely to this influence. As I grew older I continued to be fascinated by military history in particular, and I read as many books as I could find on the subject.

     Battleground is a film I discovered when I was starting to become a real history buff, collecting militaria and getting into historical reenacting, and it could not have hit me at a more opportune moment. One thing that always struck me about personal accounts from war veterans was how dull their experience could be at times. There's a famous (unattributed) quote from the First World War that describes it as "Months of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme terror"and Battleground starkly portrays this facet of war in a way that few films do.

     Written and produced by Robert Pirosh, who would go on to create what is still perhaps my favorite television series Combat!, Battleground has many of the qualities that made that show work so well. Pirosh drew on his experiences serving in the infantry during the war in writing this film, and it is remarkable for its unglamorized portrayal of the day-to-day life of the citizen soldier. Indeed, for a film produced in the late 40's, Battleground is almost singular in it's down to earth qualities. There are here no awe-inspiring heroics nor statements on the glory or futility of war. It's simply a story about men struggling to maintain their composure under incredibly harrowing circumstances.

     A major theme in the picture is the idea that the men on the front lines don't know what's going on, that their part in the larger conflict is obscure to them. Early in the film, former newspaperman Donald Jarvess remarks sardonically, "This is what I like about the infantry. You always know just what's going on." Indeed, there is only one moment in the film where the men of Item Company are allowed a glimpse at the bigger picture, when they happen to encounter the German messengers who are sent to offer General McAuliffe a chance to surrender and get to hear the general's famous reply "Nuts", repeated by one of his staff.

     Battleground also explores the idea of the brotherhood of men in war. When Jim Layton first joins the outfit, he feels like a complete stranger. Listening to the familiar chatter of the squad, from which he is excluded, Layton wanders around the barracks looking for an available bunk. There's an existing community here of which he is not a part. He does, eventually, begin to integrate, largely as a result of the experience he and the others share at Bastogne. He becomes friends with Holley (Van Johnson) the platoon's resident gold-brick and con-man. Holley himself grows a lot as a character throughout the film. Made the new squad leader by a wounded Sergeant Wolowicz, he finds a courage and resolve that he never knew he had.

     Layton and Holley are the two characters who really go through an arc but all of the characters are well drawn and the casting is spot on. Holley's buddy, Richard Jaeckel's Bettis, suffers from combat fatigue and runs away from the front line during the first barrage. James Whitmore's S/Sgt. Kinnie is the platoon's grizzled leader, who guides their rookie lieutenant (played by Brett King) with his sardonic advice, born of hard won experience. The platoon's real leader, Kinnie hides his war weary visage behind a facade of acerbic wit. John Hodiak's Donald Jarvess is an intellectual stuck in a unit of farmers, laborers and slackers. Lacking someone to share an intelligent conversation with (he lost a buddy in Holland), he longs for the days when he was a writer in Sedalia and was the first to be informed of important news. His bunk buddy partner, Abner Spudler (Jerome Courtland), is a country hick who annoys Jarvess with his constant use of the phrase, "That's for sure. That's for dang sure." but who Jarvess, nonetheless, misses once he's gone.

     Douglas Fowley's "Kipp" Kippton is a grumpy cynic whose pair of dentures serve both as a biting means of retort and a potential means of escape (Kippton was once pulled of the line when he "accidentally" broke his dentures). Bruce Cowling's Sgt. Wolowicz is the kind of dependable squad leader every soldier wants to have: humane, pragmatic and deeply concerned for the welfare of his men. Herbert Anderson's Hansan is his most dependable soldier, a man who doesn't hesitate to be the first to move forward under enemy fire but who also leaves his watch set to Springfield, Illinois time as a way to stay connected in his hometown.

     George Murphy's Ernst J. "Pop" Stazak is the image of the citizen soldier, a good natured veteran with a touch of arthritis who just wants who just wants to get back to his wife and kids but is prevented from going home on a dependency discharge (his wife is too sick to take care of the kids) when Bastogne is surrounded. He is good friends with his bunk partner "Johnny" Roderigues (Ricardo Montalbán), a city boy from L.A. who is enchanted by his first sight of snow. Pop's sadness over Roderigues ironic death (he freezes to death after being wounded and left behind on an ill fated patrol) is one of the film's most affecting moments, "He used to see snow, waaay off in the mountains."

     The movie is filled with great little moments and memorable exchanges of dialogue. There's a scene late in the film where a bunch of the men are eating some hot chow outside of the aid station in Bastogne and a woman is seen rifling through the garbage to find something to eat. "I don't even see those things" says Holley, to which Jarvess snaps, "I want to see them! I want to remember them!" In an earlier scene, when Layton confesses his fear in the face of enemy fire, Jarvess tells him, "You just joined the biggest club in the army. Everybody belongs." Certainly though, the best lines belong to Segeant Kinnie, "Me and General McAulliffe decided to move I Company up on the line. That is if you agree."

     To direct the picture the studio selected William A. Wellman, who had also helmed the classic war film The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). As with his earlier film, The Ox-Bow Incident, Wellman makes great use of studio sound-stages to portray the isolation and harsh winter conditions faced by the defenders of Bastogne. Paul Vogel's Oscar winning cinematography, with its foggy haze and atmospheric lighting, really captures the stark environment these men lived in day in and day out. There's one scene in particular that has always stood out to me. In a wide shot we see Sergeant Kinnie, nearly despairing of the prospect of relief ever arriving in Bastogne, resignedly trudge back toward his foxhole, dwarfed by the landscape and the oppressive grey skies. Subtlety, the lighting changes and we cut to a close-up: Kinnie is startled to see his own shadow. The clouds have broken and the Air Force is finally able to drop much needed supplies into the besieged town and to provide its beleaguered defenders with air-cover.

     The ending of the film is also great. As battered men march to the rear, having finally been relieved, they encounter their reinforcements. "What do you want these guys to think, you're a bunch of WACs", asks Kinnie. Not wanting to appear slovenly, they straighten out and take up a marching tune as the fresh troops pass by. The film has almost no musical score, but it kicks in here, accompanying the men's singing. They have not lost their pride, and their loyalty and devotion to each other has never been stronger. It's a perfect ending to a remarkable little film.