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Out of the parlor and into the manure pile, nothing like a war to push you into life's messy torrent. A nation "in peaceful progression" is interrupted by the clarion call of patriotism, the idle fancy-pants (John Gilbert) joins the lanky proletarian riveter (Karl Dane) and the burly bowery bartender (Tom O'Brien) with helmet and bayonet. King Vidor understands the allegorical implications and still enjoys the leisurely set-up, the first half is a spacious barracks comedy about training, waiting, "skirt duty." Sent to France, the guys see social barriers vanishing in fraternal practicality, bundled-up while crumbling a stale cake or bare-assed in the woods under a makeshift shower. Keaton figures in these gags, the eye-hole in the barrel over the hero's head allows for an iris-encircled POV shot, the ideal way to frame the Gallic sweetheart (Renée Adorée). For the villagers literally rattling sables, the battleground is a glorious confetti downpour; for the doughboys in the fields, it's a mist of poison gas, a stride into the forest "alive with machine-guns and snipers." (The rhythmic montage mixes lateral pans with reverse tracks, an advancing camera that can't afford to blink as comrades drop like flies.) In between there's that wonder of Vidorian ardor, the transcendent impulse against the monument flow as Gilbert and Adorée must be pried apart amid lines of departing trucks. A vista is composed like a Barbizon canvas and then blown to smithereens, the sustained two-shot of lovers sharing a stick of gum becomes the sustained two-shot of enemies in a crater splitting a cigarette. "Cheers when we left and when we get back. But who the hell cares... after this?" The homecoming is from Griffith and goes into Renoir (The River), the mother's tearful recollection of her maimed boy's life is Vidor's alone. Wyeth's Winter 1946 and Christina's World give the ultimate study. With Hobart Bosworth, Claire McDowell, Claire Adams, and Robert Ober. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |