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"Professional soldier" turns out to be the antonym of "individualistic artist," Nicholas Ray finds that out under Howard Hughes. Guadalcanal '42, life and death with Marine pilots. The fliers are a youthful and offhand bunch, the compassionate captain (Robert Ryan) clashes over them with the disciplinarian major (John Wayne), one quotes John Donne and the other growls "this is where we separate the men from the boys." A kamikaze raid is the welcome they get as soon as they reach the island airstrip, the defining view has fireballs under tropical rain. The Dawn Patrol adjusted, a sake-soaked clambake followed by an admitted sense of fear before the mission. "Who's winning what war?" The jingoistic assignment is keyed to Hughes' fixations, from aerial formations at dusk to the girlfriend back home who gratuitously leans back on a mantelpiece and puffs out her chest with pride. Ray's hand is felt in the contrasting masculine modes of the Wayne-Ryan conflict (a tension of philosophies as well as of star personas) and in the splashes of color that enliven the military greens and browns (a Texan recruit's ornate yellow-lined boots get their own close-up). Comedy relief on the ground from the scrounging sergeant (Jay C. Flippen), combat in the air with a tilted camera on bullet-cracked cockpits. The Technicolor sheen of location and studio work segues repeatedly into the grain of 16mm Pentagon footage, the squadron is not called "Jigsaw" for nothing. "Any closer and those guys will be using bayonets instead of propellers!" The samurai katana in the suburban home points toward Bigger Than Life, and then there's Bitter Victory. With Don Taylor, Janis Carter, William Harrigan, James Bell, Barry Kelley, Adam Williams, and Keith Larsen.
--- Fernando F. Croce |