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The template is taken up by Irwin Allen, nothing like a disaster to sort out crisscrossing relationships. Hawaiian barracks in 1941, the transferred private (Montgomery Clift) has sworn off the boxing ring, he's called "lone wolf" and "hardhead" but it's a simple matter of philosophy, "a man don't go his own way, he's nothing." First Sergeant (Burt Lancaster) keeps one eye on him and another on the commander's neglected wife (Deborah Kerr), their risky affair is immortalized on the surf. "I just hate to see a beautiful woman goin' all to waste." The misfit gets "the treatment" from the other dogfaces, relief comes from the loudmouth buddy (Frank Sinatra) and the melancholy nightclub princess (Donna Reed) and the bugle. (Full of steam and beer, he plays a virtuoso barroom solo as an improvised salute to his own mulish intransigence.) The nonconformist who wants to belong, a soldier's story. "I love the Army." "It sure doesn't love you." James Jones canvas, Fred Zinnemann treatment, glamorous grit on the drab tropics. The stubborn man of conscience (High Noon, A Man for All Seasons), imbued with Clift's beautiful ingrown soulfulness and contrasted with Lancaster's ramrod ruggedness. Folly of the "tough monkey" who spits at the stockade sadist (Ernest Borgnine), "Taps" at dawn for the end of a friend and the end of an epoch. "You ain't enjoying life much, are you, kid?" The dalliances and brawls that ward off the boredom of history between dramatic points, and then death falls from the sky on a certain Sunday morning. One fella is relieved to trade thorny romance for straightforward action, another meets gunfire on the golf green, their ladies share a bleak coda aboard a departing ship. "Re-Enlistment Blues..." Preminger's revision (In Harm's Way) handily implodes individual and institution alike. With Philip Ober, Mickey Shaughnessy, Harry Bellaver, Jack Warden, John Dennis, Claude Akins, and George Reeves. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |