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The director's name is stamped on a freeze-frame of a flamethrower, as it should be. Days and nights along the Siegfried Line, 1944, a pitiless distillate of combat. (A hint of romance is swiftly curtailed when the flirty French barmaid is caught speaking German.) American outfit on the front line, sergeant (Fess Parker), mechanic (James Coburn), Polish tag-along (Nick Adams), scavenger (Bobby Darin) helping himself to the bombed-out church, "no respect for things that used to be." The new arrival is a lone wolf (Steve McQueen) whose deadpan is tested when a bullet ricochets inches away from his helmet. Don Siegel's camera cranes up to establish the jagged topography of the proceedings, foxholes around a pillbox with the enemy just out of sight. Adapt or die, most of them do both. "That's what makes a good soldier." Storming in the gloom, as blunt a battleground as Fuller's. The ingenuity of the diminished squad mirrors that of the modest production, cf. Aldrich's Attack, a backfiring jeep must sound like a tank. Crawling across a minefield is a suffocating set piece, hands feel the ground in close-up until one of the explosives is triggered and the hushed night is illuminated by explosions and screams. (Demises are perfectly abrupt and undignified, one of the grunts expires howling about his entrails.) "On-the-job training" for the lost clerk (Bob Newhart), who uses a bugged telephone to try out his vaudeville routine: "There's still a war going on in Japan, you know, sir. You might send them over there..." A tottering POV shot gives the view of the sacrificial hero, a grainy zoom gives the infernal last image remembered by Peckinpah (Cross of Iron). With Harry Guardino, Mike Kellin, Joseph Hoover, Bill Mullikin, L.Q. Jones, Don Haggerty, and Michele Montau. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |