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Behind the lines, a war won thanks to "nothin' but bus drivers and traveling gas station attendants." Patton's forces are far ahead, the proverbial worm's tail has to catch up with its head, thus the convoy of supplies steered by a mixed-race platoon. German bullets, exhaustion, internal tensions, "miles of freshly churned mud" ahead. Bad blood between lieutenant (Jeff Chandler) and sergeant (Alex Nicol), the corporal from Detroit (Sidney Poitier) slugs the racist private (Hugh O'Brian). "See France the easy way," Paris is tantalizingly near, the galoot (Charles Drake) makes the acquaintance of a local fille (Jacqueline Duval) with pointy sweater and hungry family. "I'll bet my bottom stripe we take Berlin with slingshots." Men and trucks in perpetual, circular motion, an abstract template for Budd Boetticher's sagebrush riders. Orders from opposite sides give immovable object and unstoppable force, "hold or die" versus "break through," labor in between is a song on a minefield. The mirage of Red Cross babes with coffee and donuts, "dolls! Real American dolls!" The timbre is close to Dwan's Sands of Iwo Jima and Wellman's Battleground, the attack on the camouflaged tank points up the kinship to Fuller's The Steel Helmet. Craters on roads, rumbles with dogfaces, the amorous wiseguy who borrows the maiden's bicycle after being left behind. "The first real novel that's gonna come out of this war," a work in progress. Pièce de résistance, barreling through burning terrain one year ahead of Clouzot's The Wages of Fear. "Get stalled in there, buddy, you'll be drivin' the only ten-wheeled Roman candle in France." With Judith Braun, Bubber Johnson, Davis Roberts, Frank Chase, Cindy Garner, Gregg Palmer, John Hudson, Jack Kelly, and Howard Petrie. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |