Irwin Shaw's novel The Young Lions was arguably the finest of the post-war novels about World War II; unlike the majority of novels that appeared between 1945-55 it concerned itself with ALL the major theatres of war in Europe and North Africa whilst others - The Naked And The Dead, Pacific island; The Cruel Sea, North Atlantic; Mr. Roberts, The Caine Mutiny, Pacific, Battle Cry, Pacific,etc - confined themselves to one arena. Shaw began his novel on New Year's Eve, 1938 and took in the North African campaign, D-Day and the war in Europe and was notable for including a German perspective in the shape of one of the three leading characters, Christian Diestl - the other two were American, WASP Michael Whiteacre and Jew Noah Ackerman whilst a fourth 'character', the bullet that finally kills Noah, which was followed from its manufacture until it got to Diestl, was 'dropped' by the publishers before it hit the stands in 1948. The basic storyline of three disparate soldiers has been retained but because of Brando's childish tantrums, which were ultimately successful, he was able to completely upset the balance of the movie by playing Diestl as a 'good' Nazi, culminating in the scene where, far from shooting Noah from ambush as he says 'welcome to Germany', he smashes his gun to pieces and is shot by Michael (as he was in the book but ONLY after he had first killed Noah). Clift must have experienced a sense of deja vu as he was called upon to fight the toughest guys in the platoon because he'd done the same thing five years earlier in From Here To Eternity; another echo with Eternity is that in both films senior officers who look the other way whilst Clift's characters are bullied are later themselves reprimanded by their own senior officers. The only thing wrong here is that Lions was published in 1948 but reached the screen later than Eternity, published in 1952. Clift, as usual, acts everybody else off the screen but there is some good support. It's certainly worth seeing but could have been so much better.
Review of The Young Lions
