This, despite its weaknesses, is quite a good movie. There is little sentimentality and no romance. It's all dust and death on both sides, the dwindling American force commanded by Gregory Peck and the Communist Chinese enemy.
It's based on S. L. A. Marshall's book of the same name, which focused, as does the film, on small-scale operations while not ignoring the larger picture. The larger picture is roughly this. Pork Chop Hill is a salient in the dividing line between two opposing armies and the cease fire is about to be signed at Panmunjom. In itself it is of no military importance, and all logic -- not just military reasoning but common sense -- dictates that the cease-fire line be straightened out and the hill ignored. Instead, both sides pour troops onto this insignificant little mountain, denuded of vegetation by long bombardment, a heap of rocky rubble laced with trenches.
It's sometimes said that Gregory Peck is a wooden actor and I guess I'd agree he's nobody's idea of Cary Grant when it comes to light comedy. His specialty lay in radiating an understated sincerity and leadership quality. He never pulled it off in a mechanical way either. There were always at least a few lines in which we recognized the human being behind the mask, and that's the case here. When he's handed an order that means he must send back his recently arrived, desperately needed reinforcements, he pauses and says quietly, "Well, they can't mean this," and we believe that he believes that they can't mean this. The rest of the cast has many familiar faces and none of them let the film down. One scene is perhaps the best that Harry Guardino has left on celluloid. The very air of the movie seems filled with fear, sweat, and dust.
But then there are the weaknesses. Marshall's book was unforgiving. When the higher echelons screwed up, Marshall noted it just as matter-of-factly as he noted the number of rounds expended by a given platoon during a given incident. In this film, somebody makes a mistake and turns on the searchlights at the wrong time. It's quickly corrected and the miscreants later explain that they mixed up Peck's unit with another -- and they apologize! And that's about it as far as errors on our side go. The later contretemps that deprive Peck of reinforcements and supplies are due to an unavoidable failure in communication, so it's nobody's fault.
Then there's the "Here comes the cavalry!" ending, which didn't happen, according to Marshall's book, if I remember it correctly. And sometimes the script spells things out in an unnecessary way. Guardino's friend is killed and Peck has to drag him away from the body, while he screams, "He was my BUDDY." Well -- we know that. It's already been demonstrated. So to whom is that line addressed? Audience members who don't know that stress generates fierce friendships?
And there's a final, even more unsettling failure to stand back from events and view them objectively, an unwillingness or inability to step outside the box. We see the Peace Talks taking place. The representative for our side explains to the Chinese, "According to the truce, Pork Chop Hill is right in the middle of the truce zone. You know it has no value so why don't you withdraw your men?" (The Chinese negotiator turns down his ear plug.) The Allied negotiators step outside and mutter angrily that the Chinese just don't want to lose the hill for symbolic reasons.
Well, what kind of cockeyed moral calculus is this? Isn't OUR side equally willing to sacrifice lives for the symbolic value of the hill? If the reasoning of the Chinese is wrong, isn't our reasoning, which is precisely the same, equally wrong? Soccer riots are better justified.
Enough preaching. This is one tough film. Despite the injections from Hollywood of the 1950s, we get a convincing picture of what combat is like. Death comes almost at random, and it's not always pretty. Bodies don't always have neat bullet holes through the shoulder. Sometimes they're visibly mangled, although the visuals aren't in any way offensive. And Peck does a superb job. So this is well worth seeing.
It's based on S. L. A. Marshall's book of the same name, which focused, as does the film, on small-scale operations while not ignoring the larger picture. The larger picture is roughly this. Pork Chop Hill is a salient in the dividing line between two opposing armies and the cease fire is about to be signed at Panmunjom. In itself it is of no military importance, and all logic -- not just military reasoning but common sense -- dictates that the cease-fire line be straightened out and the hill ignored. Instead, both sides pour troops onto this insignificant little mountain, denuded of vegetation by long bombardment, a heap of rocky rubble laced with trenches.
It's sometimes said that Gregory Peck is a wooden actor and I guess I'd agree he's nobody's idea of Cary Grant when it comes to light comedy. His specialty lay in radiating an understated sincerity and leadership quality. He never pulled it off in a mechanical way either. There were always at least a few lines in which we recognized the human being behind the mask, and that's the case here. When he's handed an order that means he must send back his recently arrived, desperately needed reinforcements, he pauses and says quietly, "Well, they can't mean this," and we believe that he believes that they can't mean this. The rest of the cast has many familiar faces and none of them let the film down. One scene is perhaps the best that Harry Guardino has left on celluloid. The very air of the movie seems filled with fear, sweat, and dust.
But then there are the weaknesses. Marshall's book was unforgiving. When the higher echelons screwed up, Marshall noted it just as matter-of-factly as he noted the number of rounds expended by a given platoon during a given incident. In this film, somebody makes a mistake and turns on the searchlights at the wrong time. It's quickly corrected and the miscreants later explain that they mixed up Peck's unit with another -- and they apologize! And that's about it as far as errors on our side go. The later contretemps that deprive Peck of reinforcements and supplies are due to an unavoidable failure in communication, so it's nobody's fault.
Then there's the "Here comes the cavalry!" ending, which didn't happen, according to Marshall's book, if I remember it correctly. And sometimes the script spells things out in an unnecessary way. Guardino's friend is killed and Peck has to drag him away from the body, while he screams, "He was my BUDDY." Well -- we know that. It's already been demonstrated. So to whom is that line addressed? Audience members who don't know that stress generates fierce friendships?
And there's a final, even more unsettling failure to stand back from events and view them objectively, an unwillingness or inability to step outside the box. We see the Peace Talks taking place. The representative for our side explains to the Chinese, "According to the truce, Pork Chop Hill is right in the middle of the truce zone. You know it has no value so why don't you withdraw your men?" (The Chinese negotiator turns down his ear plug.) The Allied negotiators step outside and mutter angrily that the Chinese just don't want to lose the hill for symbolic reasons.
Well, what kind of cockeyed moral calculus is this? Isn't OUR side equally willing to sacrifice lives for the symbolic value of the hill? If the reasoning of the Chinese is wrong, isn't our reasoning, which is precisely the same, equally wrong? Soccer riots are better justified.
Enough preaching. This is one tough film. Despite the injections from Hollywood of the 1950s, we get a convincing picture of what combat is like. Death comes almost at random, and it's not always pretty. Bodies don't always have neat bullet holes through the shoulder. Sometimes they're visibly mangled, although the visuals aren't in any way offensive. And Peck does a superb job. So this is well worth seeing.