Two nights ago in Brooklyn, New York, the wonderful Bam cinematheque screened Gordon Douglas' 1951 film Only the Valiant in the series J. Hoberman: An Army of Phantoms, programmed by the Village Voice critic in honor of the publication of his new book.
The film, by a director with whom I have no familiarity, was quite a discovery: a dark, morose, low-budget Western (and crypto Korean War film) that stars Gregory Peck as a "valiant" cavalry officer who leads a ragtag group of miscreant soldiers and non-coms on a suicide mission to defend a strategic pass from the Apache. The story and atmosphere is absolutely post-WW2; there's both a nastiness of the soldiers (anticipating films by Robert Aldrich, including the somewhat similar The Dirty Dozen) which reflects the more cynical attitude towards war and violence of the era, as well as an abstraction to the cause and ideology of...
The film, by a director with whom I have no familiarity, was quite a discovery: a dark, morose, low-budget Western (and crypto Korean War film) that stars Gregory Peck as a "valiant" cavalry officer who leads a ragtag group of miscreant soldiers and non-coms on a suicide mission to defend a strategic pass from the Apache. The story and atmosphere is absolutely post-WW2; there's both a nastiness of the soldiers (anticipating films by Robert Aldrich, including the somewhat similar The Dirty Dozen) which reflects the more cynical attitude towards war and violence of the era, as well as an abstraction to the cause and ideology of...
- 2/25/2011
- MUBI
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