Battleground

Based on the true life activities of an American division shortly after the D-Day landings in the winter of 1944, this offers one of the most authentic interpretations of the wartime experiences of a dozen or so ordinary soldiers far from home, cold, hungry and fearful. They are led by “Holley” (Van Johnson) but rank means precious little really as the squad try to navigate the foggy countryside around Bastogne with little ammunition or food. Meantime, the Nazis are plotting their own major counter-offensive and with a constant barrage of sniper fire, leaflet dropping and radio broadcasts spelling doom and gloom for them, these squaddies find themselves living on their nerves more and more. What stands out with this drama is that it avoids the more rabble-rousing and jingoistic aspects of warfare cinema and concentrates more on just how tough their situation proved on even the most robust of these men. Men, it should be said, who were not professional soldiers nor were they remotely prepared - physically or psychologically - for the attritional aspects of this evolving, taut, scenario. Each man has their own way of dealing with this, and in many cases these ways are neither reliable nor consistent. They can vacillate between despair and hysteria, terror and optimism and a really effective cast deliver with authenticity. George Murphy’s “Slazak” probably does best for me, but there are plenty of others treading on these eggshells including one of his more natural contributions from Ricardo Montalban, as well as John Hodiak - but it’s really the ensemble approach to the storytelling that demonstrates just how vital teamwork and inter-reliance were for survival, for sanity and for motivation. William Wellman keeps that tension going potently with only a modicum of pyrotechnics and gunfire, but with plenty of conversation - rational, irrational and downright bizarre, as we head to no particular conclusion for these men but a piece of a jigsaw puzzle about which they didn’t really know their own part much less the bigger picture. It’s a film about the ordinary folk who fought in WWII and for two hours presents us with quite a compelling and emotional character study.