Movie Review: 'The Dirty Dozen'
Pros: Great cast; well-written screenplay; lots
of action in third act
Cons: Unflinching look at war's violence, but
not as graphic as modern war films
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
All art, as writer-director Nicholas Meyer (The Seven Percent Solution, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) has observed in several of his Star Trek-related audio commentaries for home video, is a reflection of the time in which its conceived. One can, for instance, look at a painting by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn and one by Pablo Picasso and tell right away that one was done in the 17th Century and that the other was created in the 20th.
As such, movies – no matter what genre they may fit in – tend to reflect the social, cultural and political environments of the times in which they are made. Not only in simple terms of cinematic techniques and casts – a film such as Casablanca is clearly identified as a 1940s-era film because it’s in black-and-white, it stars actors who were prominent between 1930 and 1950, the music, its visual style, its themes, its political undertones and the very way it was written.
On the other hand, you can’t confuse 1993’s Schindler’s List with Casablanca even though they’re both (mostly) in black-and-white and are set during World War II. Schindler’s List’s director Steven Spielberg and his cinematographer may borrow some ingredients from World War II era films – such as lighting setups and the big themes that portray Nazi Germany’s tyranny – but the movie’s realistic portrayal of violence and Nazi war crimes can’t be confused for Casablanca’s crowd-pleasing mix of wartime propaganda, romance, comedy, musical interludes and even bits of clear-cut good-guys-versus-bad-guys action adventure.
Though all genres tend to change along with the times in which they are made, movies about World War II underwent a major transformation as filmmakers’ perceptions about the conflict evolved – often influenced by writers’ or directors’ political philosophies.
For instance, movies made in Hollywood between 1939 and 1945 (but especially those produced after December 1941) tend to be inspirational, escapist or almost simplistic in nature. American “combat” films, even those which depict the dark days of 1941 and 1942, tend to showcase small units of white servicemen from various ethnic groups who, despite their initial differences, come together by Act Three to fight the evil Axis and give them a drubbing, All-American Style. Even in movies like Wake Island or Bataan – battles which resulted in Japanese victories – the 1940s era viewer was left with a certain belief that these setbacks could and would be reversed.
By 1967, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, the cultural and social pendulums had swung so radically that producer Kenneth Hyman felt at ease with an adaptation of E.M. Nathanson’s novel about 12 GIs convicted of serious crimes being recruited and trained to carry out a perilous mission in Nazi-occupied France.
If Nathanson’s novel The Dirty Dozen had been written, say, in the early 1950s, it’s quite likely that the writer would have chosen 12 trouble-prone GIs for Major John Reisman’s ad hoc unit instead of hardened criminals who are sentenced to either death by hanging or 20 years of hard labor.
However, the book was published in 1965, by which time the national mood toward the military was turning cynical and anti-heroes were beginning to be staples in popular literature and war movies, even those set during “the good war.”
Perhaps even more relevantly, by 1967 support for the U.S. military operations in Vietnam was eroding significantly; this is reflected in The Dirty Dozen’s obvious anti-authoritarian undertones, personalized by the attitudes of not only the 12 “hard cases” placed under the command of Maj. Reisman (Lee Marvin), but those of the anti-heroic major himself.
Written by Nunnally Johnson (The Three Faces of Eve) and Lukas Heller (The Flight of the Phoenix), The Dirty Dozen is set in the early spring of 1944, a few months before the Allied invasion of Normandy.
In a prologue which essentially sets up the film’s plot, Reisman, an infantry officer who apparently has been seconded to the Office of Strategic Services, witnesses the execution (by hanging, no less) of a GI who has committed murder. As Reisman digests this unpleasant event, he is ushered into a briefing room by Major General Worden (Ernest Borgnine), where other Army officers – including his previous commanding officer, Col. Breed (Robert Ryan) and the more sympathetic Major Armbruster (George Kennedy) – are also in attendance.
Maj. Gen. Worden: This war was not started for your private gratification, and you can be damned sure it's not being run for your personal convenience, either!
Though Worden clearly doesn’t like Reisman’s methods of making war, he does recognize that behind the major’s insubordinate attitude and dislike of generals who don’t really know how to fight battles there is a real soldier’s mind and skill set. Knowing that Breed and the by-the-book General Denton (Robert Webber) object, Worden nevertheless offers Reisman an assignment proposed by Allied headquarters: to choose 12 convicts, psychos and losers from a U.S. Army prison in England, train them, then lead them on a daring and deadly raid in enemy territory a few weeks before D-Day.
At first, all Worden can offer Reisman is the possibility of commuting the prisoners’ sentences if they somehow survive the mission. The canny Reisman knows that this is no deal that the men will accept, so he gets the reluctant general to guarantee full pardons to the men if they take the assignment, don’t try to escape and complete the raid.
The first two thirds of The Dirty Dozen – so called because the 12 soldiers refuse to shave or shower to protest their shabby living conditions during training – center on how Reisman chooses and trains his team for what he and his superiors consider to be a veritable suicide mission.
The team-in-the-making includes Victor Franko (John Cassavetes), Joseph Wladislaw (Charles Bronson), Robert Jefferson (Jim Brown), Samson Posey (Clint Walker), Pedro Jiminez (Trini Lopez) and Vernon Pinkley (Donald Sutherland).
All art, as writer-director Nicholas Meyer (The Seven Percent Solution, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) has observed in several of his Star Trek-related audio commentaries for home video, is a reflection of the time in which its conceived. One can, for instance, look at a painting by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn and one by Pablo Picasso and tell right away that one was done in the 17th Century and that the other was created in the 20th.
As such, movies – no matter what genre they may fit in – tend to reflect the social, cultural and political environments of the times in which they are made. Not only in simple terms of cinematic techniques and casts – a film such as Casablanca is clearly identified as a 1940s-era film because it’s in black-and-white, it stars actors who were prominent between 1930 and 1950, the music, its visual style, its themes, its political undertones and the very way it was written.
On the other hand, you can’t confuse 1993’s Schindler’s List with Casablanca even though they’re both (mostly) in black-and-white and are set during World War II. Schindler’s List’s director Steven Spielberg and his cinematographer may borrow some ingredients from World War II era films – such as lighting setups and the big themes that portray Nazi Germany’s tyranny – but the movie’s realistic portrayal of violence and Nazi war crimes can’t be confused for Casablanca’s crowd-pleasing mix of wartime propaganda, romance, comedy, musical interludes and even bits of clear-cut good-guys-versus-bad-guys action adventure.
Though all genres tend to change along with the times in which they are made, movies about World War II underwent a major transformation as filmmakers’ perceptions about the conflict evolved – often influenced by writers’ or directors’ political philosophies.
For instance, movies made in Hollywood between 1939 and 1945 (but especially those produced after December 1941) tend to be inspirational, escapist or almost simplistic in nature. American “combat” films, even those which depict the dark days of 1941 and 1942, tend to showcase small units of white servicemen from various ethnic groups who, despite their initial differences, come together by Act Three to fight the evil Axis and give them a drubbing, All-American Style. Even in movies like Wake Island or Bataan – battles which resulted in Japanese victories – the 1940s era viewer was left with a certain belief that these setbacks could and would be reversed.
By 1967, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, the cultural and social pendulums had swung so radically that producer Kenneth Hyman felt at ease with an adaptation of E.M. Nathanson’s novel about 12 GIs convicted of serious crimes being recruited and trained to carry out a perilous mission in Nazi-occupied France.
If Nathanson’s novel The Dirty Dozen had been written, say, in the early 1950s, it’s quite likely that the writer would have chosen 12 trouble-prone GIs for Major John Reisman’s ad hoc unit instead of hardened criminals who are sentenced to either death by hanging or 20 years of hard labor.
However, the book was published in 1965, by which time the national mood toward the military was turning cynical and anti-heroes were beginning to be staples in popular literature and war movies, even those set during “the good war.”
Perhaps even more relevantly, by 1967 support for the U.S. military operations in Vietnam was eroding significantly; this is reflected in The Dirty Dozen’s obvious anti-authoritarian undertones, personalized by the attitudes of not only the 12 “hard cases” placed under the command of Maj. Reisman (Lee Marvin), but those of the anti-heroic major himself.
Written by Nunnally Johnson (The Three Faces of Eve) and Lukas Heller (The Flight of the Phoenix), The Dirty Dozen is set in the early spring of 1944, a few months before the Allied invasion of Normandy.
In a prologue which essentially sets up the film’s plot, Reisman, an infantry officer who apparently has been seconded to the Office of Strategic Services, witnesses the execution (by hanging, no less) of a GI who has committed murder. As Reisman digests this unpleasant event, he is ushered into a briefing room by Major General Worden (Ernest Borgnine), where other Army officers – including his previous commanding officer, Col. Breed (Robert Ryan) and the more sympathetic Major Armbruster (George Kennedy) – are also in attendance.
Maj. Gen. Worden: This war was not started for your private gratification, and you can be damned sure it's not being run for your personal convenience, either!
Though Worden clearly doesn’t like Reisman’s methods of making war, he does recognize that behind the major’s insubordinate attitude and dislike of generals who don’t really know how to fight battles there is a real soldier’s mind and skill set. Knowing that Breed and the by-the-book General Denton (Robert Webber) object, Worden nevertheless offers Reisman an assignment proposed by Allied headquarters: to choose 12 convicts, psychos and losers from a U.S. Army prison in England, train them, then lead them on a daring and deadly raid in enemy territory a few weeks before D-Day.
At first, all Worden can offer Reisman is the possibility of commuting the prisoners’ sentences if they somehow survive the mission. The canny Reisman knows that this is no deal that the men will accept, so he gets the reluctant general to guarantee full pardons to the men if they take the assignment, don’t try to escape and complete the raid.
The first two thirds of The Dirty Dozen – so called because the 12 soldiers refuse to shave or shower to protest their shabby living conditions during training – center on how Reisman chooses and trains his team for what he and his superiors consider to be a veritable suicide mission.
The team-in-the-making includes Victor Franko (John Cassavetes), Joseph Wladislaw (Charles Bronson), Robert Jefferson (Jim Brown), Samson Posey (Clint Walker), Pedro Jiminez (Trini Lopez) and Vernon Pinkley (Donald Sutherland).
Other members include Archer Maggott (Telly Savalas) and Milo
Vladek (Tom Busby). Each man has his unsavory side and would otherwise be
unfit for military duty, but Reisman and Sgt. Bowren (Richard Jaeckel) have
made it their mission in life to get them back into fighting form and unleash
them against the enemy.
My Take: The Dirty Dozen is not one of those World War II action movies to be watched for their realism and historical accuracy. Though the novel it’s based on may have been inspired by accounts of GIs taken from stockades (military jails) to serve in a front line during a battle, the movie’s audio commentary – which includes comments by the well-known technical adviser Dale Dye – points out that in such cases the soldiers were being punished for drinking on duty or having gone AWOL. The film’s conceit that the U.S. Army would have ever used hardened criminals in any military action is merely for entertainment, although it is true that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did, in fact, shanghai convicts of all types (but mostly political prisoners) and send them to battle.
The film, though, works quite well as a piece of high-octane action-adventure; the Johnson-Keller screenplay does a great job at introducing the various characters and gives each of them unique traits. The Dozen aren’t the kind of guys you particularly would want to hang out socially with; Cassavetes’ Franko is a cold-blooded hoodlum and Savalas’ Maggott is a racist religious zealot who is violently misogynistic, while some of the others are shifty, undisciplined, crazy and malcontented.
Once they have undergone their training, however, the Dozen prove to be soldiers who can carry out any mission, especially once they turn their hostility toward the Army to the Germans instead.
Though "tame" by the standards of films such as Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, Aldrich's movie is, at times, shockingly violent and unflinching in its portrayal of war. In a well-known anecdote, MGM told the director that The Dirty Dozen would garner Aldrich an Oscar nomination if, and only if, he would remove one scene from the movie's climax.
Aldrich thought about it for a moment, but he turned the studio's request down and shot the scene as written in the script. When he was asked later why he gave up a chance for an Oscar win just to keep the scene, he said, "Because I wanted to show the audience that war is hell."
My Take: The Dirty Dozen is not one of those World War II action movies to be watched for their realism and historical accuracy. Though the novel it’s based on may have been inspired by accounts of GIs taken from stockades (military jails) to serve in a front line during a battle, the movie’s audio commentary – which includes comments by the well-known technical adviser Dale Dye – points out that in such cases the soldiers were being punished for drinking on duty or having gone AWOL. The film’s conceit that the U.S. Army would have ever used hardened criminals in any military action is merely for entertainment, although it is true that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did, in fact, shanghai convicts of all types (but mostly political prisoners) and send them to battle.
The film, though, works quite well as a piece of high-octane action-adventure; the Johnson-Keller screenplay does a great job at introducing the various characters and gives each of them unique traits. The Dozen aren’t the kind of guys you particularly would want to hang out socially with; Cassavetes’ Franko is a cold-blooded hoodlum and Savalas’ Maggott is a racist religious zealot who is violently misogynistic, while some of the others are shifty, undisciplined, crazy and malcontented.
Once they have undergone their training, however, the Dozen prove to be soldiers who can carry out any mission, especially once they turn their hostility toward the Army to the Germans instead.
Though "tame" by the standards of films such as Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, Aldrich's movie is, at times, shockingly violent and unflinching in its portrayal of war. In a well-known anecdote, MGM told the director that The Dirty Dozen would garner Aldrich an Oscar nomination if, and only if, he would remove one scene from the movie's climax.
Aldrich thought about it for a moment, but he turned the studio's request down and shot the scene as written in the script. When he was asked later why he gave up a chance for an Oscar win just to keep the scene, he said, "Because I wanted to show the audience that war is hell."
Comments
Post a Comment