NFR Project: 'The Story of G.I. Joe' (1945)

 

NFR Project: “The Story of G. I. Joe”

Dir: William A. Wellman

Scr: Leopold Atlas, Guy Endore, Philip Stevenson

Pho: Russell Metty

Ed: Albrecht Joseph

Premiere: June 18, 1945

108 min.

“To Pyle, they were heroes, not dashing or even particularly brave, but men who persisted in the face of great fear and discomfort because they had to. By sharing their lives, Pyle was becoming one of them in spirit if not in age, in practice if not by force of conscription.” -- David Nichols, Ernie’s War

Ernie Pyle was a journalist from Indiana. He developed from beat reporter to managing editor. Then he took off and did what his instincts led him to – he traveled the country for Scripps-Howard, turning in an essay six days a week, writing about the people he met and the experiences he had. He was a syndicated, roving columnist.

Then World War II came. Pyle determined that he would report on the war much as he had written on American domestic life, by traveling and telling regular people’s stories. He reported first from war-torn England, then shipped out to North Africa. Pyle was 42 years old.

Instead of covering the war as a typical journalist might, by talking to officials and military men and providing an overview of the situation, Pyle did the opposite. He imbedded himself with an infantry unit and traveled with them to the front, as close as he could possibly get (and nearly getting killed in the process). He put himself in the background, and foregrounded the stories and impressions of the men with which he, in a sense, served.

Pyle’s first book of war columns, the 1943 Here Is Your War, was an enormous success. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He became, to his annoyance, famous. He kept reporting, going to the Italy campaign, landing in France one day after D-Day, seeing Paris liberated.

His work thrived close to combat, but he did not. He complained on being drained of feeling, of indifference to the death he saw, day after day. He wondered how it affected him, and those around him, and he wrote honestly of that. His writing is simple, clear, and affecting, thoughtful without being maudlin or pretentious. Ernie was the real deal.

Now, during the war it turns out that the Army wanted a film glorifying their servicemen much as Air Force did for flyers in 1943. They immediately latched onto the idea of basing a film on Ernie’s columns. A deal was made, and the project was developed. No fewer than nine other combat journalists were called in to vet the script and the production, to make it as real and unidealized as possible.

Director Wellman had been an ace flyer in World War I, so he knew something of military life. He wanted to make a film that accurately portrayed the life of a combat soldier – and he did. Along with Battleground (1948), Wellman made the most convincing portrayals of an infantryman’s life.

The film ostensibly stars Burgess Meredith as Pyle (he is given Pyle’s white hair and receding hairline). The moral center of the film, however, is Robert Mitchum as Captain Walker, the gruff but compassionate leader of the men. This is Mitchum’s first significant role, and it’s the only role for which he ever received an Oscar nomination. His world-weary, sleepy-eyed soul on display, Mitchum nails the mix of fatalism and hope that makes Walker an emblematic presence on the screen.

Pyle retreats with the troops after the Battle of Kasserine Pass, the Americans’ first big defeat. Pyle rejoining them in Italy, where they get bogged down at San Pietro (there is footage incorporated from John Huston’s 1945 documentary The Battle of San Pietro) and in front of Monte Cassino.

In the script, Pyle stays back at the edges of the scenes, allowing the men he covers to speak for themselves. They are a ragged bunch – there are no he-men or fanatical patriots here. They are regular guys, called on to do a horrifying job. The men dig in to the knee-deep mud in front of Monte Cassino, which for weeks is not bombed as it is an ancient monastery, even though it’s being used by the Germans as a targeting outpost.

The rain pours down; the men go out on patrol. They are wet, unshaven, filthy. Characters are picked off.

The men get turkey and wine for Christmas, via Walker, at gunpoint, from the quartermaster.

Finally, the monastery is bombed and the men take the objective. Meanwhile, Ernie goes to the rear to submit some columns and finds he’s won the Pulitzer. He returns to Cassino, where he finds the remnants of his outfit waiting for their next assignment. Men leading mules draped with corpses come down from the heights. Walker is one of the dead.

And the film ends. There is no happy ending here. The men look down at Walker, mumble apologies, and move on. Ernie follows them.

Wellman, admirably, doesn’t shy away from any of the soul-crushing details of life in combat. It is a miserable enterprise, consisting of long bouts of waiting and passages of extreme peril and violence. Hunger, cold, illness all taking a toll. The film is relentlessly downbeat. It posits the theory that one is fighting not so much for one’s country as for one’s buddies, caught in the same desperate situation.

Pyle never got to see the film. He decided to go and cover the Pacific war after the end of the war in Europe. On April 18, 1945, Pyle was shot by a Japanese sniper on the island of Ie Shima, west of Okinawa. This film is an admirable reminder of Pyle's eloquence and compassion.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.