In HMV a few days ago I found a film called "The Big Red One," a film by Samuel Fuller from 1980, which has been restored to its shooting script version - I get the impression that the release version was significantly cut. Lee Marvin as a grizzled sergeant with history dating to WWI, shepherding four rookies (including a post-Star Wars Mark Hamill) in the US 1st Infantry Division through Algeria and the Kasserine Pass, Sicily, Normandy Omaha Beach and then through Belgium and finally into Czechoslovakia. A recurring theme throughout is whether 'killing' can be different from 'murder?'
Apart from matters of pace and timing (which are largely fashion in the film industry), a number of things struck me. The episodic nature of the film (it crosses 1918, and then WWII from the North African landings onwards) reminded me of All Quiet On The Western Front, as it's a story mainly about surviving what happens, rather than being part of something. Private Ryan owes a lot to this film, but more pointedly the dramatisation of Stephen Ambrose's book Band of Brothers appears to have drawn on it too. There's much in the film that is clearly directly from Fuller's own experience: A Sicilian boy doing a deal with the GIs, trading knowledge of a hidden artillery piece (turns out to be a tank) for a decent burial for his mother; a Belgian woman spotting an infiltrator from something as simple as the way he holds his knife whilst eating, losing a squad member to a sniper who turns out to be a child, and the liberation of Flossenburg. Other episodes are well known in more general histories, and are included (I guess) so that the roadmap is complete.
Some points are laboured, and whilst the cast aren't all brilliant, Marvin is very good. It's worth seeing.
