As a young lad, I saw all those wars movies of the 1950s, but it would be a mistake to think that even at that age we weren't discriminating.
Based on best-selling novels, most had a good proportion of love to war; in fact one of them was called "In Love and War". However "The Naked and the Dead" opened with a fake-looking nightclub scene and then had the most intrusive, unbelievable romantic scenes that descend like drop-short artillery rounds into the story at inappropriate times with the women dressed like Gil Elvgren pin-up girls of the 1950s.
Back then, most of our parents had been in the war, and we also read books about it and saw documentaries. We had a fair idea about what had happened in the Pacific. However the island in "The Naked and the Dead" was fictional. Anopopei. It was ridiculous with a jungle covered, Matterhorn-like mountain in the middle.
We see the invasion of Anapopei from the brass-eye view with Raymond Massey as General Cummings. Then we get the foxhole-eye view with a platoon of grunts under Aldo Ray's Sergeant Croft, a man who would as soon whack a dame as he would the enemy. However, Cummings and Croft are cut from the same bolt of jungle greens, sharing the philosophy of making their own men more afraid of them than the Japanese.
Aldo Ray is totally believable. Director Raoul Walsh, according to his biography by Marilyn Ann Ross, reckoned Aldo was drunk most of the time, but his sheer physical presence commanded every scene he was in. Like many in front of and behind the camera, he had been in the real thing; a naval frogman who went in ahead of the landings on Okinawa, no wonder he looked so good in the swimming scenes; Aldo had definitely walked the walk.
As a young guy going to school back when discipline was more stringently applied, I didn't buy that General Cummings took all that back-chat from Lieutenant Hearn, his lippy, disrespectful aide played by Cliff Robertson. If Hearn had tried that with George S Patton he would have had the muzzle of an ivory-handled pistol stuck up his nose. Eventually Cummings punishes him by putting him in charge of Croft's platoon in a patrol over the mountain with a plan to fool the Japanese.
The battle scenes are impressive even if some were borrowed from the much more satisfying "Battle Cry" made a couple of years earlier.
Bernard Herrmann gave the film an ominous, distinctive score. It's not the most memorable war movie score of the 50s, see Hugo Friedhofer for those, but it's unlike any other.
War films of the late 50s, from Hollywood and Britain, had taken on a cynical edge. Now the Allies were portrayed as mean as the enemy. This film was a classic example. There were forces in society that were beginning to react to the traditional view of the military and the establishment that would dominate the 1960s.
Based on best-selling novels, most had a good proportion of love to war; in fact one of them was called "In Love and War". However "The Naked and the Dead" opened with a fake-looking nightclub scene and then had the most intrusive, unbelievable romantic scenes that descend like drop-short artillery rounds into the story at inappropriate times with the women dressed like Gil Elvgren pin-up girls of the 1950s.
Back then, most of our parents had been in the war, and we also read books about it and saw documentaries. We had a fair idea about what had happened in the Pacific. However the island in "The Naked and the Dead" was fictional. Anopopei. It was ridiculous with a jungle covered, Matterhorn-like mountain in the middle.
We see the invasion of Anapopei from the brass-eye view with Raymond Massey as General Cummings. Then we get the foxhole-eye view with a platoon of grunts under Aldo Ray's Sergeant Croft, a man who would as soon whack a dame as he would the enemy. However, Cummings and Croft are cut from the same bolt of jungle greens, sharing the philosophy of making their own men more afraid of them than the Japanese.
Aldo Ray is totally believable. Director Raoul Walsh, according to his biography by Marilyn Ann Ross, reckoned Aldo was drunk most of the time, but his sheer physical presence commanded every scene he was in. Like many in front of and behind the camera, he had been in the real thing; a naval frogman who went in ahead of the landings on Okinawa, no wonder he looked so good in the swimming scenes; Aldo had definitely walked the walk.
As a young guy going to school back when discipline was more stringently applied, I didn't buy that General Cummings took all that back-chat from Lieutenant Hearn, his lippy, disrespectful aide played by Cliff Robertson. If Hearn had tried that with George S Patton he would have had the muzzle of an ivory-handled pistol stuck up his nose. Eventually Cummings punishes him by putting him in charge of Croft's platoon in a patrol over the mountain with a plan to fool the Japanese.
The battle scenes are impressive even if some were borrowed from the much more satisfying "Battle Cry" made a couple of years earlier.
Bernard Herrmann gave the film an ominous, distinctive score. It's not the most memorable war movie score of the 50s, see Hugo Friedhofer for those, but it's unlike any other.
War films of the late 50s, from Hollywood and Britain, had taken on a cynical edge. Now the Allies were portrayed as mean as the enemy. This film was a classic example. There were forces in society that were beginning to react to the traditional view of the military and the establishment that would dominate the 1960s.