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The exquisitely offhand approach is illustrated early on, the radio broadcasting news of Pearl Harbor is shut off because it's interrupting Ward Bond's tribute to Jack Pennick in a saloon in the Philippines. (The youthful faces of sailors are contrasted with the cragginess of veteran officers, yet the most eloquent visage belongs to a local woman gazing through the smoke of departing vessels—suddenly, it might be Pedro Costa filming in Fontainhas.) "Plywood dreams" of the PT boat squadron, pitted against Japanese forces after the fall, a job of sacrifice for two Navy lieutenants (Robert Montgomery, John Wayne). "Why don't we knock those babies off?" "What with? A cake of soap and a bathtub?" Stanza after stanza of moody disenchantment released during the nation's celebration of victory, the bitter distillate of John Ford's war experience. Return to the decimated base, "pretty rugged, isn't it," lean rations for the walking dead, "razor blades and toothpaste." Bombardments, evacuations, casualties to remember. Healers in the wreckage have no time to be angelic, the nurse (Donna Reed) in close-up at the surgery table is an icon of clammy stoicism as the lights go off and on from nearby explosions. (Her romance with Wayne is curtailed with a phone call unceremoniously cut off in Bataan, "her voice sounded swell. Clear, brave... and far away.") Medals are distributed but the recipients are more interested in a feline stowaway, MacArthur's stride of patrician grandiosity is a set-up for the punchline of a callow ensign's autograph request. A puggish crew member known for "bits of poetry" (Murray Alper) gets a stammering eulogy of Stevenson verses, elsewhere the old shipwright (Russell Simpson) only needs rifle, jug of moonshine and strains of "Red River Valley" to await his demise. Idealized words to cling to in the reality of futility and exhaustion, "My country, 'tis of thee..." Donovan's Reef is the transcendental postscript. Cinematography by Joseph H. August. With Jack Holt, Marshall Thompson, Paul Langton, Leon Ames, Arthur Walsh, Donald Curtis, Cameron Mitchell, Jeff York, Harry Tenbrook, and Louis Jean Heydt. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |