Film Review
Edward Dmytryk's overblown adaptation of Irwin Shaw's popular wartime
novel
The Young Lions is a
sprawling and uneven affair that struggles to fill its over-generous
two hours and fifty minutes of run time, but it has at least three
things in its favour: riveting performances from each of its three lead
actors, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin. For
Martin, the film was crucial, his chance to prove that he could make it
as a solo actor after his break-up with his long-time comedy partner
Jerry Lewis - he acquits himself superbly, with what is quite possibly
the best performance of his career. Brando and Clift also manage
to exceed our expectations - remarkably this is the only occasion we
get to see them together in the same film. Clift's sensitive
portrayal of a working class Jew who triumphs over middle-class and
racial prejudice is intensely poignant and true to life, although it is
Brando who steals the film, with what is assuredly one of his finest
character turns, totally convincing as an idealist young German officer
who becomes sickened by the realities of war and the demonic side of
Nazism.
Dmytryk's direction lacks its customary flair and too much of the film
feels as if it was shot half-heartedly, with simple camera set-ups and
no real attempt to build tension. The contrivances that riddle
the screenplay become increasingly absurd as the film progresses and a
more committed director would perhaps have worked a little harder to turn
these into cruel ironies of fate rather than what looks like lazy
writing. In parts, the film descends to the level of lowgrade
soap, gushing with the kind of mawkish sentimentality that is an
instant turn off. The few battle scenes are competently staged
but overall appear to be superfluous in a film that is fundamentally
about the inner conflict within a man, rather than the external
conflicts between men. The three main characters all have a
harrowing personal journey to negotiate, and for each of them the
greatest enemy is himself. One (Martin) is an outright coward
whose only interest is to avoid being killed, at any cost. The
second (Ackerman) must overcome racial prejudice to prove himself a
decent American citizen, worthy of the respect of his fellow comrades
in arms and the family of the woman he hopes to marry. The third
(Brando) is driven to see what Nazism stands for and becomes ever more
sickened by the cause he is fighting for, knowing that any attempt to
resist it would be a futile gesture.
The storylines involving Dean Martin and Montgomery Clift are what you
would typically expect to find in an American war film of this era, and
here
The Young Lions offers
few, if any, surprises. What makes the film so interesting, and
so compelling, is the inclusion of the third narrative strand involving
Marlon Brando's character, which, unusually, shows us the war from a
totally different perspective, that of a decent young man who happens
to be a Germany officer. Bizarrely, it is not the square-jawed
American GIs who grab our sympathies and emerge as the real heroes of
the film - it is Brando's conflicted German Lieutenant Diestl.
Through a combination of subtle writing and even more subtle acting,
Diestl is revealed to be a character of staggering complexity and there
is hardly a scene in the film in which Brando does not make us want to
weep for the horrible predicament he finds himself in, having to
support a regime he knows to be inhumane and totally misguided.
It is a pity that the film had to end with a typically soppy Hollywood
coda, rather than just a few seconds earlier. How much more
powerful and meaningful the film would have been if the last thing it
had showed us was Diestl's casual butchery by a soldier who had known
nothing of his agonising loss of faith and personal
disintegration.
The Young Lions
was a brave attempt at a different kind of war film, but in the end it
is let down by its own pusillanimous reluctance to stray too far from
the cosy conventions of its time.
© James Travers 2013
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Next Edward Dmytryk film:
Murder, My Sweet (1944)
Film Synopsis
On the eve of World War II, Christian Diestl has high hopes that
Hitler's National Socialist Party will bring about a better future for
his country, but his illusions are soon shattered by the harsh
realities of warfare. After the surrender of France, he meets and
falls in love with a young woman in Paris, who makes him realise that
he is on the wrong side of history. Meanwhile, on the other side
of the Atlantic, Noah Ackerman and Michael Whiteacre are called up to
serve in the United States army. Ackerman, a Jew, is viciously
ill-treated by his fellow conscripts and platoon leader, whilst
Whiteacre, a self-confessed coward, uses his influence as a well-known
name on Broadway to secure a safe posting far from the front
line. Whilst Ackerman and Whiteacre are both improved by their
wartime experiences, Diestl has his morale slowly eaten away as he
comes to realise the full extent of the evil that his country has
unleashed upon the world...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.