Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

GazerRise Fantastic!

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

evanston_dad "The Story of G.I. Joe" is a tribute to the anonymous grunts who made up the U.S. infantry during WWII. It's an odd film in many ways compared to other war movies of the time. It's light on the propaganda and morale boosting, and doesn't really even have a plot. It's rather an episodic series of vignettes that shows what a day in the life of an infantry soldier could consist of. It's even a bit surreal in the way that I imagine war can be, where one moment you're having a conversation about something mundane, the next moment you're dodging bullets and bombs, and the moment after that you're back to your mundane conversation. There's not a mission to anchor the plot, and there's no conclusion either. These guys just wander around, doing what they're told and never really seeming to be sure (or really care for that matter) what they're objective is. I imagine that also is very much the way war is for the average soldier.If you need main characters in your movies, I suppose those played by Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum will do, but this film isn't really about those two men any more than it is about any one of the other men. We get to know the soldiers the way another soldier in the company would, by one or two defining traits, not by any intimate knowledge of their inner lives. Makes it easier to say goodbye to them when they die.The always reliable William Wellman directed "The Story of G.I. Joe," and he gives it a realistic, newsreel look that's also very different from the usual studio sets of the era."G.I. Joe" was nominated for four Oscars in 1945: Best Supporting Actor (Mitchum), Best Screenplay, Best Dramatic or Comedy Score, and Best Original Song, for the short tune "Linda" that hauntingly is used in the film as part of a German radio broadcast designed to demoralize American troops.Grade: A

jacegaffney This is a beautiful movie. Its most celebrated scene is of two men in a tent, one a war correspondent, named Ernie Pyle, the other an army captain, called Walker. They are shown together commiserating about the men the latter one feels responsible for sending to their deaths. This is an idle moment, an intermission from the killing but not the squalor, composed of words, rain, mud and pregnant pauses between swigs of a shared bottle of grappa. Nothing "happens" except that the viewer is privy to a communion of souls and the spectacle of what seems like the two most believable actors (Burgess Meredith as Pyle, and Robert Mitchum as Lt. Capt. Bill Walker, respectively)to ever share screen space and time together in the same motion picture.In his famous review of it, James Agee compared the packed emotionalism of GI JOE's final lyrical outburst with the elegiac verses of Whitman's Civil War poetry and while the great author of "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" and "A Death In The Family" was wont to gush about certain pet favs of his (John Huston, the 'Silent Age' of Charles Chaplin, and a documentary approach to the cinema, in general, spring most immediately to mind) on this occasion, when composing the longest essay he ever devoted to a single picture, I believe Agee got it exactly right for of all the war films dealing directly with the miserable business of fighting and dying and soldiering on regardless, only THE DEER HUNTER comes remotely close to equalling its weary blend of stoical honor and boundless remorse in the face of such heartbreaking images of battle.The anecdotal design of THE STORY OF G.I. JOE (the underrated, deceptively original script is by Leopald Atlas and Guy Endure) frustrates as standard narrative mechanism but coheres poetically as a whole, as an ode to the nobility of the human spirit. It ingeniously incorporates surprisingly choice ingredients of the period: the overcast quality of Robert Capa's combat photos haunt the cinematography and give this William Wellman film an expressive look (and grace) none of his others possess; the early scenes in the African desert and a hurried-up wedding between a WAAC and enlisted man have the flavor of a series of mordant Bill Maulden cartoons. Most obviously, there are the words of Pyle himself, especially the inspiring ones culled from "The Death of Captain Waskow," spoken by Meredith on the soundtrack that conclude the movie.Wellman wraps it together with the utmost tact and unerring sensitivity (qualities not usually associated with him)- with a divine instinct that seems to derive from the beyond. This makes it the greatest of Memorial Day movies. In its stark juxtaposition of brutal inevitability (the men look out for each other like muddy boots dangling in the wind, ready to drop) and the recording of amazingly tender impulses under duress, G.I JOE is the most cathartic of fighting films. It wasn't until the Peckinpah westerns that anybody surpassed it.

MarkJGarcia Released in July of 1945 shortly before the war ended this movie follows real life war correspondent Ernie Pyle played by Burgess Meredith. For his first assignment on the front he joins up with Company C of the Army's 18th Infantry, also on its virgin mission, in the North African desert. Through some tough battles Ernie earns the respect of the men. Sometime later, after victories in Sicily and elsewhere, Ernie rejoins Company C in a camp in Italy where the men this time are happy to see him. The men of Company C are led by Lt. Bill Walker, played by Robert Mitchum. Mitchum was lent from RKO to United Artists for this William Wellman directed movie. The extras in the film were real American GIs, in the process of being transferred from the war in Europe to the Pacific. Many of them were killed in the fighting on Okinawa - the same battle in which Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese sniper - never having seen the movie in which they appeared. On April 18, 1945, Pyle died on Ie Shima, an island off Okinawa Honto, after being hit by Japanese machine-gun fire. He was riding in a jeep with Lieutenant Colonel Joseph B. Coolidge (commanding officer of the 305th Infantry Regiment, 77th Infantry Division) and three other men. The road, which paralleled the beach two or three hundred yards inland, had been cleared of mines, and hundreds of vehicles had driven over it. As the vehicle reached a road junction, an enemy machine gun located on a coral ridge about a third of a mile away began firing at them. The men stopped their vehicle and jumped into a ditch. Pyle and Coolidge raised their heads to look around for the others; when they spotted them, Pyle smiled and asked Coolidge "Are you all right?" Those were his last words. The machine gun began shooting again, and Pyle was struck in the left temple (however, the Ernie Pyle State Historic Site in Dana, Indiana, contains a telegram from the Government to Pyle's father stating Pyle was killed by a sniper).The colonel called for a medic, but none were present. It made no difference—Pyle had been killed instantly.

trwillett Don't understand the other writer's comment about it being 'endless mud.' Yeah, it was, and so was the war. The film shows the weariness, the dirt, the cold and--above all--the futility of war. To think we are still doing it...still sending men and women to lob bombs and bullets at each other...is unbearably sad.Mitchum is excellent as a battlefield-promoted leader. And Meredith is outstanding as Pyle--the actor conveyed the compassion of the correspondent with the lift of an eyebrow, a softly spoken word.This film should be seen in all high schools along with Battleground. Then let the students discuss what they saw and how it applies to today's situation.When will we ever stop throwing rocks/bombs/bullets at each other?