Post by ronnierocketago on Feb 19, 2009 5:59:29 GMT
TO HELL AND BACK (1955) - ***1/2
I think its a good thing that Audie Leon Murphy was a real life person, for I doubt anyone would have conjoured up such a fantastical fictional biography in fear of being dismissed as pure absurdity. Born to an impoverished sharecropping Texas family of 12 kids, he was forced to quit school at eigth grade to get a job out after his father deserted them. After Pearl Harbor, Murphy at the tender age of 16 sought to enlist with the Marines, but at 5'5'' and 110 pounds, they turned him down for being ill-fit for combat. So did the Air Force and Paratroopers, but the Army let him join, even if his platoon thought his size was a fatal liability for them.
But shorty proved everyone wrong by earning a Distinguished Service Cross after solo-dispatching several Nazi machin gun nests after they killed his buddy. The runt ended up being commissioned second lieutenant, leading the platoon himself. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for Holtzwihr, France in 1945 where on top of a burning tank, a death trap with spilled gasoline everywhere, he alone held off a German infantry advance with the tank's .50 caliber machine gun, then organizing his surviving men, they staged a successful counter-attack. Holy shit! After the war, he became both a successful movie star (44 films in all) and a Country Music songwriter. After President Kennedy, Murphy's gravesite is the most visited at Arlington National Cemetary.
As an actor, his most notable film work was TO HELL AND BACK, based off his autobiography (which was actually ghost-written by his war buddy), so effectively you have rather uniquely bizarre film production where one of the most decorated soldiers in American history plays himself. It's a fascinating gimmick to say the least, one that easily could have been dismissed as Murphy and studio shallowly cashing in his fame as a war luminary. But Murphy surprisingly proves himself to be a captivating presence, a humble yet charismatic lead, like if Jimmy Stewart had ever quit stuttering and man up. The public agreed, for TO HELL AND BACK was Universal Picture's biggest box-office hit until JAWS.
But God knows how fucking weird and awkward it must have been for Murphy to recreate in dramatizing horrific traumatic episodes of his life a decade later. Of course the irony is that as badass as TO HELL AND BACK does make Murphy look (he needed no help from Hollywood), the producers actually cut out the more incredible details of his war years because they thought the audience wouldn't believe it. For instance, throughout his tour of duty, Murphy had malaria. That's right, he went Clint Eastwood on the Germans while suffering a disease that kills a million folks a year. Do you feel lucky mosquitos, do ya punk!?! No wonder Cracked.com praised him as "a real-life guy who made Rambo look like a pussy."
One thing you must get through with TO HELL AND BACK is that it was produced like the other Hollywood war films of that time, where war comes off as a great fun backyard adventure where soldiers simply fall down after getting shot and the Americans always die by overacting. Of course I think that epoch's censoring of war to offend audiences is a great insult to those who fought, for it makes their sacrifices seem almost trivial, and less miraculous for those that survived, all which Murphy didn't intend. Now what I do dig though with TO HELL is that alot like war vet-turned-filmmaker Sam Fuller's B-movies of the time, there is a dramatic emphasis on how in all wars, even the supposed righteous World War 2, alot of deaths occured over futile trivial matters that mock logic.
There is a great lengthy sequence in Italy where the Germans and Audie's platoon effectively wipe each other out, including most of Audie's pals, in a mud battlefield over a simple farmhouse that might serve as a temporary observation post. The Americans capture it finally, face off a column of Nazi tanks, but then have to evacuate immediately because of the advancing Allies. All for nothing.
What also caught my attention was the early scene when young Murphy had to quit school, how his hick neighbors lament over this tragedy. That's quite a contrast with modern America where a good education isn't as prized much anymore, or worse knowledge is demaned and dismissed especially in poor urban and rural communities, and nevermind that silly stigma within our politics and culture where being smart was an evil elitist trait.Better yet in Basketball, where we actually freak out in surprise when we get a major college senior star only join the NBA Draft after his senior year. Sure the NBA has since set that minimum draft age at 19, but it's not working like everyone had hoped. Instead of giving those guys at least a year of academia (which most of them waste anyway with garbage courses to stay GPA eligible), the NCAA has effectively become a glorified minor league.
Anyway, my favorite moment though in TO HELL was the ending shot when Murphy gets the parades and medals, and at this great moment of his life, he projects an empty blank uncomfortably awkward stare. It's good acting, but also it represents what I think also seperated TO HELL from the other genre works of the 1950s, which was making this critical point that as heroic Murphy was, his fallen comrades were no less brave or courageous, but are only remembered as mere statistics or unremarkable tombstones. Much like ATONEMENT, they were people with unfinished goals and dreams that were interrupted and destroyed by the war. This will sound naive, but I would like to believe that Murphy wouldn't have done TO HELL if it was just another run-of-the-mill glorifying of war.
The conclusion with the "ghost" roll call may come off to some of you as cheesy, but I appreciate that well meaning gesture, and with Murphy himself that makes TO HELL a really good watch in spite of the bland direction and an uneven uninspired episodic screenplay, though I did like that segment where this soldier, a bragger of his womanizing, confesses about his only true love back home to an Italian prostitute who didn't speak any English.
In fact, I think a nuanced biopic of Murphy should be produced. It would cover obviously his harsh upbringing, war exploits, and his cinema career (B-westerns and John Huston's THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE), but also the obscure fact that he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder ("shell shock"), which caused him to be severely addicted to sleeping pills. He quit cold turkey by spending a week locked up at a motel. Afterwards he used his fame to speak out in support of Korean and Vietnam veterans suffering from war-related mental disorders like PTSD, proving that they're all victims, even Audie fucking Murphy, of whom George S. Patton had infamously slapped literally as cowards.
Now that makes him an even greater hero.
