Stars: Richard Widmark, Karl Malden, Robert Wagner, Jack Palance

Director: Lewis Milestone

Summary: A Lieutenant is about to lead his men into a heavily fortified Japanese stronghold, during the American Pacific campaign.

Once again returning to the genre to which he was perhaps best-suited, director Lewis Milestone traces the fate of a Marine platoon during WWII. The film stars Richard Widmark as the no-nonsense Lt. Carl Anderson, an officer charged with the responibility of leading his unit on a scouting mission to capture prisoners from an experimental rocket-launching facility and bring them back for interrogation. Among his platoon are veterans Pidgeon Lane (Jack Palance), Doc (Karl Malden), and Sgt. Zelenko (Neville Brand), as well as raw recruits Coffman (Robert Wagner) and Cpl. Stuart Conroy (Richard Hylton). Anderson is skilled at subtly motivating the varied group of characters, while suffering himself from crushing headaches. The platoon attacks the island, taking losses on the heavily defended beach. When they try to take a strategic ridge, they're pinned down by rocket fire whose source is impossible to locate. In desperation, Anderson is ordered to take a hand-picked patrol behind enemy lines to bring back prisoners. After some painful losses, they finally return with prisoners. Despite occasional war movie cliches, this is a solid, exceptionally well acted effort, which gives full weight to the terrible human cost of war. The film is also notable for great performances by Malden, Palance, Widmark, Webb, and the very young Wagner.

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Alfred Hitchcock famously observed that movies should be more than just picture postcards of people talking. Sometimes, though, dialogue is all that's needed. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's immaculately scripted All About Eve is a case in point. There are no special effects (unless one considers Marilyn Monroe's wiggle or a scene in which a car breaks down). What the movie offers instead is some of the most coruscating one-liners ever committed to celluloid.

The top-name cast certainly know how to put Mankiewicz's words across. Anne Baxter is all doe-eyed charm as Eve, the ruthless aspiring actress who passes herself off as a little girl lost. George Sanders (eminent character actor and the voice of Shere Khan the tiger in The Jungle Book) shows his customary mellowness of sneer as Addison De Witt, theatre critic and professional cynic ("a venomous foot louse" as he's characterised) who helps push Eve up the greasy pole toward success, if not happiness. Best of all is Bette Davis, a soured but still resplendent stage diva, who takes Eve under her wing. ("I'll admit I've seen better days but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail--like a salted peanut", she tells her lover.) The plotting and double-dealing on the screen, described in Sam Staggs' All About All About Eve: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made, were matched by what went on behind the scenes. Davis heartily loathed fellow actress Celeste Holm who--ironically enough--plays her best friend. She fell in love with another co-star, the handsome, good-looking Gary Merrill, whom she later married. Backstage dramas are often self-indulgent and stagy affairs, but this one dazzles. --Geoffrey Macnab

Aspect Ratio:	4:3 Full Frame
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1951
Release Date:	May 3, 2004
Runtime:	109 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	01214 D V D
Keywords:	War, Montezuma, Halls
Genre:	War