Customer Reviews

Johnny Got His Gun

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I haven't read the book, but I knew the basic plot outline and so when I saw this film, I expected very strong anti-war sentiments to be pervasive throughout the movie. However, even though the main character loses his arms, legs, face and four of his five senses to a mortar in World War I, not a drop of blood is shown in the movie and the film's indictment of the institution of war seems to take a backseat to the young soldier's struggle to adapt to his dark, silent and motionless environment.

I was hesitant to watch this film at first because I thought it would be dull to watch a two-hour movie concerning a horribly maimed young man lying in bed. However, due to his unique condition of being connected to this world only through his sense of touch, I found it fascinating how he first struggles to distinguish his dreams from his reality, and after that tries puts his energy toward discerning the passage of time.

The movie includes a number of dream sequences, which to a man deprived of sight, sound, smell and taste, must certainly at least rival anything that happens during his waking hours in importance. The numerous dream sequences serve to explain his past and shed light on his values. Some of them are quite surreal, some are unhappy while some are fairly humorous.

The ending is grim and the man's predicament is left unresolved, which leaves the viewer to fill in some of the blanks, but this invites the viewer to give the movie some thought after seeing it, and I by no means felt that the movie was left so open-ended that I felt like I had been shortchanged.

I strongly recommend this brilliant film even to those people who generally avoid war movies.

This is a significant film that has reached cult status. Dalton Trumbo wrote the novel in 1938, won the National Book Award, and then the book was banned as subversive. Trumbo suffered a polemic from HUAC in 1949, and spent a year in jail for contempt of congress. The book was banned again in 1950, during the Korean War. Kirk Douglas brought him out of exile in 1960 to write the screenplay for SPARTACUS. In 1970, Trumbo directed this film himself, adapted from his own book, and it emerged as a scathing anti-war allegory. When the film opened, it did poorly at the box office in America. The Viet Nam war had clouded the issue. Perhaps if he had included more humor and satire in the picture it would have been easier to digest. Watching it is like drinking white lightning; it burns all the way down.

In 1989, the rock group Metallica released a 7 minute video called TWO OF ONE, and it did use clips from this film. This helped to generate more interest in the movie. The cinematography was above average, done by Jules Brenner, nicely blending B&W, sepia, and full color scenes.

We are introduced in the opening scene to a group of doctors discussing a decerebrated patient, a grievously wounded soldier, assumed to be brain dead; incapable of sentience or dreams; just an armless, legless, faceless, totally deaf living chunk of meat with a beating heart and an active colon. But we soon hear the soldier's voice, and realize he is aware of his environment.

Timothy Bottoms, in his film debut, played the young soldier, Joe Bonham. He did an exceptional job with the voice over work, and we get to see him in the flesh in flashbacks; even the moment he crouched in the trenches, readying himself for his rendezvous with the howitzer shell that had his name on it. There were some rough spots in his acting, but overall he was fine as the fresh-faced naive Joe. Jason Robards played the father, and he underplayed brilliantly. He was a terrific actor, who could bray and strut like in A THOUSAND CLOWNS, or he could quietly inhabit a role like he did in this film. Kathy Fields did a credible job as Joe's sweetheart, Kareen. Charles McGraw was wonderfully gruff, yet compassionate at Kareen's Dad. Eduard Franz, a skilled character actor, played the pivotal role of General Tillery, the doctor that had spared Joe's life, such as it was. Donald Sutherland played Christ, looking every inch both the hippy and the savoir. His scenes gave us a humorous take on death and war. Trumbo should have paid more attention to this level of satire. It might have made this movie more popular to the audiences of 1971.

Diane Varsi was outstanding as the fourth Nurse. She found a way to share her love of humanity with what was left of Joe. Her willingness to see him as a human being, to open windows, to sponge bathe him, even masturbate him, showed a level of compassion unrivaled in the piece. It was she that figured out Joe's incessant head movements were important. They turned out to be Morse code. Joe found a way to commlunicate with his doctors.

He asked to be allowed to be around other people, even to be given over to a carnival if necessary. He was tired of being alone. If they would not do this, then they should kill him. It was a chilling scene indeed, when shame, guilt, and cowardice washed over the medical assemblage. They fled quickly, exiling Nurse Varsi from the room, turned their backs on him, leaving him alone and drugged in the darkness and the complete silence, in the hellish limbo of the land of the living dead.

I liked this film a lot, more for its message than its content. As TV Guide put it, the movie was,"flawed but powerful." This film has sturdy teeth, and it bites through much of the traditional dogma, propaganda, and lies that politicians force-feed us eternally. It teaches us that blind patriotism can lead us into dark events, whereby the powers that be will be able to manipulate or sacrifice our life or limb on the alter of their choosing. It teaches us further that freedom, liberty, and democracy can be reduced to buzz words that can mantle the real issues. We come to realize that, in fact, there are worse things in this world than death.

In 1971 I was 17, and a budding "hippie" with anti-war leanings and a rebel streak a mile long. While riding the NYC subway to work one day, I noticed a young man about my age absorbed in a book as he rode next to me. The title of the book was Johnny Got His Gun. "Probably some right-wing adolescent shoot-`em-up war epic", I thought to myself, dismissing the teen and his book from my mind. A few weeks later, I read an article in the newspaper that a film was being made of the book Johnny Got His Gun, and I was instantly embarrassed at my previous assumption of the book's subject matter when I read that Johnny Got His Gun was actually a pacifist anti-war classic, and that its author, Dalton Trumbo, had been blacklisted as a communist during the 1950's. A few days later, I ran across the book in my favorite bookstore, and picked it up almost without thinking.

I was immediately blown away by the intense imagery of the narrative's storyline. Joe Bonham, an 18-year old soldier, is hit by a bombshell on the last day of WWI, and awakes in a hospital bed horribly deformed. Unable to speak, see, hear, or smell, he gradually learns that his arms and legs have been amputated. As the horror of his situation unfolds in a stream-of-consciousness first person narrative, he slowly realizes that the bomb shell that hit him scooped out his face, leaving a gaping hole where his eyes, ears, nose and mouth used to be. The army doctors automatically assume he is a thoughtless vegetable, and in an experimental effort to see if they can keep someone in his condition alive, he spends the next several years in a hospital bed, well cared-for but practically forgotten. Joe is constantly thinking but unable to communicate. Deprived of all senses, except feelings and thoughts, his story movingly unfolds, and I was forever transformed by the beauty of Mr. Trumbo's story-telling ability and the terror-filled description of Joe's situation. He spends his days remembering the details of his young life, while struggling to overcome the inability to discern his conscious thoughts from his nightmares. As I waited for the film's premiere, I must have read and re-read the book a half dozen times, and 38 years later, portions of the powerful book still stick with me.

I saw the film on opening day in an art house on the east side of Manhattan, and although I was slightly disappointed by the movie's inability to project the author's hauntingly beautiful prose onto the screen, the story has remained a favorite of mine ever since. I recall that the film got lukewarm reviews, but I remember urging all of my friends to see it and experience it for themselves. I also remember a review by Rex Reed, then one of the top film critics in NY. In describing the scene where Joe finally manages to communicate with a nurse the fact that he has conscious thoughts, Mr. Reed said that that scene alone contained more tenderness than the entire film "Love Story" (which was then a current smash hit). I was also bitterly disappointed that the film did not get more attention.

Recently I learned that an all-region DVD of the film was available from Portugal, and I gladly paid Amazon the import price of the DVD. I also obtained a new copy of the book, and found to my delight that the story had lost none of its impact after 38 years. Why should it? The book was first published in 1939, and when I first discovered it 32 years later, I found it fresh, vibrant and surprisingly topical.

Apparently due the fact that a stage version (and a DVD of the stage version) is getting quite a bit of attention, the powers that be have finally decided to release this forgotten gem. I will now order the new DVD as well.

Although the film is slightly dated, I heartily recommend it for its unforgettable storyline. I also recommend that anyone who enjoys it check out the novel; Mr. Trumbo's masterpiece is every bit as compelling as any film version could ever be.

When I was young, the heavy metal group Metallica released a video entitled "One". A child at the time, I remember seeing black and white images of a man who appeared to be wearing a nurse's mask, and hearing narration. Later on, seeing the video a few times, I realized what it was about, who this man was, and the general plotline. I was so simultaneously horrified, depressed, and abysmally aware that this COULD happen and probably had happen that I thought about it for days. I even feared, for a time, turning on MTV for fear of seeing the video again. It stuck in my mind like morbid superglue.

Finding out more about "Johnny Got His Gun" as novel, I was almost terrified to touch the book, but soon couldn't resist anymore. The impact of the novel on my mind was indescribable. Although I had no intention whatsoever of seeing the film (the book, in it's depth, sincerity, hopelessness and painstaking attention to gruesome detail had overwhelmed me), I promised myself that one day I would.

I did. While it doesn't approach the power of the novel, it is a film like no other. I have never once seen a plot this bleak and "in your face" in terms of anti war, matters of human dignity and just bare suffering ever. It made my stomach turn, heart leap and etched in my memory. The scenes where Joe talks to an obviously illusory Christ are surreal and disturbing. This is bar none the most powerful anti-war film, and one (if not the) powerful films I have ever seen. I am not surprised at it's obscurity, as few would even want to see it. Brilliant, breathtaking, and absolutely devastating. If you're up for a challenge and a mind blower, watch this straight through with no breaks.

This astounding DVD still isn't available in the United States. I had to order this imported version(for an American film?)and it was worth every penny.
This has got to be the most powerful anti-war statement ever created. It puts you inside the mind of a U.S. soldier killed in battle. Well, actually, he suffered an unimaginable fate FAR worse than death...

"Landmine, has taken my sight...taken my speech...taken my hearing
taken my arms...taken my legs...taken my soul...
Left me with a life in hell."

Clips of this movie appear on Metallica's video "One". The magnitude of these devastating injuries is impossible to comprehend. The soldier can't decipher his reality from his nightmares. He is kept alive, slowly going mad, just for the doctors to study for future cases.
I really love how this movie was shot, using B&W film for the soldiers day to day suffering, and color sequences to pull you inside his memories, nightmares, and subconscious. At moments you'll also feel trapped inside this surreal sort of desperation.
A tragic and extraordinary movie "they" don't want you to see.

Given the debate over the running time and rating in these reviews, let me clear up the confusion. The only difference between Shout Factory's version and the Media Home Entertainment version on VHS is about 10 seconds of full frontal nudity when Kareen walks over to the bed, as one reviewer observed. Otherwise, shot for shot they are the same versions. Shout Factory did not make this cut. We obtained our master from the company that released the DVD in France, Roissy Films. It was created in 1994 from a print transfer, and it's the same master, by the way, used for the German, UK and Australian releases. We could not find another master of sufficient quality that included those missing 10 seconds, and we felt that the quality of the image and sound was more important than the missing footage.

True, there is a disparity of five minutes in running time between our DVD and the 1982 VHS release. But that is due to the fact that our master was converted from PAL. By the end of the movie, there is a five minute difference. But if you cue both versions up to the same shot 25 minutes in, for example, you will see there is only a two minute difference. There is some sort of drift, but the content matches from beginning to end (except for the 10 seconds).

I consulted Jules Brenner, the film's DP, about any other missing footage. He said there was a roughly 40 second shot of Christ being crucified, but he wasn't sure if that had been cut from the theatrical version or in the years following. (It's also absent from the VHS release.) Otherwise, he could not remember anything missing. We're glad to see that so many people have reconnected to the film and found it as powerful as they remember--and we're especially gratified to learn that the film has found new fans.

Jordan Fields
Director of Acquisitions
Shout! Factory

This movie made a lasting impression on me. I think it is THE BEST anti-war movie ever made.

All right, I'll begin by saying that "Yes! This is the movie from the Metallica video" Good, now that is out of the way..... This is one of the finest works of cinema you will ever see. The story is along the lines of a train wreck (you can't stop watching no matter how much you want to). It is a beautifully twisted look into the mind of a man whos only remaining sense is touch. Which is not much when you have no arms or legs. The feel of the sun on his skin is the only way he can keep track of time. His memories are his only company. This film will let you see how a man can be trapped in his own body. You will be disturbed, uncomfortable, and the memories of this movie will creep up on you when you're alone in the dark. Enjoy.

I saw this movie years ago, and when I'm asked what was the scariest movie I've ever seen, I always point to this one. It turned me into an instant pacifist, and I recommend it be required viewing for anyone endorsing war as a U. S. policy.
No movie brings home the truth that human beings pay a horrible price during a war better than this one does.

I recently was looking for this title on dvd and to my surprise it has not been released officially on dvd in the U.S. When i searched it out i could only find the old vhs copy and some people wanted ludicrous amounts of money for it ($30 or $40) I searched Ebay and found that you can get it as a import dvd it doesnt have regional code so it plays in U.S. Dvd Players and for the price i got it for it was well worth it. The Copy i got was pretty good considering it hasnt been officially released and not available anywhere else on dvd except in england for some reason for those who were looking get it while you can