Customer Reviews

The Story of G.I. Joe

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4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been watching "War Films" for nearly fifty years. This has been my favorite war film of all-time. It was filmed in black and white. It does not have the special effects of "Saving Private Ryan",but being made in 1945, it has the look and timeliness of the "real thing" without the Spielberg touch. 150 men in this movie were actual combat veterans which lends a lot of credence the movements and actions of these soldiers. This was the first and only time, that Robert Mitchum was nominated for an Academy Award. He was OUTSTANDING as Capt. Walker. Burgess Meredith is so great as Ernie Pyle, that Ernie Pyle could not have played himself any better!

This movie will let you know about the comraderie of combat citizen soldiers. Their personal anguish. Their sacrifice and courage.

A VERY REAL LOOK AT WAR!

I saw this movie many years ago and always considered it the best war movie ever produced. The stars were outstanding. Ernie Pyle could not have have played himself better than Burgess Meredeth and Robert Mitchum has never been better in portraying the lt. loved by all his men. The characters were everyday men who had a job to do and never considered themselves heros. I could never understand wythis movie was never reproduced on video or why it has never been shown on tv in over 40 yrs. This movie falls in the same class as "Saving Private Ryan" and "A Walk in the Sun"

I grew up during World War II. My dad, a combat engineer, was overseas for three years, so the war made an indelible impact on me that lasts to this day. I remember sitting in the local movie house watching the news reels and wondering whether my father was there,was all right or would even come home again. I had friends whose fathers were not.

He did, thank God, but the experience made me very critical of the typical John Wayne type Technicolor epics that glorified war and had almost supernatural heros and heroics. Those old black and white news reels, shot by combat photographers, showed the real face of war, its mindless viciousness, the numbing stress it placed upon its young combatants and the pathos of death and dismemberment at its most violent.

I believe only three films about WWII caught this realism. 1. Battleground, 2. Twelve O'Clock High. and 3. The Story of G.I. Joe. If there were equally good films made about the Pacific theatre, I don't remember them, but the three above films I think will stand the test of time because of their powerful realism.

The Story of G.I. Joe is about the 'forgotten war', the Italian campaign where the American and British forces had to slug their way inch by inch up the peninsula against well-prepared and led German forces who often fought to the last man. But the attention of America was focused on the Pacific and later, after D-Day, the northern European campaigns.

Ernie Pyle, who is brilliantly portrayed by Burgess Meredith in this film, was the only reason that folks back home, who had fathers and sons in Italy, could find out a little, anything, about this forgotten war. He understood the American G.I. better than any writer that ever lived. My father said it was because he was up front, both physically and spiritually, with the grunts.

Robert Mitchum, who I always believed was a vastly underrated actor, stuns the viewer in his sensitive role as a young officer who grows weary and finally fatalistic regarding the death of the men he leads. He knows it is only a matter of time for them all. His deeply moving performance alone makes this a movie to see. Tragedy at its best.

I watched my father twice try to make it through this movie. He couldn't. He said it was just too real for him. That's a review better than anything I can write.

Unlike modern films about WWII (i.e. Saving Private Ryan), the Story of G.I. Joe doesn't jump out and grab you. There are no explicit scenes of human body parts flying through the air, blood filled waters and no multi-million dollar special effects. This film though, conveys the horrors of war with more brutal emotion than any other film I have ever seen. The black and white celluloid projects soul were today's special effects only provide flash. The result is that the film takes a little time to engage you, but once you get caught up in the lives of the infantry soldiers, you really begin to care about and respect them. The acting in this film is brilliant and with great respect to Tom Hanks and the cast of Saving Private Ryan, who also did an excellent job, could never be duplicated today. Even though the characters in the Story of G.I. Joe become battle hardened soldiers, there is an innocence of time that half a century later is lost on modern actors. This same innocence is communicated through the script. The story walks a fine line between its message of the evil of war and the goodness of the men involved. Men who are blinded by their duty. This movie is a keeper, one to be watched over and over again so that the subtle meanings and stark images can be more deeply appreciated.

This unforgettable classic, based on Ernie Pyle's "Here is Your War" and "Brave Men", is considered by many to be one of the best war films ever made. Even General Dwight Eisenhower considered it the best movie to come out of World War 2. William Wellman, the director, initially didn't want to make the movie, but after a telephone conversation with Ernie Pyle himself, Wellman relented. Wellman later admitted that Pyle's pleas for the common soldier were so touching that Wellman was nearly brought to tears.

"The Story of G.I. Joe" follows the beloved correspondant Pyle (played to perfection by Burgess Meredith) as he meets and becomes close friends with C Company of the 18th Infantry as they fight their way from Sicily to Rome in 1942 and 1943. Pyle becomes especially close to Captain Bill Walker (played by Robert Mitchum, in his oscar nominated breakthrough role). The combat scenes are brief but very realistic, and no one is safe from death on the battlefield (including the Captain).

This movie is an unflinching look at the daily struggles of the infantrymen, who struggle with the enemy troops and the mud. Wellman wisely used 150 veterans of the army's Italian campaign as extras, and gave some of them speaking parts. Unfortunately, many of these extras would later be killed fighting in the Pacific after the film was completed. And Ernie Pyle would also meet his death in the Pacific, killed by a sniper's bullet. "The Story of G.I. Joe" would be the one and only film he made that Wellman refused to watch.

Undoubtably one of the finest-crafted war films ever made, "The Story of G.I. Joe" is a lasting monument to not only Ernie Pyle's great coverage of the brave American foot soldiers, but also to the soldiers themselves, who loved Pyle more than all the other correspondants of World War 2. Perhaps the best line of the whole film is at the very end when Burgess Meredith (as the film's narrator) says, "And for those beneath the wooden crosses, there is nothing more we can do, except perhaps to pause and murmur, "Thanks, pal."

I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can't be won without. - Ernie Pyle

Newspaper columnist Ernie Pyle reported from the front during World War Two, spending the majority of his time with the common infantry soldier and most often reporting on their daily doings, Pyle won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for `distinguished war correspondence during the year 1943.' William Wellman's 1945 ERNIE PYLE'S STORY OF G.I. JOE is one of the great World War II movies made by and for that generation. It's important, I think, to heed the full title. This movie is very much Ernie Pyle's vision of the war. You can find a number of columns written by Pyle by doing a simple internet search, and anthologies of his war reporting are still in print.
The movie episodically follows Pyle (Burgess Meredith) and the infantrymen of Company C from their landing in Italy to the eve of their assault on Rome. The low-key approach Pyle brought to his writing is duplicated here. There's a gritty realism without the false heroics or gung ho attitude that marked most recruitment movies of that era. It's an ensemble work, with Meredith and then newcomer Robert Mitchum (who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Capt. Walker) standing out in a strong lineup.
This is a movie made by, and for, the WWII generation. The soldiers - your sons, America - are tired and dirty and somehow inured to the killing. As Pyle wrote, and this movie captures, `every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion.' They're shown in episodes that could almost be given column headings - The Company Adopts a Dog, Sarge Looks for a Phonograph, Christmas at the Front, A Marriage During War.
STORY OF G.I. JOE is a wonderful movie that, upon release, claimed fans as diverse as Dwight Eisenhower (who said it was the greatest war movie he'd ever seen) to James Agee, who praised Mitchum `(t)he development of the character of [Lieutenant Walker] is so imperceptible and so beautifully done that, without any ability to wonder why, you accept him as a great man in his one open attempt to talk about himself and the war' in particular and the movie `(the) closing scene seems to me a war poem as great and as beautiful as any of Whitman's' in glowing terms indeed.
Ernie Pyle died while with the troops in Okinawa, shot down by a Japanese machine gunner on the island of Ie Shima. ERNIE PYLE'S STORY OF G.I. JOE is a fine testament to a great writer.

Although some of the acting and dialog may come across as dated, there is an innocent honesty about "The Story of G.I. Joe" that consistently shines through. The story is believable because by and large it is true. The actors are believable because many of them actually were GIs. Robert Mitchum and Burgess Meredith are superb in the leading roles. This film, along with Director Wellman's other WWII classic, "Battleground", surely deserves a place "first of foot and right of the line" in the ranks of American war movies. It most definitely deserves a place in anyone's collection of great American films.

The story is a good story, it is Erines Pyles story of the GI's of WW II. Captian Walker is based on a young Captian Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas, of th 36th Division. KIA January 10, 1944, in Italy. Pyles books are well worth reading if you have an interested in the stories of the men who were responsible for winning WWII, the boys who did the work, made Generals famous, went unnoticed , came home went to work raised faimlies and made the America we enjoy today.

Winston Churchill called the Italian Campaign that "tough old gut" which was very true. My dad was also a combat engineer with the 85th Infantry Division and fought up the "boot" to Austria and he told me this was the most realistic portrayal of life as a GI and of combat in Italy he had ever seen (with "TO HELL AND BACK" a close runner up). Burgess Meredith was brilliant as Ernie Pyle and my dad read all of his books postwar. This movie was based on his book, "Brave Men", I believe. Robert Mitchum deserved his Oscar nomination for his role as the war weary Company commander. This movie is a fitting memorial to all of those who fought in and especially those who died in the Italian Campaign. May they rest in peace and the grace of God. Arrivaderci.

Audio Merits:6/10; Video Merits:5/10;Scenario Merits:8/10; Cinematographic Merits:10/10; Musical Merits:9/10; Overall Artistic Performance:9/10; DVD Extras:9/10; Recording Total Quality:8/10. Professor's Comment: All the war film virtual attributes such as exaggerations, superheroes, subjectivities are absent. I recommend it if you prefer a true story of the real men of army: The Infantry.