Halls of Montezuma

Many war movies just following WWII were of the John Wayne tough guy type. However, Halls of Montezuma, is refreshing in that it looks in depth at the psychology of the soldier. Really at how men change when laying there lives on the line. The cinematography was also well done when you consider this movie was made half a century ago. You won't see the blood and guts as in a Saving Private Ryan, but the movie may make you think twice before signing up for active duty.

When it was released in 1950, "Halls of Montezuma" was one of the most realistic and ambitious war movies yet made. Today its strengths still outweigh its unfortunate flaws. The flaws are an all-too-familiar sentimental streak, an absurd "revelation" about Japanese tactics, an unconvincing psycho in a clumsy explanatory flashback, and the unlikely presence, in Lt. Anderson's platoon, of a replacement who just happened to have been one of his high-school students in civilian life.

Many viewers will find such flaws even more annoying because they detract from the good things about this movie, including some solid performances (Widmark, Palance, Boone, Webb) a realistic plot, an unusually authentic look--including some (mostly) well integrated combat footage--and a spectacular scope. Until "The Longest Day" (1961), the beach landing here(with flame-throwing tanks)and the later assault on the Japanese were more impressive than any other screen depictions of a large military operation. (BTW, the failure of the Japanese to oppose the landing itself isn't a Hollywood howler; the movie accurately reflects the Japanese defense strategy on Okinawa in 1945.) Milestone's directorial masterpiece, "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930), expresses revulsion at the slaughter of World War I. "Halls of Montezuma" affords a more complex view of men in World War II. The hero is a high-school chemistry teacher whose migraines have addicted him to painkillers; he doesn't care because he assumes he's going to be killed. One character is blinded and another killed by accident. By modern standards such incidents may seem relatively mild, but during the war such troubling images were thought to be too disturbing for film-goers. Even in 1950 they were strong stuff for a movie.

Made at a time when the Cold War was heating up dangerously in Korea, "Halls of Montezuma" is still a revealing postwar response to World War II in the Pacific.

Halls Of Montezuma is a busy, Technicolored war film circa 1950, and was a big hit in its day. The story-line, such as it is, is convoluted and not really worth going into. Basically the film is about the psychology of war and its effect on human relations, especially those created by the war itself. A good deal of the film, as I recall, takes place in caves, ditches and deserted buildings. Unlike most war films this one emphasizes the fact the most soldiers, even Marines, are made, not born; they all come from someplace and would like to return there, preferably in one piece. Lewis Milestone directed the picture, and while it is a far cry from his classic All Quiet On the Western Front, this film is no shabby piece of work. Richard Widmark heads a cast of future stars, and they all perform well, if a bit too strenuously at times. The actors tend to be grouped together a good deal, maybe to ensure that no one can outshine anyone else, and this, plus the emphasis on isolated settings, succeeds in making the film strangely intimate. The color is bright and often glaring, and the Pacific island setting well-rendered. It's worth mentioning as a footnote that the studio that made the picture, 20th Century-Fox, would soon be switching over to making almost exclusively CinemaScope films, and would also soon be dropping Technicolor for the cheaper De Luxe color. Their post CinemaScope product is for the most part vastly inferior than what they previously had been doing, and Halls Of Montezuma, while not a great film, shows, even today, just how beautiful Technicolor could be. This, plus the use of the square, tidy space movies were limited to in those pre-wide screen days, makes for a depth in perspective that is at times almost seductive, even in so grim a film as this.

This is one of a slew of WW2 films made in the late 40's and early 50's, some better than others. This is definitely one of the better ones. This film features a whole bunch of future stars, such as Richard Widmark, Karl Malden, Richard Boone, Jack Palance, Robert Wagner, Jack Webb and Martin Milner. Most of them hadn't completely honed their skills yet and a couple of the performances are either a bit wooden (Malden, Wagner and Webb) or overdone (Widmark). The technology is very primitive by today's standards, yet this film holds up well. The acting aside, it seems that every effort was made to make the film as realistic as it could be. In that respect, this film is much better than some of the others of the same era. There are a lot of films from this era. If you choose to watch only a few of them, make sure this is one of the few.