They Were Not Divided

I was hoping for a more compelling film; but there was far too much dialogue, and not enough action. Especially, after the basic training section of the film, which is actually the better part of the movie.

There were just too many bromides and cliches that were continually interfering with the natural evolution of the film. The actors did a competent job, as did the director, but the production values, to say the least, were slipshod. Maybe it was because it was an armored division. Armored division films of WW all seem to suffer from similar shortcomings; with the exception of Patton. Films like The Battle of the Bulge, The Battle of Alamein, Desert Fox, Rommel, and even the modern Fury with Brad Pitt, all had character development problems, action sequence problems, and pacing problems.

Doing dialogue for these types of films is very difficult to accomplish; that is why very few of them are highly praised compared to infantry, naval, and air force films. The natural confining aspect of a tank does not lend itself to good development of dialogue. However, to be fair, the film is watchable and entertaining, and will satisfy most WW 2 genre fans.

It's life in a tank division of the Welsh Guards -- writer-director Terence Young's unit during the Second World War -- from training through the Battle of the Bulge. It centers on an American volunteer, Ralph Clanton, and Edward Underdown, but it's a movie of flashes and vignettes, impressions of war closely realized, where a battlefield has a dead cow amid the advancing tanks, and crews are briefed in barns, where cockerels strut about.

There's little doubt in my mind that Young drew the threads of this movie from his own experience, and hewed to the dictum that drama is life with the dull parts cut out. The result is a series of closely drawn individuals, including Michael Trubshawe in his screen debut and Christopher Lee in a small role in his eighth movie: to some a career, but he would appear in 188 more.

The only times when the movie slows down, when scenes last minutes instead of seconds, is when Underdown is with his wife, Helen Cherry, and Clanton with his English girlfriend, Stella Andrew. These, the film tells us, are life. The rest of it, the entire war, is some weird, senseless dream.

Typical British WW2 film but made interesting with battle scene of Tiger tanks - must have been war loot and what happened to it after the film was made? Sadly the film shows just how smallminded and nitpicking the officers are towards the men during training and then battle. Tank driver being told to button tunic up to chin despite heat in tank! Romantic scenes are very believable. It is well worth watching though!

"They Were Not Divided" is a British WWII film about a Welsh tank unit that also seems to have a lot of Americans, Englishmen and Canadians among them. It takes place from just after Dunkirk in 1940 and ends with the fall of Germany.

The story is VERY episodic and character development is seemingly unimportant. This makes the film a bit less involving and cold than a typical war story...which is its biggest weakness. As a result, it comes off like a Cliff Notes version of the war in Europe. It's not terrible at all but could have been better.

By the way, most of the 'Americans' in the movie sound exactly like Brits TRYING to sound American. I think British viewers would not have noticed this, but Americans sure will be able to tell they aren't from home! Now I know how Brits feel when they watch American films with horrible British accents...such as Bert in "Mary Poppins"

An interesting movie due to its quick overview of the trials and tribulations of a British armored division during WW2. And when I say quick, I mean in every sense: the events narrated, the editing, the dialogues. Everything seems to be rushed, and events unfold one after another at breakneck speed. Surely, it's part of the film's objective to showcase the swiftness of an armored division, in contrast to infantry, which has a slower, more tedious pace if you will. But in haste, it's very easy to make mistakes, and this film has a few. I understand that everything advances so rapidly, but advancing the Anzio landing to 1943 when it actually occurred in 1944 is pushing it too far.

Nevertheless, the film manages to pique some interest; the fast-paced editing appears quite contemporary and appealing, although modern filmmaking tends to overuse this narrative device. The cinematography is spot-on, with good shots and evident artistic ambition, featuring deep and dramatic black and whites and pronounced chiaroscuro that would easily meet the basic requirements of any selection for the Magnum Agency.

In terms of storytelling, it falls quite short in depth, with the typical snappy dialogues that don't delve into the psychology of the characters. Perhaps the problem lies in trying to encompass the entire geographical journey of this armored division in a single movie spanning more than four years of war across Europe. From a war cinematography perspective, the film is interesting due to its display of resources; it's even possible to catch a glimpse of an original German Tiger Tank, something that cinema would take decades to see again. However, like the rest of the film's resources, this aspect is also treated superficially; there's no time for more. There's no time for real battles, no time to face the enemy head-on, hardly any casualties, and the enemy is almost invisible, nearly nonexistent, an enemy that offers no resistance to the frenetic advance of the swift division.

But of course, the director doesn't want to show us the bitter face of war; he only aims to cement the already evident Anglo-American relations with a propagandistic film. In its final sequence, with the two flags, the British and the American, overlapping, it definitively seals this alliance.