Take the High Ground!

I could tell this plot less film would go downhill from the beginning. In the opening scene we see a platoon of soldiers attacking a North Korean position, and one of them casually stops for a drink and is shot by an enemy soldier with a U.S. Army M1 rifle! That a real soldier would do this under fire, and that the props department couldn't afford an AK-47 speaks volumes about this film.

Then we go to Fort Bliss for what is supposed to be boot camp but is actually a summer camp for teenagers. I say this as an Army veteran.

Richard Widmark was on loan to the studio that made this film, but I think he should have remained with his contract studio, for I don't believe "Take the High Ground" was a milestone of his career.

The story could hardly be more familiar. A barracks worth of raw recruits from varying backgrounds arrive at Fort Bliss to go through basic training in the infantry. Widmark is the sterner of the two drill sergeants, Malden the more human, but both are friends, until . . . . Two plotlines are developed simultaneously. The first involves the mostly comic tribulations of the new grunts. They are by turns humiliated, worked to exhaustion, given to pillow fights and practical jokes on one another, as the sergeants attempt to "help you rid yourself of your winsome civilian ways". We are thankfully spared any involvement on their part with young women outside the camp. (The sort of thing, among other things, that positively ruined "Battle Cry.") Of course there has to be a romance, but it is left to Widmark and Malden, the two combat veterans who come to blows over Elaine Stewart, the pride of Montclair, New Jersey, as Julie. She's clearly more attracted to Widmark who is, after all, the male lead, but he professes to despise her because she hangs around in seedy juke joints, drinks, and makes out with soldiers like him. Malden is attracted to her too and, at least for one night, enjoys her favors, which Widmark notices. It annoys him. Widmark and Malden grow somewhat apart. Their irritation with one another increases as Widmark bears down harder on the recruits. His morality is lofty, of the "Nothing you experience in basic training will be as tough as combat," which may be true but which also provides a drill instructor with a license for outright sadism. Not to worry. The boys shape up and do some close order drill at the train platform before shipping out, leaving a new incoming group of recruits staring in awe. Julie leaves town, tearfully, by a train as well, no doubt to recapture her dignity. Widmark and Malden encounter each other on a dark street while returning from the train station, and Malden wordlessly offers Widmark a conciliatory cigarette. The processing machine grinds along and all is well. Widmark's character is oddly written. He quotes Elizabeth Barrett Browning while sneering that he's never read her. The only Browning my drill instructor ever heard of was made of metal.

While this may not be the movie that made me want to join the Army in 1956, it may have helped. The plot is a formulaic coming of age in basic training story, turning boys into men. The personal interactions and love affairs of Widmark and Malden, the veterans of Korea who are now leading a trainng platoon at Fort Bliss, Texas, next to El Paso are also formulaic.

The real value of this picture is as a time capsule. Nothing herein is BS, dreamed up, or recreated such as are Platoon, or Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now, to mention some more modern highly praised but highly fictionalized films. Nor is it an anachronistic mish mash such or a low budget BW cheapie such as many of that period were.

Everything shown here is as it was at the time of filming and the background extras and other military individuals were actually going through infantry training with the real possibility of going to combat in Korea when it was being made. (An amusing aspect is that the opening scene of the newly arrived trainees and the disciplined troops entraining for their new assignments were filmed on the same day with the same Southern Pacific locomotive and equipment. Yet supposedly took place three months apart.)

Other time capsule films of the time are Bombers B-57, and Strategic Air Command, which prove that officially approved films can be entertaining and informative both.

At least Kubrick's film for its first part; in other words, the best movie ever made about military drills in a boot camp, far better for me than Ridley Scott's GI JANE, just a joke for me. Here, Richard Widmark is simply awesome, though the story could have been far darker, more dramatic, but I think the director Richard Brooks refused the idea to "disgust" the bulk of his audiences with a too gloomy atmosphere. The purpose was to denounce the harsh, brutal, sadistic methods of the US ARMY, or Marine Corps. That's what I got, what I understoood. And I was very amused to discover that, in the late eighties, a commercial for Lucky Strike cigarettes used a man with a face very close to Widmark's one for a sequence taking place precisely in a boot camp, where the sadistic instructor - with Widmark's face - pushes the young soldiers beyond the human resistance limit, showing that they were not lucky, like the cigarette brand.... Not very subtle but that tribute amused me much.

An utterly routine military film, minus anything that might distinguish it from the many other recruiting posters of the time, e.g. The DI (1957), Battle Cry (1955), et al. Except for the first few minutes of combat in Korea, the remainder is taken up with Basic Training at Fort Bliss, TX. Widmark gets the stereotypical role of an emotionally crippled drill sergeant, while Malden is wasted as his straight-arrow assistant. Third billed Stewart is the required love interest, who unfortunately is all hair and little talent. The remainder of the cast fills out the ranks of recruit trainees, with the usual array of witty or problem personalities. The movie's one notable feature turns up in the multi-racial ranks of the trainees, a relatively new updating for Hollywood.

As a guy who went through Basic (at Ft. Bliss in the 60's), I have to agree with reviewer bkoganbing. Many of the incidents portrayed in the film would never have occurred in real training, especially Malden slugging Widmark in front of the trainees. But I guess the screenplay needed more action at that point. Then too, the language was really cleaned up for public viewing. I had to laugh every time Widmark benignly called the recruits "young people".

What surprises me is the movie's director, Richard Brooks. How he got the job of supervising this sort of pablum is a puzzle, having built a reputation for highly serious work as a screenwriter, Brute Force (1948), Crossfire (1947), et al. Anyway, the movie is fairly typical of the sanitized type of military drama of the 1950's, before the stark realities of Vietnam sank in. (Contrast Basic Training here with it's more starkly realistic counterpart in Full Metal Jacket {1987}.) All in all, Take The High Ground is little more than a bland period curiosity.