Yesterday's Enemy

This Hammer production broke away from the traditional horror movies for which they had become famous in the 1950's and like "The Camp on Blood Island" was a Second World War drama concentrating on the war with the Japanese. Set in the Burmese jungle, but filmed in the studio, it is a mostly all-male affair full of very familiar British faces. With Val Guest in the director's chair and Stanley Baker playing the officer in charge it is often highly effective (and surprisingly brutal). Indeed Baker is so good, (he was nominated for a BAFTA as indeed was the film itself), you might think you are watching a much better film than you actually are. It's certainly not free of clichés but it also poses some interesting ethical questions, (what constitutes a war crime, how far should an officer go in pursuit of his goals?). It may be no classic but it's no disgrace either and is worth seeing.

I caught this for the first time this evening having never come across it before in over 60 years of film and a TV viewing. It proves what can be achieved without a huge budget as long as one has a fine cast, well written script and a darn good director. No over-dramatic music needed to highlight the tension, no million dollar special effects. Modern filmmakers could learn a thing or two from this lesser known masterpiece of British cinema.

Yesterday's Enemy is a taut claustrophobic war film about a whittled down company of British soldiers caught behind the lines in Burma. It takes no sides other than to point out the absurd futility and dehumanization of individuals in war and the limited options they are faced with. It is a sober unromantic and highly provocative work that foreshadows the quagmire in Viet Nam and unapologetically addresses actions taken in the heat of battle far from the sideline moralizing out of harm's way.

Captain Langford leads his lost patrol with a firm hand cajoling and threatening members of the unit to remain disciplined and vigilant. When they stumble upon an austere Burmese jungle village they are surprised by a fierce Japanese resistance attempting to protect a senior officer. With the village under control Langford seeks answers through intimidation, torture and finally execution of innocent locals. Eventually they are overwhelmed by the Japanese who adopt the same methods to get answers about their missing general.

Despite it's sound stage jungle locale Yesterday's Enemy director Val Guest attains a very atmospheric feel of heat and pressure with the uncompromising downward thrust of the film as reality trumps morality. Stanley Baker's Langford and Gordon Jackson's Sgt. McKenzie remain stoically impressive throughout as they address the reality they are given while Guy Rolfe's Padre and Leo McKern's journalist Max ably bring balance and debate to the picture in arguing the other side.

Yesterday's Enemy (even the title points out the absurdity of war) unromantic and dark vision offers no solutions but raises dozens of questions about the ugliness of war without flinching remaining with you long after the firing has ceased. It is Britain's Steel Helmet.

Yesterday's Enemy was a BBC television play by Peter R Newman. It was inspired on a war crime perpetrated by a British army captain in Burma in 1942.

This is the Hammer remake. It retains Gordon Jackson who appeared in the original play. It is a low budget film. The jungle setting very much looks like a film studio and seems uninspired.

In fact I had little expectation of this film in the first few opening minutes. I just looked like a typical jungle war film with the angry young men of the late 1950s. Something a bit like The long and the short and the tall.

What it turns out to be is a stark morality play about ethics of warfare, The Geneva convention and fighting for the greater good.

It has sense of rawness which you felt would had been controversial at the time of its release.

Captain Langford (Stanley Baker) leads his lost patrol in the Burmese jungle as they retreat from the Japanese. They come upon a small village which they take from the Japanese. Langford is interested in man who attempts to flee who he thinks might know about a map with strange markings they have found on a high ranking dead officer.

Langford all sorts of threats and intimidation tactics which become more severe. The padre and the journalist attached with the patrol protest at his brutal methods. Langford has none of it, he even plans to move on with his patrol and leave the injured men behind as they would slow him down.

At the end he guns down two innocent villagers in order to make the detained man talk. He also has him killed in due course.

Eventually the group are later overwhelmed by the Japanese. They are now interrogated by Major Yamazaki who speaks good English. He is very courteous but his menace is more indirect compared to Langford but just as brutal. In short the Major adopt similar methods to get answers about their missing high ranking officer.

There is no doubt that this is a provocative film showing the cruelty of British officers. Yet Baker gives such a stoic performance, his Captain Langford despite his shortcomings and brutality is just the kind of man who could lead the able men in his patrol to safety.

This Hammer WWII b-movie was originally a stage-play, and with the contained setting and tons of dialog it's apparent..

But Stanley Baker turns in his greatest performance... a one-man show despite being surrounded by character-actors like faithful sergeant Gordon Jackson countered by idealistic reporter Leo McKern and priest Guy Rolfe, driving the central moral-quandary plot-line...

Beginning with their troop of disheveled British soldiers, lost and trudging through the Burmese jungle, happening upon a two-hut village where Baker's no-nonsense captain figures he MUST scare an informer by killing two elderly locals...

The best scenes occur during this first half when Baker's lethal, cold-blooded methods start becoming more clear and, because of the vital information gained, somewhat logical, and he never wavers to the ethical humanity in a village foreshadowing future Vietnam films (and their tropes) about murderous white soldiers...

These include Brian De Palma's CASUALTIES OF WAR and Oliver Stone's Oscar-winning PLATOON, still paling to this low budget, obscure gem mostly thanks to Stanley Baker...

Keeping up the same stubborn, determined intensity when the Japanese, led by an English-speaking, philosophizing Philip Ahn, turns the tables, and the adaptation becomes even more stagey and yet with tight, edgy suspense by Val Guest, one of Hammer's best directors, YESTERDAY'S ENEMY keeps the audience as locked-in as its unflappable leading man.