Beach Red

Wow, I thought I saw all the war movies. This a unique captivating war film with several unusual techniques. It has voiceovers by soldiers in the middle of combat and flashbacks to past scenes and still photos of loved ones at home. For instance, one soldier learns the password for the day is "darling" and reminices(sp) about his wife calling him that. All this occurs in-between and during brutal battle scenes some of which are hand to hand combat with bayonets. The Japanese soldiers are also shown with loved ones and to be human as well. The American flashbacks seem odd since the family members are dressed and groomed in 1950-60s fashion during this WWII movie but gave the movie kind of a universal quality. There is also some mild nudity and delicate sexual references in the flashbacks that some will detect. Watch when one of the soldiers builds a "woman" in the dirt and kisses her or Wilde's wife Julie panting in bed. One disappointment is that we never learn the fate of Columbo, whose thumb gets shot off, and the bleeding soldier he reluctantly carries on his back. Listen to the amazing detail on the litany of natural insect and plant dangers in this island jungle. The Japanese speak Japanese in this movie without subtitles yet we can understand what they are taking about. I could go on with more. Better then Saving Private Ryan for sure and it looked like much material was taken from this film for that one. 8/10

I can't imagine this movie escaping my notice, as I'm something of a war-movie buff but this was a new one to me. First of all, the violence is shocking. This movie does not conform to what Paul Fussell (A WWII veteran) has described as Hollywood's sanitizing of combat. Men's limbs come off. People bleed out after getting stabbed. You are made to care for the soldiers on both sides. You witness seppuku (ritual disembowelment). It's an utterly unorthodox take on Pacific-island combat, replete with unbelievably accurate on-screen ordnance. Flamethrowers, mortars, chattering water-cooled guns. It's harrowing and deeply touching, reminding the viewer how wasteful but ultimately necessary it may be to kill fanatics. Awesome. The flashback scenes are weird; the lock-down focus zooms are quite strange but somehow appropriate. The combat footage is indistinguishable from actual War Department stuff. Indeed, a cameraman plays a key roll. The fact that there is a not a sanitized ending merely strengthens this movie, in my opinion. Being a US Marine has never been easy, I would guess. But taking an island defended by soldiers who would die to a man is even tougher. It humanizes the war; puts a face on it. Then part of that face is blown off. I've never seen anything like it. It's more "Band of Brothers" than "Saving Private Ryan" and, given the context of 1967, even more amazing. A must-see.

No one can accuse Cornel Wilde of being a subtle film director . BEACH RED shows the same flaws that made the film version of John Christopher's novel NO BLADE OF GRASS a memorable movie for the most bizarre reasons . That novel didn't contain any environmentalist subtext or agenda but Wilde decided to batter the audience to death with a pollution is bad kids message . He also used strange directorial techniques that felt that they belonged in an entirely different movie . In this movie that was made three years previously Wilde has a similar sledgehammer approach which works slightly better but even so you'll remember this film due to its storytelling more than its actual story

From the outset you can see BEACH RED is a war film with a difference but tries just a little too hard . It has cinematic art-house pretensions but possibly not the budget and probably not a cerebral enough director to pull off the ideas presented . That said Wilde does deserve some credit for making what is effectively a B movie in to something that sticks in the mind . It also be judged against the context it was made . The Hays Code was still in place but Wilde has tried to push the boat out as to what he can get away with and it's relatively sadistic and graphic for a movie during this period . Likewise the Vietnam War was escalating and throughout the narrative there's a strong element that just because the enemy is not from a WASP nation it doesn't necessarily make them evil because the enemy is still human

It's impossible to mention BEACH RED without mentioning later , better , more critically acclaimed films namely APOCALYPSE NOW , THE THIN RED LINE and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN . The extensive use of voice-over whether it relates to the nature of war , profound existentialism or merely hoping to get home in one piece along with the imagery seen here has had a very clear influence on Coppolla , Malik and Spielberg . Malik especially has taken the ideas presented here and made them more effective in THE THIN RED LINE which critics described as " an interesting failure " . Perhaps BEACH RED deserves the same dubious backhand compliment ?

A fair screen performer, Cornel Wilde occasionally appeared in more interesting fare, such as the cult B-noir The Big Combo (1955), a title held today in greater esteem these days than his other mainstream successes. Of greater interest still is Wilde's career as a director that, with the tense drama of Storm Fear, started the same year as Combo. Although not a fully mature work, it still suggested some of the themes that would inform Wilde's later films: a concern with man confronting the elemental, whether externally or internally, and a fondness for extreme situations.

From the mid 1960s onwards Wilde made a remarkable trilogy of work in quick succession: The Naked Prey (1966), Beach Red, and No Blade Of Grass (1970), which are the films upon which his directorial reputation rests principally today. Each concerns a journey of one sort or another, in which men must differently face up to the primitive impulse within themselves as the comforting supports of civilised society stripped away. Thus in The Naked Prey a European is pursued by relentless natives across a bleak African wilderness. In No Blade Of Grass a party of English refugees and survivors have to navigate a post-catastrophe landscape. Beach Red sees soldiers face up to their innermost fears and regrets during the bloody battle for a Pacific island. Typically in Wilde's work, a stricken or unforgiving world reflects back the straits in which the main characters find themselves whilst any final resolution is, at best, ambivalent. In Beach Red this environment is lush and dangerous, full of both natural and human perils (at one point the director gives a litany of killer flora and fauna), but one where the greatest threat to man is Man himself.

Some critics have compared Wilde's cinema to that of Sam Fuller. Both forge personal cinema with an own, urgent vision. Fuller is the more assured stylist, with his tabloid-inspired contemplation of events. Wilde, too, often wears his message unashamedly on his sleeve - most obviously in the weaker No Blade Of Grass, or in some of the regretful soliloquizing of Beach Red. Like Fuller, Wilde produced and directed, but also scored and acted in two out three of his best works. (He's also heard as the narrator in the present film, and performs a similar function as a radio voice in No Blade Of Grass). Beach Red was the only one he also co-wrote, which leads one to think it had particular interest for the director. Unlike Fuller, Wilde never served in the armed forces. And unlike Fuller's war movies, Wilde's single martial opus is distinguished by its even-handedness. While the gritty realism and hard-wrought bravery of Wilde's soldiery is never in doubt the same, just, eye is applied to both sides.

The humans in uniform place the blame for the ensuing cruelty and pain not, as a rule, on individuals but on a wider commitment to duty, outside of any immediate questioning. When a soldier is guilty of any unnecessary cruelty, such as the Sergeant who breaks both the arms of a dangerous Japanese prisoner to subdue him, Captain MacDonald condemns the action outright. "We must never forget why we are killing...". In all of his major films Wilde's world is often cruel and hard - but never sadistic, his main characters determined, never cynical. MacDonald, John Custance, or the unnamed runner of The Naked Prey, do not manipulate others, but only try and survive, making the best of a bad world. (A difference in worldview that explains why Fuller made a string of excellent noir films while Wilde only made one.)

Those who have seen Saving Private Ryan will feel right at home here, and not just with the painful introspection of MacDonald as he struggles with duty. (Others have felt the flashbacks and narration anticipate Malick's The Thin Red Line, 1998.) Here, too, we see men dying in the water during a beach landing, pinned down beneath murderous machine gunfire, eviscerated, half burnt by flame throwers. Limb parts float in the water, while the young warrior 'Mouse' stands in horror, his arm ripped from his side. It's no romanticised version of war and the ending of Beach Red is less compromising than Spielberg's that, catering to different tastes, felt compelled to offer. More than in No Blade Of Grass, Wilde feels free to indulge in stylistic tricks and methods to achieve the peculiar dream-like intensity which accompanies combat experience, using stills, visual distortions, voiceovers and flashbacks. These highlight the interior life of his characters, some of these 'internalised' moments being almost as explicit and powerful as dynamic scenes elsewhere, such as during one of MacDonald's sensual reveries about his wife, when we see her presumably on the point of orgasm. There's sexual content too in the conversations between Private Egan (Burr de Benning) and minister's son Private Cliff (Patrick Wolfe), including at one point fantasising over a woman's torso fashioned from coconut shells and soil.

Memories of sensuality provides nostalgia for the soldiers. But Beach Red offers no real solutions to the horrors of war, and is unflinching. If MacDonald's supporting narration during combat is sometimes a little too matter of fact then this can be ascribed to Wilde's naiveté, in the best sense, as a director, an ongoing quality marking his best work. MacDonald, a lawyer by profession, is just a man who wants to get back to his wife. John Custance just wants to reach his brother's refuge in Scotland. 'The Man' in The Naked Prey just wants to elude his dogged pursuers. Characters are boiled down to essentials through their desires, offering a simple focus on key, almost primitive, issues in times of great adversity. When necessary, then narrator Wilde can provide the hand-on-heart commentary. This honesty means that we can overlook the odd cliché in his Beach Red, and enjoy it as one of the best war films.

First, let me ask, why isnt this available on video or dvd here in the States? They have it in Britain & Germany! Nevertheless Im glad to see this film making the rounds on Showtime and it's satellite cousins. I agree with previous posters that Spielberg 'HAD' to have watched this great film from the great Cornel Wilde, who incidentally plays the captain here. I originally watched this back in the 1980s on HBO and it, usually for years after, showed up on TNT during Memorial Day Weekend. But in the past few years I hadn't seen it until lately with these few Showtime airings. But back to the movie. Long before I had ever seen Saving Pvt Ryan I had just read the reviews of it. When the reviews talked about the opening sequence being extended pure assault, I knew that someone watched or knew of Beach Red. Both SPR & BR open in an almost identical fashion of pure armed violence. The only difference is the locale of the two pics. SPR on the beaches of Normandy and BR in a distant south pacific isle.

Beach Red covers a platoon from it's assault on a Japanese held beach, through the occupation of the island and finally to many of the members of Wilde's platoon losing their lives. This is bittersweet because we are taken, through flashback, to some instant in these soldiers personal lives. Wilde doesn't stop there. He also flashbacks the Japanese soldiers lives as well. This is great and considerate filmmaking as it humanizes boths sides, US & Japanese, withstanding the brutality of armed combat. This pic, unlike for instance 'The Longest Day', is filmed in rich colour. With the addition of colour in a war film this further personalizes the tragedy Wilde & his men have to go through in killing and staying alive. War is just as deadly on a bright and sunny day as it is on a gloomy or rainy type day. But Beach Red would have been a still very effective film had it been made in black & white.

For War Film buffs, I think many will be stunned by this movie when and if they have not seen it. It's always been a sort of low key picture undeservedly but thanks to home video & cable a couple of new generations will discover this unheralded classic. Wilde should have been very proud of his achievement in Beach Red, both as director & actor. And his supporting cast of the great Rip Torn as the gruff Sergeant and Burr DeBenning as the well meaning Yokel-Bumpkin are pure delight. A fine film from a fine cast. View it.