Anzio

It's always a bad sign when a film's theme tune sounds nothing like the genre it's claiming to be . THE BAT for example features a funky jazz tune and boy was that film a pile of rodent droppings and alarm bells started ringing when the opening credits of ANZIO started where a war weary corespondent played a very possibly drunk Robert Mitchum marched through a military HQ to the sounds of a Frank Sinatra style swing song ! Yeah there's nothing quite like a war film to get you on your feet grooving away , bah bah bah bah bah bah bah

ANZIO isn't an awful film but it's far from being a great one either with the script being the major problem . It opens one of those light hearted scenes of with over paid , over sexed and over confident US soldiers that we've seen far too many times before . I guess it's supposed to be amusing but it's not . Eventually the film lives up to its title and shows us what went wrong at the Anzio landings with the American generals Clark and Lucas not driving inland quick enough . This is a fairly good history lesson since it paints a fairly poor picture of American leadership in Italy . Remember in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN , BAND OF BROTHERS and A BRIDGE TOO FAR Monty is painted as possibly the most incompetent allied General of the war ? This was nothing compared to the ridiculous mistakes made by Clark and Lucas during the Italian campaign , though somewhat cowardly this film renames Clark as " Carson " and Lucas as " Lewis " which is a great pity because a history student could do worse than watch this film , though if they did they'd notice like a great number of war films made during this period ( BATTLE OF THE BULGE is a good example ) that both German and American tanks are from a different generation but the Anzio landings here are more accurate than the ones seen in PINK FLOYD THE WALL

After this the narrative then sadly settles down into a straightforward war film where the action could basically have taken place anywhere like France or the Phillipines where a bunch of GIs are surrounded by the enemy and have to make it back to enemy lines . As many people have pointed out on these pages the script is rather unfocused and slightly disjointed and I had a gut feeling that some of it ended up on the cutting room floor , for example we see the platoon escape from a house at night and almost immediately after the platoon are trapped by some German snipers in the middle of the day , though to be honest this isn't a movie that is afraid to kill off characters so deserves some credit alongside the historical accuracy

It's a shame that the makers of a movie made about one of the bloodiest battles of WWII chose to make a semi-fictional work. The real story is far more gripping than this movie. Anzio was a four month struggle, which for the Allies, had no rear area. There was nowhere an Allied soldier could go that was out of range of German artillery and planes.

The real battle for Anzio was a true Allied effort with the British and Americans locking in a duel to the death with the best German troops Hitler could put in Italy. It was supposed to break the deadlock of the Gustav line by flanking but was doomed from the start because it lacked sufficient landing strength. True, the road to the Rome WAS uncontested on D-Day, but Kesselring himself said later he would have easily cut off and destroyed any such small force if it extended itself even to the Alban Hills, let alone Rome.

The story of the loss of Darby's Rangers is covered in other movies better; of the 767 Rangers sent on a mission, only six returned. It is but one of many stories of horrific sacrifice of young lives. Further south, in a diversionary mission designed to take pressure off the Anzio landing, the US 36th division lost 1600 men in a single night trying to cross the Rapido river. The British took terrible losses, especially in the German offensive of 18-19 Feb 1944, mainly due to their bad luck of being placed in the line in the area in which Hitler personally chose to concentrate the main German offensive, which came within about 1000 yards of breaking the last line of defense.

Such losses are unimaginable today, yet they were accepted then as the price that must be paid to rid Europe of Hitler.

There are no films that I know of that do justice to Anzio. One would be better served by reading any of the numerous books about Anzio or even reading the write-up at http://www.army.mil/cmh/brochures/anzio/72-19.htm -- it is infinitely more interesting than this movie.

The Allied invasion of Anzio,which took the Germans totally by surprise,is the background for this war movie.Because of extreme caution on the part of the Allied commander (Arthur Kennedy)the invasion became a big military failure. The plot concentrates on a small group of men trying to survive behind enemy lines after their platoon had been almost totally wiped out by the Germans.

A totally unconvincing war movie,which is surprising considering the people involved in it. The acting is bad.Robert Mitchum seems to utter his lines as if he was reading a boring book.The dialogue is childish and typical macho-stuff,but there are a few action scenes that are well staged.

Anzio is a weird film. Made at the height of the Viet-Nam War, it's clear this Italian film is trying to be anti-war. Robert Mitchuim, who looks like he hadn't slept for a month, and was on a week-long drinking binge, rambles on about the waste of war. He sounds like a drunk at a upscale cocktail party. Yet, the movie also uses the basic Hollywood heroics to attract the viewing public. The sniper shoot-out is done realistically and is somewhat exciting. Aside from that, the film is way to talkative, way too long, and the action in general is dull.

The best thing about this movie are the performances of Mark Damon and Reni Santoni as two U.S. Army Rangers. Peter Falk was stereotyped with this type of anti-establishment role in the late 1960s and played the exact same role in Castle Keep. Falk also looks beat, drunk, and bored. Arthur Kennedy and Robert Ryan are totally wasted and it's clear they were hired for their names. Earl Holliman gives a modest performance.

When Winston Churchill was asked to appraise the Anzio operation he said that instead of hurling a wildcat on the beach and flanking the Germans the 36,000 allied troops at Anzio were nothing more than a stranded whale.

Of course the whole Anzio landing was Churchill's own idea, but to give him some credit it was an attempt to try and break the logjam of the Italian offensive. The Allies had landed back in 1943 at Salerno and Churchill's 'soft underbelly of Europe' proved to be armor plated. Progress was measured in yards. It wasn't like the trench warfare of the first World War, but it was enormous American, British, Canadian and other assorted allies casualties.

Anzio Beach was selected for a landing up the Italian coast near Rome to both outflank the Germans and maybe take Rome. It worked, but the American commander John P. Lucas moved too cautiously having remembered the 21 Day pitched battle at Salerno in those first landings in Italy. Field Marshal Kesselring was able to bring down reinforcements from the north and contain the Allies on that beach. There in fact they stayed until they linked up with the main offensive months later, just before the American Fifth Army liberated Rome officially on June 5, 1944.

The story of the military failure of Anzio is told with fictional names as Robert Ryan, Arthur Kennedy, and Arthur Franz play Mark Clark, John Lucas, and Lucian Truscott respectively. Truscott is the guy who relieved Lucas and kept the Allies from being driven off the beach, although to be fair to Lucas his priority was a secure beachhead and he certainly succeeded.

The other story of the film Anzio is that of Ernie Pyle like war correspondent Robert Mitchum who drives all the way to an unguarded Rome and then gets caught with a bunch of American GIs and one Canadian in trying to get back to Anzio beach.

Earl Holliman, Reni Santoni, and Peter Falk play some of the soldiers with Mitchum and they do well. This is definitely not a war for glory for them, they're just trying to survive out there. Falk particularly is riveting in playing an American who was wounded and invalided out of the American army from the Pacific Theater who then moved to Canada to join their army. Why you would ask, because he's grown to like it and has a real jones for combat.

Anzio unfortunately doesn't concentrate on either story long enough to tell it in the best possible way. It had potential to be a great film, but falls short. In addition Jack Jones's singing of the theme song is jarringly out of place.

What I would like is someday for someone to tell the story of the original landings in Italy at Salerno, Messina, and Brindisi. That would make a great motion picture if done right.

When you watch Anzio you are sad for the colossal waste of human life it was, especially since the objective wasn't obtained. And a great story needs better telling.