Perfect Casting

Rating: 9/10 (28 May 2011)

One of the great achievements of this film is its recreation of Army barracks life. It hadn't changed much when I was in basic training in 1969. The orderly sterility, the lack of color, and of course the regimentation. This was all largely necessary and the traditions were not without an austere beauty, the bugle calls for instance, but the demands of the organization, the rigid bureaucratic hierarchy had to predominate. The film is actually less cynical than the novel but the casting was pitch perfect, Lancaster, Clift, Sinatra, Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed and then the little gem of Ernest Borgnine's "Fatso Judson". Borgnine spent 10 years in the Navy, but the other thing that helped him was that being an Italian American he had a good ear for the bigotry that Italians faced in pre WWII America, and so he could create the truly frightening performance of the sadistic stockade Sergeant.
Color would have helped the film. It would have emphasized the lushness of Hawaii in contrast to the drabness of the Schofield Barracks. But Zinneman's direction was excellent as was the screenplay. A wonderful job.