Confused, thought it was anti-military comment

Rating: 6/10 (17 April 2006)

I guess the reason I didn't really like the film is because I expected a completely different film. I'd heard this film had won Oscars and I'd heard of the beach scene, but knew nothing else about the film. I thought it was partly a romance and partly a look at the army. I was caught up in the forbidden love of Kerr & Lancaster and interested in Clift & Reed's 'relationship' and was eager to see how they resolved their problems. I was also getting the impression that the Army was an awful place to be - Lancaster, Sinatra & Clift's characters experienced a great deal of hardship and misery because of their enlistment and from their fellow men.
So it came as a shock to me when these men supposedly in love refused to try to better their miserable positions in the army by trying to move up or out of it. They spurned the women just to stay in the army? Even though they were miserable where they were they chose the army as their love. What? That made no sense. Their superiors were all incompetent or sadistic losers, in the case of Clift, nearly all his fellow enlistees treated him like dirt. The army was the reason his best friend was killed. Yet because that's all he knew, he stuck to it. IMO, that's not a good reason to choose something.
As the film was from 1953, I thought it was set AFTER WW2 and didn't realize this was the days right BEFORE Pearl Harbor- so the bombing was a shock. I had to rethink my experience of the entire film. I could appreciate how even after all the misery everyone banded together for defense. If the men had turned away from their women after the attack that would have made more sense. I could understand not wanting to transfer away once the action starts. My biggest problem with the film was that I could not for the life of me understand why Clift did not identify himself when he was coming back to the base!?!?! That made no sense at all. Of course they're going to shot someone they don't recognize who won't identify themselves in the midst of an attack. So I went from sympathizing with him for most of the film to thinking he was an idiot.
In the end I had very little sympathy for any of the male characters. I thought they were stupid for choosing to stay in their miserable lives. If this had been shown as a patriotic choice following the attack I could have understood it better. Also, I thought the scene with the guy refusing to pass out ammunition during an attack as showing the rigidity and stupidity of the military - which I don't think was the point of the scene/movie. I kept thinking if these dumb schmucks had transfered out they wouldn't have been there for the "preemptive" strike -they'd be promoted and (maybe) happily married. So I had much less sympathy than I think I was supposed to have.