Movie Reflects U.S. Society in 1970

Rating: 10/10 (21 April 2006)

As many commentators have pointed out, the juxtaposition of 1960's anachronisms in a WWII movie is quite entertaining. Some seem to get upset by it (a hippie tank commander!????), but it makes great satire.
What viewers need to remember is that this film was made in 1970, and as such it serves as an example of the schizophrenic nature of U.S. society at that time. Remember that this movie was released in the same year as the very popular films "Patton" and "MASH", each of which appealed to exact opposites in the political spectrum, and 1970 was at the height of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The film serves as a transition point, between the pro-war films of the 1960's and the anti-war films that followed over the next decade.
Although this movie is in the context of a war film, it is decidedly anti-military and individualistic, even if it is pro-soldier. The military mindset is ridiculed in the caricature portrayed by O'Conner as the general. The morals of the establishment are ridiculed in the anti-looting admonition from the lieutenant, warning the men that the penalty for looting was death (as he drives off towing a yacht which he plans to get back to the states, somehow). At the end, while negotiating with the Germans, they insist that they are not "the U.S. Army", but instead are a "private enterprise".
And yet the film has enough in it to appeal to everybody, both as a credible war movie, as a comedy, and as a satire. It is still one of my families favorite movies of all time.