The Thin Red Line
Tags: anti war

Plot synopsis:
United States Army Private Witt goes AWOL from his unit and lives among the carefree Melanesian natives in the South Pacific. He is found and imprisoned on a troop carrier by First Sergeant Welsh of his company. The men of C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division have been brought to Guadalcanal as reinforcements in the campaign to secure Henderson Field and seize the island from the Japanese. As they wait in a Navy transport, they contemplate their lives and the invasion. Battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Tall talks with Brigadier General Quintard about the invasion and its importance.
C Company lands on Guadalcanal unopposed and marches to the interior of the island, encountering natives and evidence of the Japanese presence. They arrive near Hill 210, a key Japanese position. The Japanese have placed bunkers at the top of the hill and anyone attempting the climb will be cut down.
A brief shelling of the hill begins the next day at dawn. C Company attempts to capture the hill but is repelled by gunfire. Among the first killed is one of the platoon leaders, Second Lieutenant Whyte. During the battle, a squad led by Sergeant Keck hides behind a swell safe from enemy fire to wait for reinforcements. Keck reaches for a grenade but accidentally pulls the pin and dies in the process. Lieutenant Colonel Tall orders the company commander, Captain James Staros, to take the bunker by frontal assault, at whatever cost. Staros refuses and Tall decides to join Staros on the front line to see the situation. The Japanese resistance seems to have lessened, and Tall's opinion of Staros seems to have been sealed. Private Witt, having been assigned punitively as a stretcher bearer, asks to rejoin the company, and is allowed to do so.
A small detachment of men performs a reconnaissance mission on Tall's orders to determine the strength of the Japanese bunker. Private Bell reports there are five machine guns in the bunker. He joins another small team of men (including Witt), led by Captain John Gaff, on a flanking mission to take the bunker. The operation is a success and C Company overruns one of the last Japanese strongholds on the island. The Japanese they find are largely malnourished and dying, and put up little resistance.
For their efforts the men are given a week's leave: the airfield where they are based comes under enemy artillery bombardment; Bell receives a letter from his wife informing him that she has fallen in love with someone else and wishes to divorce; Captain Staros is relieved of his command by Lieutenant Colonel Tall, who deems him too soft for the pressures of combat and suggests that he apply for reassignment and become a lawyer in the JAG in Washington. He offers to arrange a Purple Heart for Staros, to avoid the unit's name being stained by having an officer removed from command. Witt comes across the locals and notices that they have grown distant and distrustful of him and quarrel regularly with one another.
The company is sent on patrol up a river but with the inexperienced 1st Lieutenant George Band at its head. As Japanese artillery fire falls close to their positions; Band orders some men to scout upriver, with Witt volunteering to go along. They encounter an advancing Japanese column and are attacked. To buy time for Corporal Fife to go back and inform the rest of the unit, Witt draws away the Japanese but is then encircled by one of their squads, who demand that he surrender. He raises his rifle and is gunned down. The company is able to retreat safely, and Witt is later buried by Welsh and his squadmates. C Company receives a new commander, Captain Bosche and boards a waiting LCT, departing from the island.

Review: This version of James Jones' book follows the plot of the novel closely and actually received very high praise from the author himself.
Jones wrote a letter to the director saying "Very rarely does an author get to write a letter to a filmmaker to say that he has captured the author's intention to the highest level possible." Jones was very pleased with the outcome of this movie, while the 1998 version heavily strays from his book.
For example, Witt and Walsh in the 1998 version both quote a lot from another Jones novel, called "From Here To Eternity", and not from "A Thin Red Line".
First adaptation of the James Jones novel about the battle for Guadalcanal on the famous Pacific toll in which a typical crew of Marines fighting the ¨Yellow Menace¨ and it results to be one of the best American films about the Pacific conflict during WWII .
Soldier Doll (Keir Dullea)separated from his recent spouse (Yordan) after only few days of marriage, spontaneously decides that he'll no longer obey the orders of his First Sergeant , following his own will instead .
As battle experience hardens soldiers and Colonel (James Philbrook) orders captain Stone (Daley) leading to the taking of the Elephant hill in the battle of Guadalcanal .
Sgt. Welsh, (Jack Warden) Doll's superior immediate grows the mutual hatred but at the ending the two contenders change to affinity , and getting reciprocal respect .Based on James Jones 's first hand account of the notorious battle is well adapted to screen by Bernard Gordon .
Visually stunning and focused on the battle of wits of a Private and a Sergeant and on men's determination to survive his tour of duty .
The film brings home the true horror of battle and the meaninglessness of it all and effectively portrays the deshumanizing effects of war .
Another tale based on the 1962 novel by James Jones was directed by Terence Malick with star-laden cast as Jim Cazievel as Private protagonist , Sean Penn as the Sergeant , and many others as George Clooney, Nick Nolte and Woody Harrelson .
It condenses about five characters each into the two lead characters in order to make a well rounded film that fairly expresses Jones' ideas on men in war.
Death is still portrayed as a somewhat painless event (with the near exception of one great scene), it leans more to the earlier gung ho war movies than, say, Paths of Glory or All Quiet on the Western Front.
That last shot is the tone of Jones' novels, a tone From Here to Eternity got right all the way through, and Terrence Malick's Thin Red Line also successfully portrayed (But stepped away to alow contemplation, not to experience.) That last scene makes it a good movie, but it couldn've been done better.
Detailing the battle on the South Pacific Island of Guadalcanal in 1943 and the Americans' final success over the Japanese, this is a most poignant and underestimated war film.
I had expected a somewhat jingoistic war film, but was surprised that this turned out to be superior to the 1998 remake in every way but one.
It's quite interesting that this version, coming right before the Vietnam era would be cynical about war but also considerably mindful of the necessity of the particular war it depicts and of the need for the soldiers to do as they did.
Whereas the post-Vietnam 1998 version is also cynical, yet much more so, showing the military as a bumbling bureaucracy of sorts and attempting to depict the battle as pointless, extending that depiction to the war in general, and it actually is an unstated allegory about Vietnam.
Grim psychological study of two Marines on Guadalcanal, each seemingly trying to top the other in body count of Japanese slain, not for God, country, or to win the war, but for the sheer joy of killing.Extremely realistic combat sequences coupled with Dullea's excellent portrayal of the on-the-edge-of-madness Pvt. Doll make this one of my favorite war films..
The Thin Red Line: the insanity of war and what men do to survive..
For those who have read the James Jones novel, you should know that that the production team for this movie paid little heed to the original text.
And, that's a shame, because the true horror and insanity of war as described by Jones is missing: instead, what you see is an attempt at a psychological explanation in the guise of one of the characters, Private Doll (Keir Dullea).Briefly, the story concentrates upon Doll  a somewhat nervous but seemingly normal soldier at first -- showing how he gradually degenerates into a killing machine who not only wants to kill the enemy  in this case, the Japanese garrison at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands  but eventually the soldiers of his own company as well.
War is hell, as we know, but is that a likely result from the stress of battle and a crazy desire to survive at any cost?
Apparently so, according to the screenwriter and director.Inexplicably, top sergeant Welch (Jack Warden), who in the novel really is as crazy as hell, is portrayed instead as a tough  but sincere -- no-nonsense veteran (who's character for the movie is no doubt modeled on Duke Wayne's portrayal of Sergeant Stryker in The Sands of Iwo Jima, [1949]) who pushes Doll to the limits, goading him all the time in order to help make Doll a better soldier and thus survive the war.
And, in a daring departure for the times, the overt homosexuality between Doll and Fife in the novel is actually hinted at, visually and in the dialog, on quiet a few occasions.I liked the black and white cinematography; it brought back memories of the Iwo Jima classic and Duke Wayne.
This film was a slow starter, but a big bombs and guns finale gave a fine portrayal of war at it's worst..
"The Thin Red Line" is a decent war film.
My only serious complaint is that I wasn't quite sure what the story was trying to say...if anything.The story is set during WWII and some marines are aboard a transport ship heading to Guadalcanal, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war.
The story focuses on Pvt. Doll (Keir Dullea) and his seemingly sadistic Sergeant (Jack Warden).
The story is extremely violent for 1964--with many scenes that would be tough on the squeamish.What I liked about the film was how savage the fighting was.
I suppose he was just a nobody at that time.This is a highly recommended black and white film for war movie buffs.
The last line in the novel reads as follows:"One day one of their number would write a book about it all, but none of them would believe it, because none of them would remember it that way."Jones was saying that their is a tendency to (for lack of a better term) gloss over what happened in war, and the way people write about war, and the way people film war, is not at all how veterans remember it.This film is not really at all what Jones was writing about.
The film fails to find any horror in the war-- it fails to show the war as written by James Jones.It is rather interesting to watch, because it shares many scenes with the Terrence Malick film (which is the far superior work), and it is fun to compare the scenes.That said, the two actors who play Col. Tall and Stone (Stein in the book, Staros in the Malick film) are both laugh out loud bad, and seem to be completely  ignorant of how to effectively portray their characters (Nolte and Koteas, on the other hand, aren't).But to give the film some credit, it features a great performance by Kier Dullea or 2001: A Space Oddyssey fame, and an interesting one from Jack Warden as Welsh.I think that the film tries to show the horror, but the production code, the script, or director didn't want to or couldn't figure out how to.
James Jones also wrote "From Here to Eternity", and this novel has been filmed several times, last time in 1998 in colour, but the two versions compliment each other.
Jack Warden and Keir Dullea clash from the beginning, they are both close to the thin red line separating sanity from madness, and they appear as rather half mad both of them, although Keir Dullea seems more liable, as he loses control a number of times.
Jack Warden's madness is of a different kind, as he rather drives others mad than goes mad himself, and he is the better soldier of the two.It's about the critical battler of Guadalcanal, when more men were lost than even the Americans and theír ruthless colonel could afford.
Titled after what one soldier says about there being only a "thin red line between the sane and mad", this World War II drama focuses on a young soldier who decides to distance himself as much as possible from his platoon's ruthless sergeant - a decision that gradually leads to him becoming a cold-blooded killer.
Keir Dullea and Jack Warden are superb as the young upstart and sergeant respectively with an especially memorable final couple of scenes that capture just how unstable Dullea has become.
With none of the other characters fleshed out in any depth, one's appreciation of the film is likely to rest entirely on how much interest one takes in the dynamics between Warden and Dullea, which admittedly overshadow the historical backdrop and battlefield action.
Edited with nightmarish flashback sequences and full of memorable dialogue (Warden warning of the dangers of letting his privates "start thinking" rather just following orders), this was though clearly intended as a less traditional war movie.
As far as dialogue-heavy war movies go, 'The Thin Red Line' might have nothing on Samuel Fuller's masterpieces of the prior decade, but it deserves to be mentioned in the same breath at least as a film that taps into the psychology of war..
Set during the Guadalcanal campaign of World War 2, Private Doll is a raw recruit.
I couldn't imagine a real-life First Sergeant taking all that crap from a private.Good performance from Jack Warden.
Plot: Tough company sergeant Jack Warden and maverick infantryman Keir Dullea battle their way – both with the enemy and each other – across the killing fields of Guadalcanal during World War II.Review: Not quite the classic I expected.
Thankfully it is held together by the two lead performances – Jack Warden (a Hollywood stalwart) and Keir Dullea (better known as the astronaut Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey).The movie graphically depicts the horror and mercilessness of combat, an experience which gradually sends Dullea round the bend.
Warden, a good character actor most familiar as one of the jurors in 12 Angry Men, must have drawn a lot on his own experiences as a sergeant in WWII.I'm not sure what the movie was trying to say, but it definitely cannot be accused of glamorising war.
The film doesn't seem to follow the book all that well, but is an excellent movie.
This version of _Thin Red Line_ might be useful for seeing what was possible for Cinemascope, mainstream (if black and white) war movies made for a North American audience ca.
It is a kind of initiation story for Keir Dullea's Pvt. Doll: going crazy to replace Jack Warden's Sgt. Welch as an appropriate soldier.
(If war is madness, it's best fought by the mad.)Psychology wins out over politics, but at least this _Thin Red Line_ makes clear that the land fight for Guadalcanal (from an Allied point of view) wasn't all done by US Marines.Save your money and rent the late 1990s remake.
There are certainly a number of points to this version that stand out, never mind the one or two actions sequences that aren't technically up to the flashiness of today's films.
Men who have been in the military will no doubt identify with the characters, from the C.O. played with hardened determination by James Philbrook, to Jack Warden's combat wise sergeant, and down to Keir Dullea's survivalist mentality in the face of an enemy that takes no prisoners.
Opposing Dullea's character, Warden is a career NCO who plays by the rules of war, but who in the end loses his life after shielding Dullea from a Japanese soldier unleashing lead.
When you wanted to portray toughness, the late Jack Warden was one of the first actors who came to mind.
When some green and incautious solders in his platoon want to pick up some war souvenirs at the start of the film, it is the sergeant who casually demonstrates that the soldiers have come within an ace of getting themselves blown up.
The Army was left to clean out what remained of the Japanese on Guadalcanal, particularly a strongly held natural feature: Mt. Austen, called the "Dancing Elephant" in the movie but in history the "Galloping Horse" because of its shape.The story centers on the taking of Mt. Austen by the Army, with the full horror of facing for the first time an enemy determined to fight to the last man.No movie I have ever seen captures so perfectly the grimness of war, its squalor, occasional moments of exultation and the byplay of men at different levels of command but all trapped in an essentially insane situation..
The trend today is to add realism into war movies in order to make them moving.
Now we come out of the movie house with a tingling in our gut and a head full of imagery and dialogue and get fooled into thinking we just saw something of value, when in fact, we're queasy from the blood and our ears are ringing from the THX surround sound at freight train levels.The Thin Red Line moves you and sticks in your mind without using the smoke and CPU cycles that are the main tools of filmmakers today.
He and his war hardened Sergeant are thrown together time after time and both effect each other.In the end, Doll reaches a place that his Sergeant has just come from.
They have a few words as Sergeant Walsh takes his last breaths, and the humanity inside Doll dies as he drags Walsh's dead body away as the credits roll.The most memorable line in the entire movie is when Doll's commander instructs him to take some men to capture a strategic point.
No loss of focus here." – "Meditations in Green" (Stephen Wright)Film lags behind most other fields, mediums and art-forms, and so its no surprise that even over half a century after its release, few war films have been able to match the power of James Jones' novel, "The Thin Red Line".The second book in his WW2 trilogy, Jones' novel told the story of Charlie company and their participation in the battle of Guadalcanal.
This polarity is typical of war novels of the era, the theme of individuals as mere cogs in the war machine introduced by master authors like Dos Passos ("Through the Wheat" and "Three Soldiers") and Thomas Boyd and carried on in the works of artists like Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Stephen Wright, William March, and James Jones.
Observe how he has one pair of characters embody different philosophical positions: for one soldier, if a human's actions are beyond his or her control, then the cause of war is irrelevant and inescapable.
Another pair of characters, for example, battle over whether or not war is ever morally justifiable.
It doesn't have the thematic weight or dramatic power of Jones' novel, but in the context of the other (mostly dumb) war movies released in the late 50s and early 60s, it's a remarkable film, an odd clash between grungy New Wave aesthetics, raw (not quite method) acting, and the stiff conventions of Old Hollywood.
Unfortunately the film received little promotion and quickly faded into obscurity and is today mostly known for featuring an early performance by actor Keir Dullea.Decades later, "Line" would once again be adapted, this time by director Terrence Malick.
Upon its release, many derided Malick's film for revoking or reversing the philosophy of Jones' novel, writers painting Malick as some kind of hippie spiritualist who turned war into a "natural", "poetic thing", a stark contrast to the cold, industrial and absurdist universe of Jones.
In fact, while Malick's film never explicitly reveals what the film's title means, Marton's film wastes little time in explaining, via Captain Stone, that the phrase is from an old Midwest saying, 'There's only a thin red line between sanity and madness.' The DVD, by Simitar Entertainment, has some interesting extras, such as bios on Dullea and Warden, but also six clips from genuine World War Two documentaries- the most interesting being a clip on the rescue of an American who evaded capture for 31 months, after the Japanese originally invaded Guam.
It is best watched as a curio piece (especially for fans of Dullea's career), and a companion to the infinitely superior Terrence Malick film of 1998.
In all fairness, I enjoyed this movie but that might be because I have a soft spot for B&W war flicks from the 60's.The acting isn't worthy of an Oscar but it is passable, other than the guy portraying Doll.
In fact, he was the one character that I wanted to grab and shake because he was over-acting his part to the point where really just wanted to hurt him.What I could not understand about this movie though were the mistakes by the armourer of the flick.
(Now this one COULD be forgiven because maybe they could have captured them from the Marines who came before the army, although I'm pretty sure the Marines were using M1917 during Guadalcanal.) However, the ONE mistake that could not be explained away was Doll and Welsh and some others using German MP 40's and MP 3008 Machine Pistols.