Bataan (film)
Bataan | |
---|---|
Eric Zeisl | |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; United States Office of War Information |
Release date |
|
Running time | 114 min. |
Language | English |
Budget | $958,000[1] |
Box office | $3,117,000[1] |
Bataan is a 1943 American
Plot
The
One by one, the defenders are killed, except Ramirez, who succumbs to malaria. Despite this, the outnumbered soldiers doggedly hold their position. Malloy shoots down an enemy aircraft with his Tommy gun before being killed. Dane and Todd creep up, undetected, on the bridge the Japanese have partially rebuilt and throw hand grenades, blowing it up.
Dane suspects that Todd is a soldier from his past named Danny Burns who was arrested for killing a man in a dispute, but escaped while Dane was guarding him.
The remaining soldiers repel a massive frontal assault, inflicting heavy losses and ultimately fighting hand-to-hand. Epps and Feingold are killed, leaving only Dane, Todd, and a wounded Purckett alive. Purckett is shot, while Todd is stabbed through the back by a Japanese soldier who had only feigned being dead. Before he dies, Todd admits to Dane he is Burns.
Now alone, Dane stoically digs his own marked grave beside those of his fallen comrades. The Japanese crawl through the ground fog near his position before opening fire and charging. Dane fires back; when his Tommy gun runs out of ammo, he switches to an M1917 Browning machine gun. He continually fires it directly into the camera lens as the end card reads: “So fought the heroes of Bataan, Their sacrifice made possible our victories in the Coral and Bismarck Seas, at Midway, on New Guinea and Guadalcanal. Their spirit will lead us back to Bataan!”
When the film was released, on June 3, 1943, the Allied offensive in the Pacific was a few months old. It would be a year and a half before the Battle to Retake Bataan (January 31 to February 25, 1945).
Cast
- Robert Taylor as Sergeant Bill Dane
- George Murphy as Lieut. Steve Bentley
- Thomas Mitchell as Corp. Jake Feingold
- Lloyd Nolan as Corp. Barney Todd
- Lee Bowman as Capt. Henry Lassiter
- Robert Walker as Leonard Purckett
- Desi Arnaz as Felix Ramirez
- Barry Nelsonas F.X. Matowski
- Phillip Terry as Matthew Hardy
- Roque Espiritu as Corp. Juan Katigbak
- Kenneth Spencer as Wesley Eeps
- J. Alex Havier as Yankee Salazar
- Tom Dugan as Sam Malloy
- Donald Curtis as Lieutenant
Production
The presence of a racially integrated fighting force prevented the film's showing in the American South.[2]
Scenes from the 1934
The film premièred in New York City on June 3, 1943.[3]
Reception
Bosley Crowther, critic for The New York Times, described it as "a surprisingly credible conception of what that terrible experience must have been for some of the men who endured it", albeit with "melodramatic flaws and ... some admitted technical mistakes." In the end, "it doesn't insult the honor of dead soldiers".[4]
Writing in The Nation, film critic Manny Farber describes Fixed Bayonets as “suspenseful, off-beat, variant of the Bill Maudlin cartoon…Funny, morbid, the best war film since Bataan (film) (1943).” [5] Farber adds: “I wouldn’t mind seeing it seven times.”[6]
The film was a hit when first released to theaters; according to MGM records it earned $2,049,000 in the US and Canada and $1,068,000 overseas, resulting in a profit of $1,140,000.[1][7][8]
Home media
Bataan was released by
Footnotes
- ^ a b c The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
- ^ Michael T. Toole. "BATAAN". Turner Classic Movies. Time Warner. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
So controversial was this film at the time that Bataan actually had trouble being shown in parts of the Deep South in the 1940s.
- ^ Bataan at the TCM Movie Database
- ^ Bosley Crowther (June 4, 1943). "' Bataan,' Film of Heroic Defense of Peninsula, Starring Robert Taylor, Robert Walker and Thomas Mitchell, at Capitol". The New York Times.
- ^ Farber, 2009 p. 374
- ^ Farber, 2009 p. 374, p. 786: Sources and Acknowledgments, The Nation, “Best Films of 1951” January 15, 1952
- ^ Scott Eyman, Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer, Robson, 2005 p 362
- ^ Variety (1944). Variety (January 1944). Media History Digital Library Media History Digital Library. New York, NY: Variety Publishing Company.
Sources
- ISBN 978-1-59853-050-6
- Richard Slotkin (1992). "The Problem of Defeat: Bataan (1943) as Last Stand". Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-century America. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 318–326. ISBN 978-0-8061-3031-6.
- Slotkin, Richard (Fall 2001). "Unit Pride: Ethnic Platoons and the Myths of American Nationality". American Literary History. 13 (3). Oxford University Press: 469–498. .
External links
- Bataan at the TCM Movie Database
- Bataan at IMDb
- Bataan at AllMovie
- Bataan at the American Film Institute Catalog