Fixed Bayonets! (PG.)
Directed by Samuel Fuller. 1951.
Starring Richard Basehart, Gene Evans, Michael O'Shea, Richard Hylton, Craig Hill and Skip Homeier. Black and white. 92 mins. Released on Blu-ray by Eureka as part of the Masters Of Cinema series.
Strange, the little snippets you remember. Something that always stuck in my head was a line from an article about fictional watering holes in the Guardian Guide. The journalist stated that overall he'd prefer to be chugging down beer at the Bada Bing, the mafia run New Jersey strip joint in The Sopranos. A Guardian journalist in a mafia run New Jersey strip joint a strip club: he wouldn't last two minutes. The janitors would've relieved him of his laptop satchel and dumped him in a back alley before he got within a 100 yards of Big Tony or Junior.
Another good example of writers and reviewers projecting a kinship with people that would have nothing to do with them in real life, is the worshiping of American genre and B-movie film makers by film academics and the directors and reviewers of The French Nouvelle Vague – the likes of Howard Hawks, John Ford, Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller.
Fuller, a former journalist and WWII veteran, was a prolific maker of small budget genre films in the 50s and 60s, a man without nonsense. This, his fourth film, is a war film that immediately gains novelty by being about the Korean War, a war that is still going on technically as it concluded in 1953, not with a treaty but an armistice. It is like one of those TV dramas that never officially got cancelled but has been in hiatus for so long nobody really wants to bring it back and find out how it all finishes. Perhaps that lack of resolution is why it has been such a shunned conflict – it's only major cultural representation was in MASH and even there is was just a 'Nam surrogate. (It is in the background of the Manchurian Candidate; oh and a few hundred Korean films of course.)
Of course it could also be that the war came so soon after WWII. It must have been so dispiriting to have the first Cold War conflict kick off just half a decade after defeating fascism. The soldiers here certainly have the air of people who know that they've stuck with a loosing hand. They are either draftees who must've thought that history had smiled at them having missing out on the big one, or lifers who know no better. In most ways though the Korean setting doesn't make the film distinctive, it could be any war really.
The film is also interesting in being a film about a retreat. In the first year of the conflict a heavy assault by the North has meant the US forces needing to fall back. To disguise this a lone platoon of infantrymen are left behind to keep the enemy busy and give the appearance of being the whole division. Among the 48 men is Corporal Denno (Basehart), a man who failed officer training and can't bring himself to kill a man face to face. He is fourth in the chain of command and getting ever more jittery as those above him begin to get picked off.
Fixed Bayonets! was a step up in budget over his first three films but it is still small scale, filmed on a small number of sets with painted backdrops. It is a strong, gritty war tale that looks like any number of black and white war films you may have seen on TV on a Saturday afternoon. But those other films aren't considered to be works of a Master of Cinema. Fuller's film is gripping, his characterisations are strong and there is a scene in a minefield that is unbearable tense, but if I'd didn't know it was the work of a Master, I don't think I'd have guessed.
It's impressive how Fuller's news instinct carried over into his film career – the war had only been going a year and he was already knocking out a second feature on it. (Bayonets! followed The Steel Helmet.)
And as for Fuller being lionized by people he wouldn't have the time of day for – he moved to France in the 80s, directed a couple of films there and made acting appearances for directors like Godard and Wenders.
Extras:
A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Glenn Kenny and excerpts from Fuller's autobiography 'A Third Face.'
Audio commentary by film scholar Adrian Martin.
Directed by Samuel Fuller. 1951.
Starring Richard Basehart, Gene Evans, Michael O'Shea, Richard Hylton, Craig Hill and Skip Homeier. Black and white. 92 mins. Released on Blu-ray by Eureka as part of the Masters Of Cinema series.
Strange, the little snippets you remember. Something that always stuck in my head was a line from an article about fictional watering holes in the Guardian Guide. The journalist stated that overall he'd prefer to be chugging down beer at the Bada Bing, the mafia run New Jersey strip joint in The Sopranos. A Guardian journalist in a mafia run New Jersey strip joint a strip club: he wouldn't last two minutes. The janitors would've relieved him of his laptop satchel and dumped him in a back alley before he got within a 100 yards of Big Tony or Junior.
Another good example of writers and reviewers projecting a kinship with people that would have nothing to do with them in real life, is the worshiping of American genre and B-movie film makers by film academics and the directors and reviewers of The French Nouvelle Vague – the likes of Howard Hawks, John Ford, Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller.
Fuller, a former journalist and WWII veteran, was a prolific maker of small budget genre films in the 50s and 60s, a man without nonsense. This, his fourth film, is a war film that immediately gains novelty by being about the Korean War, a war that is still going on technically as it concluded in 1953, not with a treaty but an armistice. It is like one of those TV dramas that never officially got cancelled but has been in hiatus for so long nobody really wants to bring it back and find out how it all finishes. Perhaps that lack of resolution is why it has been such a shunned conflict – it's only major cultural representation was in MASH and even there is was just a 'Nam surrogate. (It is in the background of the Manchurian Candidate; oh and a few hundred Korean films of course.)
Of course it could also be that the war came so soon after WWII. It must have been so dispiriting to have the first Cold War conflict kick off just half a decade after defeating fascism. The soldiers here certainly have the air of people who know that they've stuck with a loosing hand. They are either draftees who must've thought that history had smiled at them having missing out on the big one, or lifers who know no better. In most ways though the Korean setting doesn't make the film distinctive, it could be any war really.
The film is also interesting in being a film about a retreat. In the first year of the conflict a heavy assault by the North has meant the US forces needing to fall back. To disguise this a lone platoon of infantrymen are left behind to keep the enemy busy and give the appearance of being the whole division. Among the 48 men is Corporal Denno (Basehart), a man who failed officer training and can't bring himself to kill a man face to face. He is fourth in the chain of command and getting ever more jittery as those above him begin to get picked off.
Fixed Bayonets! was a step up in budget over his first three films but it is still small scale, filmed on a small number of sets with painted backdrops. It is a strong, gritty war tale that looks like any number of black and white war films you may have seen on TV on a Saturday afternoon. But those other films aren't considered to be works of a Master of Cinema. Fuller's film is gripping, his characterisations are strong and there is a scene in a minefield that is unbearable tense, but if I'd didn't know it was the work of a Master, I don't think I'd have guessed.
It's impressive how Fuller's news instinct carried over into his film career – the war had only been going a year and he was already knocking out a second feature on it. (Bayonets! followed The Steel Helmet.)
And as for Fuller being lionized by people he wouldn't have the time of day for – he moved to France in the 80s, directed a couple of films there and made acting appearances for directors like Godard and Wenders.
Extras:
A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Glenn Kenny and excerpts from Fuller's autobiography 'A Third Face.'
Audio commentary by film scholar Adrian Martin.
