The Young Lions (1958)
Grade: 86
"The Young Lions" is a lengthy war epic that focuses not on battles, but on the people that have been forced to fight them. The theme of war as an evil, destructive and pointless force is well-developed, and the quality of the script and story more than compensates for minor problems.
It is the story of three soldiers. Marlon Brando plays a German lieutenant whose growing disillusionment with war and the German cause parallels the decline of the Axis war machine. Montgomery Clift plays a jewish private who must overcome harassment from his fellow soldiers. Dean Martin plays a Broadway entertainer who is racked with guilt for trying to avoid fighting in the front lines.
Dean Martin has the weakest character. He is clearly in his late thirties, but is so guilty over not serving in the trenches that he falls to drinking and abuse of his girlfriend. Martin doesn't seem comfortable, looking as if he'd rather be somewhere else.
Clift effectively underplays. Clift always landed terrific roles, due either to his excellent judgement of scripts, or from film directors noticing his charisma. His character briefly deserts his unit, an action not well explained. Also, perhaps he is made too much of a hero in rescuing his bullying fellow soldiers.
Brando has the best role. His German accent isn't quite right, but he underplays his character perfectly. Torn between duty and the revulsion of his actions, he soon has the unhappy look of a condemned man.
Well directed, there's not a scene wasted, and the film never drags. The Germans are portrayed as humans reluctantly following an evil cause, rather than as murderous stereotypes. The script and cinematography is also excellent.
http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews