GUADALCANAL DIARY (1943)

One of the best of the early WWII films, perhaps partly because it's centered on an actual event, the first major ground offensive by American troops. The film is based on a book by a journalist who was with the first group of Marines who invaded Guadalcanal, a small island in the Solomon Island chain, and though I haven't read the book, the film does stay true to the journalistic form, with voice-over narration and an episodic nature. We begin observing the group of new troops on a ship somewhere in the South Pacific, waiting for action. It became a cliche for movie troops to be a varied bunch of stereotypes, and this is most likely one of the movies responsible for the development of that cliche, but the types are worn lightly and rarely feel overdone (despite the fact that the very first line of dialogue involves a Jewish man singing "Rock of Ages" at a Sunday morning service). Ostensibly, the main character of the film is the stolid Irish chaplain (Preston Foster), but William Bendix, as the pug from Brooklyn (nicknamed "Brooklyn"), gets the most screen time. Others we get to know include the relatively seasoned sergeant Lloyd Nolan, intellectual Richard Conte, Latino Anthony Quinn, and baby-faced teenager Richard Jaeckel--the narrating reporter (Reed Hadley) is only seen occasionally. The opening 20 minutes sets up a nice, casual intimacy among the men, who don't mind napping on each other's shoulders or jitterbugging with each other. Their landing on the island, which has a Japanese-built airstrip that the Americans would dearly love to occupy, is easy as there is virtually no resistance, but when a large group of men attempt to invade a beach at the mouth of the Matanikau River, they are slaughtered with only one soldier, Quinn, able to swim back to safety. He can only watch as the Japanese soldiers brutally bayonet the American corpses littering the beach. Jaeckel, despite being warned, tries to steal a sword from a dead Japanese only to wind up getting wounded by a nearby sniper; the payoff occurs later when the lad uses a similar trick on the enemy. The battle scenes are well done, though not nearly as graphic as they would be in later movies, and in general, the conditions have clearly been sanitized for the homefront viewers; for example, there is very little hint of the malaria that ravaged the men in real life. Still, we do get a strong sense of how the men change over the course of their ordeal, especially at the end when the weary Marines greet their Army replacements. Crusty old Lionel Stander, who I think was a crusty old man even in his youth, has a small role. Not the most realistic war picture, but definitely recommended. [DVD]