Il nudo e il morto

"The Naked and the Dead" is a film based on a novel by Norman Mailer, which was based on his experiences fighing in the Pacific during WWII. I expected the movie to stink, as Mailer hated the final film and thought it the worst movie he'd seen. After seeing it, I assume he felt that way because they bastardized his story...not because the film was bad in any other way.

"The Naked and the Dead" is a HUGE counterpoint to the average war film made during WWII. The WWII era movies were all very patriotic...and featured men who were dedicated and loved serving their country. The film, on the other hand, shows that overwhelming patriotism is NOT what all soldiers feel...most just want to do their job and survive. And, in a HUGE departure from the war era films, some are just sadists who love killing!

The story is set on some island in the Pacific and for much of the film there are two parallel stories. One is about a company of soldiers serving under a competent but sociopathic sergeant (Aldo Ray). He knows is job, is good at it but also is obsessed with killing...even birds, captured prisoners and his commanding officer!! The other is about a lieutenant (Cliff Robertson) who is serving as the adjutant for a sadistic jerk of a general (Raymond Massey). Eventually the two stories intersect.

I hate films that glorify war or make it look fun...so I appreciated this movie because it never even came close to doing either! The acting and script are very good...though I have no idea what the source novel is like by comparison. Apparently Mailer thought the difference was huge.

By the way, one part of the film I hated. A man is bitten by a poisonous snake...something that I am sure happened occasionally. First, the men cut open the wound and try sucking out the poison (something you should NEVER do). Second, the guy literally died in a minute or two...something that just doesn't happen...even with the most dangerous of snakes. It was a sloppy scene, that's for sure.

The Naked and the Dead (1958), my rating 7 of 10. I see why this film has a middling score on IMdb after reading a synopsis of the book. If one comes to watch this film after reading the book and hope for it to be very faithful to the book such as a Cain Mutiny film did, you will not be happy. I watched the film without reading the book, which is considered by many to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, so I had no preconceptions of how the tale should unfold. For this reason, I'm happy I was able to enjoy the film on its own merits, I give it a decent score of 7. After reading a synopsis of the book, it contains much more personal information about the characters, especially pertaining to anti-Semitic bigotry and homosexual tendencies. Written in 1948, I bet this book turned some heads, it seems ahead of its time. 10 years later, America has fought in yet another war, and its appetite for war action dramas was changing to a more cynical side. The book mainly focuses on Aldo Ray's character along with some lurid domestic scenes involving soldiers and cheating wives and strippers. Aldo Ray is portrayed as a functioning psychopath, not really all that crazy but definitely a murdering sadist as he cold blooded murders a Japanese prisoner. Besides the Lieutenant/General conflict of Robertson and Massey's characters, two action supporting characters I personally like to watch had some decent screen time, LQ Jones and Robert Jaeckel. LQ's character is married to a stripper who sends him money (silly premise), I thought of a Z budget war film LQ was in, "Iron Angel" where he is in a strip club in Asia and there is a stripper there on the main stage up close and personal, with a very noticeable appendectomy or caesarian scar. Now that's a really good setting of a raunchy strip bar (although I think it had more to do with the film's low budget)! Richard Jaeckel gets some good screen time and shows his "I'm devastated" face he is usually called to perform in his films; hey he was a B movie action film guy and one of the few who consistently was called upon to show some emotion other than being angry. This was made by RKO Radio Pictures who was going out of business soon but the production values are decent. We see large military formations in the film, not just a squad. Perhaps the end footage was lifted from another film but I doubt it as the end says it was filmed in Panama and probably used our Canal Zone military units at the time for the large scenes. Purists may be dismayed that not much of the tank hardware is accurate but it looks better than the Battle of The Bulge and their newer tanks. Based solely as a war action drama and nothing more I am giving the film a 7 out of 10. If you are coming here after reading the book you may get about 40 percent of the character development (guessing) and I'm sure would not enjoy it as much. It should be remade now!

I saw this movie on a local PBS station about the same time I was writing a Term Paper on the novel. I have already read the novel several times, but I still thought that the movie perspective might be helpful. Needless to say I was wrong. The movie turns a book about the futility of the individual's role in war into a boiler plate feel good war movie w/ a happy ending. One of the most important parts of the novel, where Hearn is betrayed despite his best efforts to be a "good" leader, is scrapped. Hearn not only survives, but the movie goes on the kill the ass hole, Sgt Croft. In the book we see a group of individuals who all want to singlehandedly make a difference and who all end up failing because modern war has grown beyond the control of the individual. In the movie we see a division of good guys and bad guys where where good guys win and the bad guys get what's coming. Finally I would like to point out that this movie is a waste of time or unpleasant to watch. If its going to be on TV by all means watch it, but if you've read the book brace yourself to be VERY disappointed.

It's 1943. A group of men set off for a Pacific island in a campaign headed by General Cummings (Raymond Massey). He's dictatorial and wants his men to fear him more than the enemy. His aide Lt Hearn (Cliff Robertson) is an idealist living under the shadow of his legendary father. Cummings sends Sgt Croft (Aldo Ray) and his men into the jungle on a seemingly pointless mission to test a mountain pass that should be easily defended by the Japanese. Croft is a hard-nosed leader who kills prisoners and has his men dig gold from the dead's teeth. After a dispute with Cummings, Hearn is also sent on the mission. Cummings goes off to headquarters to argue for more troops to stage a big attack. However the small pointless mission may actually hold the key to the island.

This is based on Norman Mailer's novel which he infuses with some of his war experiences. First off, I don't like the start in Honolulu and the flashbacks. They take the audience out of the war experience. It feels melodramatic and old school like a bad 50s war movie. At its best, the movie has a feel of Malick's film 'The Thin Red Line'. The wide field of grass and shots that come out of nowhere give the movie a feeling of foreboding. The cast of characters get scattered in the mission. There is a message being delivered but it's a bit muddled. The movie needs to narrow the focus.

Raoul Walsh's films of the 1950's are uncharted territory, much like the South Pacific island where most of the action in Naked and the Dead unfolds. Many of the films aren't available or are rarely seen. Of those that are, I'm only familiar with a series of Clark Gable films serving mostly as an excuse for Walsh, through Gable, to flaunt his reactionary values, missing body parts, and old-sea-salt virility. In none of these films was there any indication that Walsh could deliver something of the scale and complexity of Naked and the Dead, which more than equals mid-period lulus like The Roaring Twenties.

Walsh was an arbitrary choice to film Norman Mailer's novel. Mailer wrote the book as a young man with a name to make and awards to win. In 1958 Walsh had nothing left to prove to anyone -- even when he was Mailer's age, I can't imagine him going for Mailer's bludgeoning tactics. Though I'm no Mailer acolyte, you do miss his chutzpah at first, as the movie has a laid-back feel more appropriate for a beach volleyball film. An amphibious landing that brings echoes of D-Day is carried out near the beginning of the film, during which we're told that 130 men have died, but we don't see a single limb get blown off. We just get a couple shots of smoke rising out of the forest as the ships land. You start to worry that Walsh, like in those Errol Flynn war films of the 1940's, has brought his crew down to Pasadena to film in a state park with three potted palm trees.

However, the interplay between the actors -- Walsh favors long-takes with eight or nine guys just shooting the s--t, stirring hooch and whining about their superiors -- is enough to keep you watching. Eventually it dawns on you that Walsh has seen much more of life than Mailer. He is long past the need to sadistically linger on the more dramatic moments of war. You can feel Walsh feeding off his group of actors, basking in their youth while lovingly depicting their trials of life, the same ones he underwent half a century ago. The approach is very much like Scorsese's in The Aviator in its tendency to concentrate on hope and promise, a refusal to wallow in the ugly. Right to the end Walsh resists the impulse to ratchet up the tension -- like a conductor guiding his music with a steady pulse, the movie just keeps plodding along, and a horrific death is given no more emphasis than a running joke about Raymond Massey's character getting a daily bunch of flowers.

In the final hour, his method pays off. The landscapes open up in spectacular fashion, just as each character moves inexorably towards an action that will define them within time like a pin in a map. An authenticity grips the movie and won't let go. The way Walsh has of letting major events happen offscreen begins to feel ominous and evocative of unseen forces, worthy of Jacques Tourneur, and the underpopulated battles take on massive grandeur in the imagination. A culminating sequence featuring rows upon rows of tanks and mortars battering an invisible enemy is what all directors want to achieve -- a moment that goes beyond words into an expression of pure cosmic power, millenia of sorrow and rage blending into a firework display for the gods.

Think of this as The Naked and the Dead, and you'll be disappointed. Think of it as what Terence Malick wanted to do with The Thin Red Line, and you will see exactly where he went wrong, and where Walsh succeeds. Walsh blows the world up good, but unlike the lords of war, he does it for love, not personal gain. And he takes us all out equally.