Van Van Praag was wounded in action whilst serving as a platoon leader during the Normandy invasion and here the action of his novel 'Day without end' has been transposed to Korea with a screenplay by Philip Yordan, again 'fronting' for blacklisted Ben Maddow.
Principally regarded as a 'Western' specialist, director Anthony Mann here employs his meticulous craftsmanship and grasp of inner conflict to great effect in what must surely be on every true cinephile's list of great war films, the best of which are, by definition, anti-war.
None of the foot soldiers that make up this 'lost patrol' has a backstory and very few of them alas have much of a future. We do at least get to see a photograph of liberal minded Lt. Benson's family while hard-bitten Sergeant 'Montana' hints at a loveless childhood and it is the dynamic between these two that provides the linchpin of the film. At one stage the Benson of Robert Ryan tells Aldo Ray's Montana 'God help us if it takes your kind to win this war' but eventually is forced to acknowledge that Montana provides the only hope for survival.
This is undeniably Aldo Ray's finest filmic hour and Robert Ryan again reminds us that he was one of the greatest actors never to win an Oscar. A brilliant touch is provided by the shell shocked Colonel of Robert Keith whose speechlessness actually speaks volumes about the psychological damage of warfare.
Mann has taken his cast to the hills of California and again shows his feel for landscape whilst cinematographer Ernest Haller provides intricate moving shots. Elmer Bernstein's score is sparingly used throughout although one is inclined to give Mann the benefit of the doubt and assume that the inane chorus at the end was foisted on him by the studio.
'Time Out' has referred to this film as 'uncommonly tough for the Eisenhower era' and a year later Mann was to virtually reinvent the Western with the equally tough 'Man of the West'.
