The Young Lions (1958)

Powerful

Nice effects though.

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

"The Young Lions" was one those big Hollywood war movies I remember seeing with my family at the local cinema during the late 1950s.I saw many of those films and actually read most of the slab-like novels they were based on: "Battle Cry", "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", "From Here to Eternity" and Irwin Shaw's "The Young Lions" - there just weren't that many competing devices back then.I usually read the books after seeing the films and then became acutely aware of how the movies suffered under the censorship of the day. The novels often filled in some serious gaps in my sex education, but the films never did.The story is about three soldiers: a German, Christian Diestl (Marlon Brando), and two Americans: Noah Ackerman (Montgomery Clift) and Michael Whiteacre (Dean Martin). The film follows their fortunes through WW2 until they cross paths at the end.The film has a number of authentic, well-executed sequences shot on location. However these are mixed with flat, over-lit scenes shot on the blandest of backlots and soundstages - the interiors are particularly artless. Documentary footage also added to the lack of a definitive style. Fortunately the action scenes open the film out. The most arresting of them was the ambush of a British convoy in North Africa. It would have touched a nerve with many in that audience in 1958 as our guys had been part of the British Eighth army and the war had only been over for 13 years.One of the surprises in the movie was the anti-Semitism Noah Ackerman encounters in the U.S. Army. Monty Clift faced a tough enlistment in "From Here to Eternity", but it was even tougher here. He looked worn (this was after his accident in 1956) and seemed a bit too old, but his performance is the most affecting in the film. No wonder Brando was wary of his talent.Dean Martin without Jerry Lewis was another surprise, but he was good as the soldier with better motives than he thought.Brando's blonde, broad shouldered Diestl starts out as a fine example of the master race, but his journey through the rise and fall of the Third Reich makes him thoughtful. He is treated rather sympathetically in the movie, although he was more of a nasty Nazi in the novel. However they may have overdone Diestl's disgust at every turn.I can see why Irwin Shaw was disappointed. However the film has its moments, and is still one I have no trouble watching every now and then.

Highest rating to this 1958 film with an all-star cast once again proving their mettle.Didn't Montgomery Clift remind you of his brilliant Pruitt five years before in "From Here to Eternity?" Dean Martin had a fabulous 1958 year proving his worth in dramatic acting with this film along with "Some Came Running."This is definitely a film of moral conviction with Marlon Brando outstanding as a German, caught by the Hitler lies and promises to the German people only to see the hell of war. In America, Dean Martin is an entertainer, a pacifist, who will use any means possible to evade military service. Montgomery Clift as Ackerman views for himself religious prejudice in the military.

See it – This is a uniquely gritty and depressing war drama. Notice I said drama. This is an entirely too-long movie that has just enough action to keep you interested. It has three battle scenes, but then again it is a three hour movie. The ratio of talking to fighting is not satisfactory for it to be called a great action movie. Having said that, it is still a great movie. Marlon Brando plays a "nice nazi" and is phenomenal in his role as usual. The other two main characters are Americans played by Dean Martin and Montgomery Clift. The movie is about the separate stories of these three men. Eventually, all three of their paths cross. A pretty cool idea for a cool war drama. Brando looks cool in his aviators too. 3 out of 5 action rating

I saw The Young Lions when I was 18 years old, the year it came out. I went into the theater a college kid from Texas who totally bought the swagger of American war heroes. I came out of the film absolutely devastated -- and decided I was now a pacifist and would dedicate my life as an artist to living up to the high standards of this film.All the acting is extraordinary -- Cliff is at his very best, Dean Martin is a surprising revelation playing a dissolute Broadway star he was perfect for. Maximilian Schell is amazing -- I don't know how he wasn't given an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Barbara Rush, Hope Lange and May Britt are all indelible portraits of the three faces of 40's women.The cinematography is black and white at its best, sharp elements of chiaroscuro unmatched by color films. The musical score is on a level with Holst's The Planets, unrelenting and devastating.But the outstanding feature of the film is the incandescent performance by Marlon Brando at the peak of power as an actor. I don't think I had ever tried to imagine how the Third Reich came to be and how it might have affected a normal German citizen until Brando's brilliant work illuminated it for me. He is at his most handsome, obviously in great shape inside that tailored uniform, and truly epitomizes the "Golden God of War" who is enlightened by the horror he is expected to deliver, and is transformed into a tragic figure.This is as good as Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List -- one of the most neglected masterpieces of American cinema: a Greek tragedy of our own era.