Anzio (1968)

Sadly Over-hyped

Absolutely the worst movie.

Absolutely Fantastic

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

RELEASED IN 1968 and directed by Edward Dmytryk & Duilio Coletti, "Anzio" (aka "The Battle of Anzio") chronicles the uneventful Allied amphibious landing at Anzio, Italy, in late January, 1944. While a reconnaissance detail offers evidence that there's no serious enemy opposition in the 30 miles between Anzio and Rome, the commander (Arthur Kennedy) inexplicably decides to dig-in, which provides Field Marshal Kesselring (Wolfgang Preiss) the opportunity to marshal his troops against the invasion. This prolongs their capturing Rome until early June.Winston Churchill was dissatisfied with this, commenting "I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat into the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale." The movie focuses on a war correspondent (Robert Mitchum) who accompanies a small group of Rangers who patrol the Italian countryside and are ambushed at the Battle of Cisterna and try to make it back. The soldiers are played by Earl Holliman, Peter Falk, Reni Santoni, et. al.The movie's based on real events, but you can tell that the writers pandered to the audience in light of some of the contrived dialogues, e.g. General Lesley quoting Churchill at the end (Lesley, of course, representing the real-life General Lucas). Another negative is the incongruent soundtrack and score, most notably the opening song by Jack Jones, "The World is Yours." Yet it could be argued that this lends the movie a unique charm.Some armchair critics complain that the movie should have focused more on The Battle of Anzio, as far as the invading Allies fighting Kesselring's counterattack, but that's here to a point (since all the events fall under the umbrella of that battle) and I think they came up with an innovative way to condense 4.5 months into a fairly compelling two hour flick.THE MOVIE RUNS 117 minutes and was shot entirely in Italy (Naples, Caserta & Rome). WRITERS: H.A.L. Craig (et. al) from Wynford Vaughan-Thomas's book. ADDITIONAL CAST: Robert Ryan has a small role.GRADE: B-

*Spoiler/plot- Anzio, 1968. A well know war correspondent becomes involved in the Anzio landings and becomes part of the many US Army units histories and victory. *Special Stars- Robert Mitchum, Peter Falk, Earl Holliman, Authur Kennedy, Robert Ryan.*Theme- War accomplishes nothing, but sometimes does.*Trivia/location/goofs- Italian. Shot around Rome, Italy. Peter Falk in his 2006 auto-biography 'Just One Thing: Stories of My Life' states that he didn't like the script for this movie which he thought was hackneyed and full of cliché. Falk wanted to leave the film for these reasons. However, producer Dino De Laurentiis encouraged Falk to stay by giving him film poster name-above-the-title credit as well as choice of writer for his dialog. Falk stayed on the picture and apparently actually wrote his own dialog. The "Black Devils" was the nickname of the 1st Special Service Force, The Devil's Brigade (also called The Black Devil's and The Black Devils Brigade), a joint American-Canadian commando unit organized in 1942. Continuity problems with historic personal troop's infantry weapons, tanks, and aircraft. Many war film clichés' abound in this film and many not sensible in logical modern warfare. It does have many overdone scenes with: whores, smart-ass and lovable Hollywood obsessed soldiers, war correspondent with a heart, and finally with minefield and sniper field tactics. *Emotion- A bad and hugely flawed war film with a 'message' from old Dino 'Red Ink' De Laurentis. This films plot is peppered with overused and boring dramatic scenes like the sniper battle, minefield escape, rowdy bar fight, young G.I. finding his first love, German Fieldmarshal barking orders to subordinates, and war corespondent who is anti-war. The main musical theme is a pretentious sad love song that is run the whole time of this sad film...YUK! Better films of this war theater and era are "A walk in the Sun", "Big RED one" or "Go for Broke". This film can out and was one year before the Oscar wining film production called "Patton" with it's opposing & more interesting war message.*Based on- Clichéd' popular 60's message war films.

You know that you're in trouble when the protagonist in a World War II movie is an Ernie Pyle-style newspaper correspondent who is still trying to figure out why men kill each other. "Why do we kill each other?" the leading man asks a general on the eve of the historic landings. "How can a perfectly ordinary good-natured guy who wouldn't slap down a mosquito sit up in an airplane and bomb 1000 sleeping strangers down beneath him?" If the question weren't idiotic enough, the high-ranking general that he is discussing war with replies, "We do it to survive, Mr. Ennis. In war, it is kill or be killed." Talk about bromides! Sleepy-eyed Robert Mitchum is cast as this naive newspaperman named Dick Ennis who covers the war for the International Press. What a name. Dick Ennis?! Ennis likes to ask idiotic questions, and he refuses to carry a grenade or tote a gun. Nevertheless, he winds up giving orders to the G.I.s who assembly around him as if he were in command.No, "Young Lions" director Edward Dmytryk's "Anzio" doesn't qualify as a traditional big-picture military action epic in the tradition of either "The Longest Day" or "The Sands of Iwo Jima." This fatigue-inducing, 116-minute movie portrays the American military in a derogatory light, but the Hal Craig screenplay alters the names to protect the incompetents. The real battle of Anzio turned into a bloodthirsty nightmare, but this Dino De Laurentiis production amounts to one big bore. Instead of depicting the disaster at Anzio, the filmmakers focus their attention on some forgettable heroics behind enemy lines. History tells us that the Allies landed at Anzio but expected the same stiff opposition that they faced at Salerno. Instead, they landed and encountered no resistance. Ennis piles into a jeep with another G.I. and whirl off to Rome. Along the way, they pick up a wise-cracking U.S. Army Corporal Jack Rabinoff (Peter Falk of "Columbo"), and they wheel into Rome like a trio of tourists and spot only one German jeep. Meanwhile, British General Starkey (Patrick Magee of "A Clockwork Orange") wants to launch a small attack, but pusillanimous two-star U.S. General Jack Lesley (Arthur Kennedy of "The Lusty Men") refuses to believe that the Germans would let the Allies catch them with their pants down. Ennis and company return and describe the picnic that driving into Rome was. Meanwhile, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (Wolfgang Preiss of "Raid on Rommel") cannot believe that the Americans have not launched a spearhead off the beach. Instead, General Lesley wants to establish a beachhead.Eventually, Lesley decides to send in an American Ranger battalion led by Colonel Hendricks (Wayne Preston of "The Man on the Spying Trapeze"), but German tanks are waiting for them, trap them in a cross-fire and wipe them out. Ennis, who accompanied Hendricks, survives with several other G.I.s, including Platoon Sergeant Abe Stimmler (Earl Holliman of "Sharkey's Machine"), and Ennis berates General Lesley over the radio for being a "timid" leader. Ennis taunts the bespectacled general with lines like, "He walked them into a park and left them in a graveyard." Naturally, nothing like this would ever have happened in a patriotic World War II era war movie. After they lose radio contact, Ennis, Stimmler, Rabinoff and the survivors spend the rest of the movie wandering around behind German lines. They discover that Kesselring is erecting fortifications at night with Italian citizens at gunpoint to stalemate an American advance. Later, Ennis gains some insight into the battle-hardened Rabinoff one night after they have holed up with three stubborn Italian women in their home. It seems that the irreverent corporal suffers from occasional bouts of belly aches brought on by hand grenade shrapnel left off from a tour of duty in the Pacific. Rabinoff explains that he came back, lied about his age and managed to enlist again because Rabinoff prefers the adrenaline thrill that he derives from these life and death antics. Basically, we have a U.S. soldier who is fighting—by his own admission—not to defend democracy but because he loves to battle. Naturally, Hollywood would never have portrayed an American soldier in such an uncomplimentary light in World War II era movies.Indeed, "Anzio" was lensed in Italy, but the scenery is the only thing authentic about this anemic combat thriller. Dmytryk helms one mildly suspenseful scene where Ennis and company have to pitch big rocks into a plowed up field so they will know where the enemy has planted landmines before a flame-throwing German tank gives them the hot foot. Near the end, Ennis finally picks up a Thompson submachine gun when his men and he are pinned down by German snipers. Ostensibly, other than Field Marshal Kesselring, the Germans are shown in long shot, speaking German, with the exception of one scene where they are seen up close disarming an American G.I. and later killing him because he tries to save a photograph that they have taken out of his wallet and thrown away. The opening titles song is out-of-place and the usually dependable composer Riz Ortolani provides a woebegone orchestral score. Robert Ryan appears briefly at the beginning and reappears at the end during a victory parade as U.S. General Carson. Arthur Franz, who starred in Dmytryk's 'The Sniper," has a cameo as Major General Luke Howard. "Anzio" exposes the folly of the battle and Ennis gets to berate the American general for being timid. Altogether, this Columbia Pictures release is not worth a Purple Heart. Anybody who watches "Anzio" deserves a Purple Heart.

It's always a bad sign when a film's theme tune sounds nothing like the genre it's claiming to be . THE BAT for example features a funky jazz tune and boy was that film a pile of rodent droppings and alarm bells started ringing when the opening credits of ANZIO started where a war weary corespondent played a very possibly drunk Robert Mitchum marched through a military HQ to the sounds of a Frank Sinatra style swing song ! Yeah there's nothing quite like a war film to get you on your feet grooving away , bah bah bah bah bah bah bah ANZIO isn't an awful film but it's far from being a great one either with the script being the major problem . It opens one of those light hearted scenes of with over paid , over sexed and over confident US soldiers that we've seen far too many times before . I guess it's supposed to be amusing but it's not . Eventually the film lives up to its title and shows us what went wrong at the Anzio landings with the American generals Clark and Lucas not driving inland quick enough . This is a fairly good history lesson since it paints a fairly poor picture of American leadership in Italy . Remember in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN , BAND OF BROTHERS and A BRIDGE TOO FAR Monty is painted as possibly the most incompetent allied General of the war ? This was nothing compared to the ridiculous mistakes made by Clark and Lucas during the Italian campaign , though somewhat cowardly this film renames Clark as " Carson " and Lucas as " Lewis " which is a great pity because a history student could do worse than watch this film , though if they did they'd notice like a great number of war films made during this period ( BATTLE OF THE BULGE is a good example ) that both German and American tanks are from a different generation but the Anzio landings here are more accurate than the ones seen in PINK FLOYD THE WALL After this the narrative then sadly settles down into a straightforward war film where the action could basically have taken place anywhere like France or the Phillipines where a bunch of GIs are surrounded by the enemy and have to make it back to enemy lines . As many people have pointed out on these pages the script is rather unfocused and slightly disjointed and I had a gut feeling that some of it ended up on the cutting room floor , for example we see the platoon escape from a house at night and almost immediately after the platoon are trapped by some German snipers in the middle of the day , though to be honest this isn't a movie that is afraid to kill off characters so deserves some credit alongside the historical accuracy