Yanks (1979)

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Just watched this film again for at least the tenth time since it's release and never fail to be impressed by the accuracy of its portrayal of Northern England. In fact this is the England I remember growing up in in the 1960s and it really only started to change around the 1970s when we finally seemed to recover from post war austerity. Shops looked like that when I was a kid in suburbs of Newcastle. Several people mention the power station mistakenly suggesting it was out of place as it was nuclear. Most power stations in the UK are coal powered and still look exactly like this and as the film was made in and around Stalybridge and the pennine towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire it may well have been Stalybridge which was built in 1926 and definitely never a nuclear plant. Lovely film and exactly as wartime was described in countless family discussions with our mams and dads. This was often the only adventure in their lives so it came up over and over again.

I remember being disappointed by "Yanks" when it was first released in 1979. Now I have seen it again nearly 35 years later, and my opinion has not changed.First, the positive news. The staging, editing, and photography are top notch, with a keen eye for period detail. Some of the acting is quite good too, especially Lisa Eichhorn (as Jean Moreton) and Tony Melody (as her dad, Jim Moreton).But the negatives dominate. The script (by Colin Wellan and Walter Bernstein) is inferior in every way, with a predictable story and far too many stereotypes for my liking. Most of the Americans are loudmouthed braggarts, and I was just waiting for the inevitable scenes of racial bigotry that seem to infest all such tales of Yanks in Britain. It should have had no part in this story. Indeed, if the script had stuck to a love triangle among Jean, Matt, and Ken, all would have been much better -- instead of trying to tackle the whole of WWII in a single bite.Dialogue is laughably clichéd throughout, and I cannot understand why Richard Gere is considered to be a capable actor. Neither is William Devane much good here. Score big points for the superiority of British acting over the Americans. Worst of all, and a lethal weakness, I sensed absolutely no chemistry whatsoever between Mr. Gere and Ms. Eichhorn. How anyone could fail to fall madly in love with Lisa Eichhorn, in person or on screen, is beyond me, but Gere somehow managed to do it. What a dud performance. Too bad because his character could have been rather likable. Instead, all he ever talked about was Arizona, and I could not see any reason for Jean to have become interested in him.Don't waste your time on "Yanks" unless you want to enjoy a nice performance by the sweet, lovely Lisa Eichhorn. I wish the movie could have been about Jean and Ken (Derek Thompson). Now, that would have been worth watching -- though of course the title would have to be changed!

Yanks is a "slice of life" movie. I mention this partly as a warning, partly because some people have never heard of this genre. For people looking for action, drama, excitement, look elsewhere. But if you are looking for great, naturalistic acting, Yanks excels. The focus of a slice of life movie is usually the everyday events of people's lives, presented as naturally as possible. And so the acting needs to be as lifelike as possible. In some examples of this genre, such as Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, there is virtually no plot, but great acting. Others, such as Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, show us a side of life, such as the heartwarming events of childhood on a farm. In Yanks, we see the lives of three couples unfold during a lull in the action of World War II, at least for them. Before seeing the film, when I read the capsule description, I had a sense of dread that I was in for some romantic sturm und drang manipulation, and was prepared to turn it off if that were the case. Instead, I saw American men behaving as gentlemen with British women of good morals, though less than perfect due to the abnormal situation of the war. Their good intentions gradual succumb to the unfolding of genuine affection. And then it is time for the men to go to war.Are we yawning yet? This movie is not for everyone, especially for the younger generation weaned on action flicks. However, I suspect it would make a good chick flick, as it has soap opera elements.As I watched Yanks, I couldn't help thinking of Memphis Belle, the story of a bomber crew deployed over Germany during the war. The movie shows the crew being selected for a documentary, and follows them through run after run. What many viewers don't know is that there was a real Memphis Belle that was the subject of a live documentary by the great director Frank Capra. Of course, Capra didn't know how the story would end, whether the crew would live or die. Real life can be pretty dramatic. The problem with the movie Memphis Belle is that the acting was pretty hammy, even though the events and the dialog were generally true to life. So it dropped the ball as a slice of life movie. In Yanks, the acting is exceptional and very natural. William Devane delivered his best performance I've seen. If you watch enough movies, eventually you may forget what really great, natural acting looks like. Yanks is a reminder. But it is short on drama. There is some conflict between the British and Americans, mainly in the form of British resentment due to a variety of reasons. But the movie avoids generalizing or moralizing about who is right or wrong. It could have played up the pat idea that the British were sometimes jealous of the Americans, and yet the young ladies were all too interested in using the GIs to go to America -- but that was not the message. Instead, the movie is about individual romances, attractions not because they were American or British but because they simply liked each other. I can imagine that this is how it really was like during the war for many people. And you don't see the loose sexual morals of today transposed onto the 1940s, and instead see some real restraint, which I suspect was also realistic. So why should you watch this movie? What is interesting is seeing the clash of the two cultures, the British and Americans, played out in the individual relationships, and seeing those relationships unfold. This is primarily a British movie, with a British director, producer, writer, composer, cinematographer, etc., filmed in a British studio by a German production company, CIP Filmproduktion GmbH, with a mostly British cast, and first released in Britain. Yet a French professor posting here dismisses Yanks as a bit of pathetic American propaganda to "erase the humiliation of 1975" when the Vietnam War ended -- a war caused by the French to keep their pre-WWII colony! Why is it so many foreigners assume that movies about America are made at the direction of some secret U.S. government ministry of patriotic propaganda? And that everything in America is one vast nationalistic conspiracy? Is that how it works in France?EXCEPT, YANKS IS NOT AN American MOVIE, DR. IDIOT! The opinions expressed by the British are hardly pro-American. And there are no scenes of battle glory of the Americans (and British) saving Vichy France from Nazi occupation during the invasion of Normandy on D Day, the reason the Yanks were in Britain. Talk about erasing the humiliation of 1945!The weak link in Yanks is the script. While we see the couples behaving romantically, we don't hear much discussion about America versus Britain, and how they would feel about living in one or the other country. Yet they consider marriage without much serious talk. I suppose this can happen with young people, but given the subject of the movie, there should have been more meat to these conversations. I notice this a lot in otherwise good romances these days: they behave romantically, and voilà, they are in love, yet there is no appropriate dialog. Cold Mountain is a good example.You can watch dozens of documentaries about World War II to learn about history, but it helps to supplement them with movies such as Yanks (or Mrs. Miniver) that give you a real feel for daily life during that time. Yanks was made more than 30 years ago, but doesn't feel dated, and I suspect it will be just as interesting to viewers, if not more so, 30 years from now.

In 1942, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were pouring into Great Britain in preparation for the eventual invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. They were young men far from home in a war-ravaged country with some disposable income and not all that much to do until D-Day arrived. Surrounding them was a land full of kids, old men and young women with very few British chaps around. Yanks is a story about the relationships that spawned between those American boys and those British girls that encompassed love, companionship, exploitation and everything in between.When young enlisted men Matt and Danny (Richard Gere and Chick Vennera) roll into England with the U.S. army, it doesn't take them long before they connect with Mollie and Jean (Wendy Morgan and Lisa Eichhorn). But while the cheeky Mollie and the somewhat shy Danny waste no time falling in love, it's a rockier road for Matt and Jean. He's immediately attracted to her, but she has a sort-of-beau named Ken (Derek Thompson) who's serving with the British forces in Malaysia. Ken and Jean are two kids who grew up in a small town with everyone always expecting them to wind up together and it's not easy for her to open her heart to another man, especially an American who wants things his own way.The same hesitation is seen in the relationship between an army captain named John (Williams Devane) and a lady of the manor named Helen (Vanessa Redgrave). Helen's husband is also away at war and her friendship with John has been platonic for a while, but they both know where it's heading. The truth is that everybody knows the American GI's will be romancing and coupling with the local ladies and no one really knows what to do about it except look the other way.These filmmakers do a great job slowly unfolding love affairs, both meaningful and not, amidst a simmering stew of resentment, jealousy and cultural clash. Yanks gently captures the amoral nature of war-time living where people try to maintain some semblance of normality and end up just taking what they need to survive. When looked at coldly, there's something seedy about these arrogant Americans swooping in and taking advantage of British women left alone by the demands of war, yet director John Schlesinger never lets the audience forget that life isn't cold. It's warm and it's now and it wants. Strangers brought together by the most horrible of circumstances are still people who want to be loved and hate to be alone.This film dispenses with a lot of the traditional obstacles that get chucked in the path of lovers. Ken makes only a brief appearance and the disapproval of Jean's parents doesn't seem to keep her and Matt separated for an instant. The story can get away with that because we know where these American boys are going and it isn't back to the States with their British loves in tow. It's to the bloody beaches of Normandy, so neither they nor their new women have much time to waste.With delicate performances and engrossing direction, Yanks is a good movie. It's not for those who flinch at unvarnished romance, but all but the harshest heart will be able to float along with this film's earnest intentions.