Battle Circus (1953)

Very Cool!!!

People are voting emotionally.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Battle Circus (1953)An awkward movie with really uneven acting and some routine (or worse) dialog. Even the battle actions scenes, which have along history of success in Hollywood, are sometimes clumsy. You have to accept all this up front to get anywhere further here and appreciate the sincere shreds of insight into a little known aspect of war, and of the Korean War in particular at the time—the mobile hospitals that followed the front line fighting.Of course MASH the movie and then MASH the t.v. show took the idea and made it everyday material (with a not-so-hidden commentary on the Vietnam war). "Battle Circus" is unusual in coming right as the "Korean Conflict" was ending (the war ended in 1953), and a decade before Vietnam grew into an actual war for the U.S. And so it is very interesting—if you are a student of war, and war movies, that is. It's a bit of a slog as a drama, however, even watching the kinds of vehicles in use or the hardships of weather and war. The methods of setting up these hospitals so quickly is quite accurate and the army cooperated with some of the filming.There is also Humphrey Bogart. When an actor reaches his kind of fame, even his lesser movies take on meaning. He has a central role as a leading officer in the group, and of course he has near-misses and a few near-kisses with the women—nurses—who are the center of activities. He's portrayed as a womanizing, practical man, not especially nice but eventually very admirable—like many of his characters, in fact. Some of the scenes are quite serious and strong, taken by themselves. But they get beaten down by the stiff romance that is forced on Bogart and his counterpart, June Allyson. She has to play a naive, smart, well-meaning "girl next door" and while that might be the truth sometimes, it makes for a kind of false set-up, and she's a lightweight presence. So the movie stumbles along in a weird zone. The decision of Altman making MASH to turn it truly comic was essential (the humor here is rare and flat, like falling in the mud). So tune out in the love scenes and get absorbed in the genuine intensity of the best of the staged war scenes and the hospital dynamics. The title, by the way, is suggested very early when Allyson cheerfully says that moving the tents every few days is just like a real circus on the move.

It's amazing that this movie is overlooked as an earlier version of Mash, yeah it's not wild and crazy but all the elements are there: especially the operating room scenes that are gruesome.The film has loose feel and lack of a real plot other than Bogie trying to get into June Allison and everyone trying to cope with the realities of war.Bogie seems out of character as a surgeon that doesn't care about anything but it's worth watching if only to compare it to Mash the movie. One has to wonder if Robert Altman saw this film before he made his version,which he had to, it's about a mobile army surgery unit in the Korean war, and their day to day trials and tribulations.

Maybe if MGM had realized that a generation later, a comedy classic would be launched about a MASH unit in Korea, they might have opted for a more lighthearted treatment of the subject here. One of the other reviewers is of the opinion that Humphrey Bogart is acting like a sexist pig in this film. He certainly is, probably just as much a one as Hawkeye Pierce. The problem here is June Allyson who just ain't no Hotlips Hoolihan. She's terribly miscast here, what was needed was someone who could have fielded Bogey's passes with a smart wisecrack in the right place. Gee, Lauren Bacall would have been good casting here.The supporting cast is pretty good though with Robert Keith as the commander of the MASH unit and Keenan Wynn as the top sergeant in the place. MASH the television series always turned deadly serious in the operating room and the same here. Nice action sequences as well.Philip Ahn has a small bit as a frightened North Korean prisoner who gets a hold of a live grenade in the operating room. Interesting because it's one of the few times that very capable oriental actor actually played a Korean which was his ancestry.Humphrey Bogart just doesn't gel with June Allyson though. She would rather have had Van Johnson and of course Bogey would have had Betty if he had his druthers. So would have I.

"Battle Circus" is another vehicle written and directed by Richard Brooks, with less satisfying results… Very likely the major fault was in teaming Bogart with June Allyson, an actress of extremely limited range whose perpetually simpering attitude and breathy whining of lines must surely have kept Bogart's nerves on edge… The idea of the film was a sound one, a semi-documentary approach at portraying the day-by-day activities of a mobile field hospital behind the front lines during the Korean War… The film fell apart, however, when an almost juvenile love plot interceded… One laughable scene found Allyson disarming a partially crazed prisoner who was threatening to blow everyone up with a hand grenade, thereby proving her courage under fire to a rather uninterested Bogart, who finally falls in love with her