Sam Fuller, the director, could sometimes give interviews that were as interesting as his movies. No baloney, and his cynicism was up front and cheerful. He'd been a Chicago newspaperman, straight out of "The Front Page", and there is a photo of him leaning back in his chair, feet propped on the desk, a cigar in his mouth, his fedora tilted back with a "press" card in its band. A kind of caricature of a hard-boiled reporter, almost a cartoon.
That, for some reason, is how many of his war films strike us today -- as cartoons rather than reality -- and "Fixed Bayonets" isn't an exception. I know the story is from a novel but it might as well have been a comic book with stereotyped soldiers uttering sentences short enough to fit into dialog balloons above their heads. Don't know why. Fuller was in the First Infantry Division during the war, the Big Red One, already in his mid-30s, and he never got over it. Years later, when the war was all over, when Fuller was safely back home, he could tell interviewers that he couldn't even listen to a noise like this (and here, he'd rap his knuckles lightly against a wooden surface) without leaping to his feet. The guy had been through hell. One of his fellow sufferers was nicknamed Griff, and there is a character named "Griff", sometimes unseen, in most of his movies.
"Fixed Bayonets" is the story of a platoon picked to provide a rear guard while the rest of the regiment retreats. Their mission is to engage any communists in pursuit and try to convince them that the entire regiment is present at this last ditch stand.
The central figure is a lowly corporal (Richard Basehart) who is both brave and intelligent but who cannot bring himself to kill another man or to order someone else to do it. Three men are above him in the chain of command. You can guess what happens to them.
There's nothing much to be said about the performances. The lines being so rudimentary, there is hardly any performance to be given. "I'll get you back alive, Sarge." "Hey! Watch it. That's an open wound!" Richard Basehart is at least believable as the unfortunate corporal. He's never been a bravura actor and that slight, stiff reticence is precisely what the part calls for. He seems to be thinking, and thinking doubtful thoughts, while he performs the requisite tasks.
I don't mean to suggest that the film stinks in any way. Fuller may use stereotypes but he uses different stereotypes from the ones we expect. It's an in-your-face report of a handful of men doing a dangerous job requiring skill. No prattling on about why they're fighting. (The enemy are simply "gooks".) And nobody dreamily describes the main street in Basset, Nebraska. Nor does some illiterate from Brooklyn tell the story of the goil me met on the Steeplechase at Cony Island. They're all too busy and too scared for that.
There are a lot of close ups too, of sweaty, smudged, bearded, determined faces. In a way, it's primitive movie-making, in the way that Grandma Moses is a primitive painter.
The most memorable feature of the movie is its set-bound, snow-bound pseudo-location. There is no wind to speak of, and although everyone's feet are in danger of frostbite, nobody's breath steams in the supercold air. And yet the rugged, snowy set is claustrophobic and as effective in invoking an atmosphere as anything short of a "Lawrence of Arabia" epic. On a low budget, this is about the best you can do, and it's pretty good.
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