Whittling away at the twelve: "Sands of Iwo Jima"

Wayne’s Sergeant Stryker: Never felt so good in his life, apparently.

Having been com­pelled by meme to spill on twelve movies that I ought to have seen but haven’t (a meme I was tagged on by bill, but which went back as far as here and here and here—appar­ently I’m not quite as famil­i­ar with all inter­net tra­di­tions as I thought), I am sub­sequently shamed into act­ively seek­ing out and view­ing those movies. About which I will issue pro­gress reports, as it were.

My not hav­ing ever seen the whole of Allan Dwan’s 1949 Sands of Iwo Jima eli­cited the most shocked reac­tions, both in and out of the com­ments sec­tion. “You simply have no excuse, private,” Cadavra’s quip, summed up the con­sensus per­spect­ive. I should like to point out that some­times things are just so in spite of the fact that one has no excuse for them. Part of what makes life inter­est­ing, I’d say. 

One reas­on I did­n’t do too much about catch­ing up with Sands over the years is that the pic­ture’s in the pub­lic domain, so if I were to put some effort into catch­ing up with it I could­n’t be sure as to how present­able a present­a­tion I’d be even­tu­ally watch­ing. The die hav­ing been cast, I bit the bul­let (and, my friends, this is not so much a mixed meta­phor as it is a lin­ear double meta­phor, and that’s my story and I’m stick­ing to it), and got hold of what looked to be the best avail­able disc, a Republic/Lionsgate issue. I would call it indifferent.

Yes, it’s quite a film. Kent Jones points out that “Dwan’s movies are inflec­ted with little grace notes—sudden tiny shifts in speed and per­spect­ive or visu­al design that gives the film a hum­ming beauty.” During a cru­cial battle scene, one Pfc, played by Forrest Tucker, leaves a couple of his bud­dies to seek out ammo, which they’re out of. On the way back he comes upon a couple of oth­er sol­diers who’ve man­aged to brew some cof­fee. Dwan lingers on his inno­cent and hard-earned enjoy­ment of the joe. This pause will have tra­gic con­sequences. But Dwan’s no mor­al­ist. His mis­take will tear this char­ac­ter apart…but we nev­er blame him for mak­ing it. 

In a sense, and des­pite all of the real ten­sion it con­tains, this is one of the more relaxed war movies I’ve seen. The pic­ture has real affec­tion for its char­ac­ters, and enjoys spend­ing time with them. I’m always sur­prised, watch­ing American WWII films, how unsen­ti­ment­al they are. Or rather, how unsen­ti­ment­al they are rel­at­ive to how sen­ti­ment­al they’re per­ceived to be, or painted as. Thus, I was rather sur­prised by a sequence in which John Wayne’s tough-as-nails Sergeant Stryker is shown hav­ing liquored him­self into near-unconsciousness. A con­vin­cing por­tray­al, too,

Okay, elev­en to go…