Up in Arms for Peace

The Victors. Dismayed by Hollywood's handling of The Bridge on the River Kwai, which he wrote, and The Guns of Navarone, which he wrote and produced, Carl Foreman wrote, produced, and this time directed an epic he calls a "personal statement" about the futility of war. Both victor and vanquished are losers, Foreman says. Then he says it again. His film delivers not one statement but a whole barrage of them, all strung together in newsreel clips and hit-or-miss dramatic vignettes that pound, pound, pound.

The story begins in England, 1942. Two young G.I.s, played by George Hamilton and George Peppard, are members of a U.S. Army squad that Foreman follows to Sicily, to D-day and France, and finally to the Soviet zone of Berlin. In Sicily, Hamilton spurns Betty Grable pinups for shots of Soviet recruits. "I'd like to meet a Russian G.I. sometime, some day," he moons. His odd fixation presages the picture's climax--a senseless knife fight between Hamilton and a Russian soldier (Albert Finney), who slay one another in the ruins of Berlin.

The brutalizing effects of war are thus stated, but they are seldom felt. In a film that asks little of its actors, Hamilton seems the same callow youth from first to last. Vincent Edwards, James Mitchum, Eli Wallach, Peter Fonda and dozens of others pop in and out of the narrative or simply vanish, presumably missing in action. There are no heroes. In one unconvincing scene, a muddled plea for brotherhood, G.I.s gape idly while two Negroes in uniform are beaten up by drawling American soldiers enjoying a "coon hunt." To complete a $50 wager, a couple of the boys gun down a puppy. There are looting episodes too. But when Foreman's lads grow misty-eyed over a music box waltz, they prove they are vandals with heart.

Avoiding battle scenes, Foreman cannily keeps the war warmish in a series of boy-meets-girl episodes that put the Army into the fray with some of Europe's lushest beauties. One soldier corrupts a trim Belgian violinist, Romy Schneider. Vince Edwards meets Rosanna Schiaffino. Eli Wallach, as a tough sergeant, sweats out an air raid abed with Jeanne Moreau. Hamilton pairs off with Elke Sommer, a free-living German girl whose parents approve of her enterprise. Peppard finds respite with Melina Mercouri, a black market wheeler-dealer. None can compare to the girl next door, of course, but war brings all manner of hardship.

Meanwhile, to keep his chronology straight, Foreman inserts newsreel footage from back home: the Rockettes try out an obstacle course; Shirley Temple marries John Agar; Bess Truman launches a flying ambulance. Cutting back to the action makes for a staccato "new cinema" pace--and for irony, tons and tons of it. Foreman likes his irony set to music. While troop trucks slog through snow, he cuts to a slide announcing: THE MANAGEMENT OF THIS THEATER WISHES EVERYBODY A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 1945. EVERYBODY SING! Later, there is mawkish sentiment when some gentle British folk invite Peppard--on crutches--to have tea, then slip him a ten-shilling note, which cues in several bars of There'll Always Be an England.

Occasionally, though, The Victors explores man's inhumanity to man with candor--or perhaps it's just a heartfelt desire to shock. A twelve-year-old homosexual leaves the Germans and offers himself as a G.I. camp follower. A French lieutenant coolly obliterates every sign of life in an enemy pillbox that has already surrendered. Soldiers in transit sing out that old favorite Bless 'Em All, blurrily substituting that four-letter verb common to army camps but not to Hollywood movies.

Shaped by discipline, such boldness might have made a classic indictment of war. Instead, Foreman has spent two and a half years producing a faintly vulgar medley nearly three hours long. Even the film's finest scene is marred by excess: as a pathetically boyish American deserter is led before a firing squad in a vast snowy field, the sound track erupts with Frank Sinatra's dulcet warbling of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, followed by Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. The choice seems arbitrary, a victory cheaply won. Or does an audience really have to be elbowed black and blue to understand that war is a far cry from Christmas?

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