Kit Parker Films, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, is out this week with a long-lead announcement for January of next year (which is coming up pretty quick … Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and suddenly you are there).
Working with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, a new 4K film restoration of director Lewis Milestone’s 1945 film release of A Walk in the Sun will be heading home as both double-disc Blu-ray and DVD special editions. The street date will be Jan. 18.
Filmed in sunny Southern California, which doubled for Salerno, Italy, we meet the men of the Lee Platoon of the Texas Division of the Fifth Army, who have been assigned the task of capturing a farm house.
Milestone frames this assignment with narration by Burgess Meredith, who efficiently gives us a bit of backstory on each of the main characters during opening credits.
Another element that Milestone used was the music of Millard Lampell (lyrics) and Earl Robinson (composer), with the haunting ballad, “It was Just a Little Walk in the Sun” delivered by William Gillespie. The theme, billed as “The Ballads,” repeats throughout the film and ultimately becomes an integral part of the story itself.
Based on Harry Brown's 1944 novel of the same name, it tells the simple story of a platoon of soldiers who have an assignment. Take a farm house.
The opening sequence was actually shot out of order as Milestone worked closely with the U.S. Army on the production, who requested that the soldiers weren’t just randomly sent out to do an assignment, but that there would have been a detailed briefing beforehand.
Another sequence that was added, which actually turned out to be providential, was the encounter with the German tank and armored car patrol. The Army advisor insisted that the platoon’s bazookas would have been used on the assault of the farm house, but Milestone had already blocked that encounter out and was having nothing to do with it.
Thus, the bazookas and all of their ammunition was expended in taking out the German armored patrol. This proved to be a very effective encounter. The news arrives that the scout patrol, with the bazookas, had been in a pitch battle, but German elements survived and were moving on the platoon’s position. They need to quickly improvise, which results in a well-filmed tracking shot of the platoon members hurling grenades at the armored vehicle. Can they knock it out before they expend all of their explosives!!
During the landing and the immediate aftermath, the officers are eliminated and it falls to the sergeants to carry out the mission. Chief among these is Sgt. Bill Tyne (Dana Andrews), with other key members of the platoon being John Ireland (who is always composing letters in his head to his wife), Richard Conte (who handles the machine gun) and Lloyd Bridges (always thinking about the land, growing things).
There are other bits that Milestone weaves into this day-long saga. Norman Lloyd as Pvt. Archimbeau, who cynically comments from time to time that the war will go on forever … culminating in the battle for Tibet. Sterling Holloway as the platoon’s medic, who gets overly curious as to what is happening on the beach and pays for it.
In short, a perfect cast, a simple story that showcases the “citizen soldier,” the combat G.I. … the result, A Walk in the Sun stands as one of the greatest war films ever made. Easily ranking with Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Samuel Fuller’s Korean War story, The Steel Helmet.
Bonus features include commentary by author and film historian Alan K. Rode (“Charles McGraw: Film Noir Tough Guy,” “Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film,” etc.), the featurette titled “Zanuck Goes to War: The WWII Films of Fox,” director John Huston’s 1945 documentary (uncut) titled The Battle of San Pietro and a collection of Fox Movietone Newreels from the period.
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