★ 9 / 10
Battle for Burma. Merrill’s Marauders is directed by
John Chard
Battle for Burma. Merrill’s Marauders is directed by Samuel Fuller, who also co-adapts the screenplay with Milton Sperling from the book, The Marauders…
Battle for Burma.
Merrill’s Marauders is directed by Samuel Fuller, who also co-adapts the screenplay with Milton Sperling from the book, The Marauders, written by Charlton Ogburn Jr. It stars Jeff Chandler, Ty Hardin, Andrew Duggan, Claude Akins, Peter brown, Will Hutchins and John Hoyt. A Cinemascope/Technicolor production with music by Howard Jackson and cinematography by William H. Clothier.
Cracker-jack war movie, packed to the rafters with blood, sweat and tears, and best of all, gritty realism. Story is about the warfare unit led by Frank Merrill (Chandler) during the Burmese campaign in 1944. Their mission was to destroy Japanese bases to avert the Japanese from making their way into India and onto a rendezvous with Hitler’s forces. Their efforts was a success but it came at great cost of lives.
Fuller, an ex-soldier himself, isn’t interested in glorifying war for entertainment purpose, he wants to keep the focus on the men and what the mission does to them, both physically and mentally. The mission was only meant to be a short sharp shocker, but they keep getting “requested” to push on further beyond what was originally required, pushed to their limits by their leader who asked they follow his lead.
In turn the men suffer through lack of food whilst some of them fall to typhus and malaria, inhospitable conditions take their toll, like trekking through miles and miles of swampy terrain, and of course they encounter the enemy on several nerve shredding occasions.
As comrades fall and heart breaking letters are written to families, Fuller peppers the picture with haunting moments. A sweep of the aftermath of a battle finds dead bodies from both sides strewn about the place, the surviving Marauders too exhausted to lift themselves off the soil. A soldier breaking down crying, another willing to carry his donkey’s load so it want be shot for holding up the trek and on it goes, a whole ream of memorable instances designed to give us some idea of what the war is hell statement actually means.
Filmed on location in the Philippines, it seems a little weird to say that the photography is beautiful given that so much emotional hardship and misery is being portrayed, but Clothier really brings everything to life with his superb use of colour, the great lensman the ideal fit for Fuller’s keen eye for lingering details.
Performances are across the board on the good side of good, with Chandler - in what sadly would be his last film before his premature death aged 42 – turning in his best ever work. He puts his all into portraying Merrill, giving him great personality whilst hitting the mark for the various emotional beats required for a leader of men. A leader who himself carries a secret that he doesn’t want his men to know about.
Stock footage usage from another movie and musical lifts from two more, hint at the economical restraints on the production, but neither affects the all round quality of the picture. Free of cliché’s or extraneous pap, this is one excellent – exciting - haunting war movie. 9/10
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★ 7 / 10
Objective: Survival.
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I could never get with Andrew Duggan, the doctor who trudges along with the Army expedition into Burma. He always seemed so actorish, no matter what the part.…
I could never get with Andrew Duggan, the doctor who trudges along with the Army expedition into Burma. He always seemed so actorish, no matter what the part. Ty Hardin looks good, I guess. His features are razor sharp and he has a hefty build but he's not much of a performer. Jeff Chandler, as the real-life General Frank Merrill, who leads the force against the Japanese in 1944, at least had the advantage of steel-gray curly hair, aquiline nose, a deep baritone, big ears, and industrial-strength facial bones going for him.
Director Sam Fuller was in his stride in 1962 and this is a well-done film. A viewer will find it a character study in the context of combat. There are several brisk fire fights that only emphasize the real focus of the movie -- fatigue and illness. It's an unusual story for that reason alone. It's an exhaustion of mind, body, and spirit, and you can almost smell it.
The film is about the war in Burma but it's relatively modern and more realistic than most of the movies made during the war years. An officer belts an enlisted man, for instance. It was shot on location in the Philippines rather than the live-oak covered hills of California. There are no stereotypes -- no wise guy from Brooklyn or braggart from Texas -- just as there were no stereotypes in Errol Flynn's "Objectiv Burma", of which this is a simulacrum. ("Merrill's Marauders" even borrows some of the musical score from the original.) Claude Akins is the tough and uncomplaining top sergeant who keeps the men together, and there is a scene in which the bearded and played out Akins is slumped against a wall after a fierce battle, his eyes closed, almost too fagged out to move. A Burmese child, and then an old lady with a bowl of rice, creep out of the rubble and approach him. He opens his eyes as the wizened woman offers him some rice and then he begins to weep abjectly. It's a touching moment, especially so, coming as it does from the cynical and unsentimental Sam Fuller.
Francis Stahl was the sound man and Ralph Ayres did the effects. They should both be applauded. The fire fights don't sound like any other movie fire fights. The battles sound like strings of firecrackers going off on Chinese New Years. I've never been in combat but those clusters of cracks and pops sound much like rifles did on the firing range.
Fuller could be a headlong and reckless director and he made some clinkers but this isn't one of them. Along with "Pickup on South Street," I'd consider this among his best efforts. For what it's worth, Frank Merrill survived World War II, but just barely.
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