| Bataan | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Tay Garnett |
| Written by | Robert Hardy Andrews Garrett Fort(uncredited) Dudley Nichols(uncredited) |
| Produced by | Irving Starr |
| Starring | Robert Taylor George Murphy Thomas Mitchell Lloyd Nolan Lee Bowman Robert Walker Desi Arnaz |
| Cinematography | Sidney Wagner |
| Edited by | George White |
| Music by | Bronislau Kaper Eric Zeisl |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer;United States Office of War Information |
Release date |
|
Running time | 114 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $958,000[1] |
| Box office | $3,117,000[1] |
Bataan is a 1943 Americanblack-and-whiteWorld War II drama film fromMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer, produced byIrving Starr (withDore Schary as executive producer), and directed byTay Garnett, that starsRobert Taylor,George Murphy,Lloyd Nolan,Thomas Mitchell,Lee Bowman,Desi Arnaz andRobert Walker. It follows the fates of a group of men charged with destroying a bridge during the doomed defense of theBataan Peninsula by American forces in the Philippines against the invading Japanese.
TheUnited States Army is conducting a fighting retreat. A high bridge—a wooden trestle on massive stone pillars—“spans a ravine on theBataan Peninsula. After the Army and some civilians cross, anad hoc group of thirteen hastily assembled soldiers from different units is assigned to blow it up and delay Japanese rebuilding efforts as long as possible. They dig in on a hillside. They succeed in blowing up the bridge, but their commander, Captain Henry Lassiter, is killed by a sniper, leaving Sergeant Dane in charge.
One by one, the defenders are killed, except Ramirez, who succumbs tomalaria. Despite this, the outnumbered soldiers doggedly hold their position. Dane and Todd creep up, undetected, on the bridge the Japanese have partially rebuilt and throw hand grenades, blowing it up. Malloy shoots down an enemy aircraft with hisTommy gun before being killed.
Dane suspects that Todd is a soldier from his past named Danny Burns who was arrested for killing a man in a dispute, but escaped while Dane was guarding him.
Army Air Corps pilot Lieutenant Steve Bentley and his Filipino mechanic, Corporal Juan Katigbak, work frantically to repair aBeechcraft C-43 Traveler aircraft. They succeed, but Katigbak is killed and Bentley is mortally wounded. Bentley has explosives loaded aboard and flies into the bridge's foundation, destroying it for a third time.
The remaining soldiers repel a massive frontal assault, inflicting heavy losses and ultimatelyfighting hand-to-hand. Epps and Feingold are killed, leaving only Dane, Todd, and a wounded Purckett alive. Purckett is shot, while Todd is stabbed through the back by a Japanese soldier who had only feigned being dead. Before he dies, Todd admits to Dane he is Burns.
Now alone, Dane stoically digs his own marked grave beside those of his fallen comrades. The Japanese crawl through the ground fog near his position before opening fire and charging. Dane fires back; when his Tommy gun runs out of ammo, he switches to anM1917 Browning machine gun. He continually fires it directly into the camera lens as the end card reads: “So fought the heroes of Bataan, Their sacrifice made possible our victories in theCoral andBismarck Seas, atMidway, onNew Guinea andGuadalcanal. Their spirit will lead us back to Bataan!”
When the film was released, on June 3, 1943, theAllied offensive in the Pacific was a few months old. It would be a year and a half beforethe Battle to Retake Bataan (January 31 to February 25, 1945).
The film is notable for depicting a racially diverse but integrated and cohesive fighting force (including a black, Asian, Latino, and Irish soldier) at a time when the United States military wasracially segregated. In his autobiography, Schary wrote that he was intentionally trying to break the color barrier in American War films and was specifically criticized by some studio executives for casting an African-American actor (Kenneth Spencer). None the less, he purposely did not tell writer Robert Andrews which character it would be, so as to avoid any racial dialogue.[2] The depiction of racial integration prevented the film's showing in theAmerican South.[3]
Scenes from the 1934RKO filmThe Lost Patrol, directed byJohn Ford, were reused in this production.
The film premièred inNew York City on June 3, 1943.[4]
Bosley Crowther, critic forThe New York Times, described it as "a surprisingly credible conception of what that terrible experience must have been for some of the men who endured it", albeit with "melodramatic flaws and ... some admitted technical mistakes." In the end, "it doesn't insult the honor of dead soldiers".[5] In The Nation in 1943, criticJames Agee wrote: "The people who made this film, I judge, were lucky enough to believe in it so warmly and innocently that the small area they staked out in nature remained at the fertile center of their affection, and their cinematic intelligence and skill—with none left over for self-congratulation from the sidelines—were released entirely to the proper business of embodiment. What they had to embody was as formal and naive as a pulp story."[6]
Writing inThe Nation, film criticManny Farber describesFixed Bayonets as “suspenseful, off-beat, variant of theBill Maudlin cartoon…Funny, morbid, the best war film since Bataan (film) (1943).”[7]Farber adds: “I wouldn’t mind seeing it seven times.”[8]
The film was a hit when first released to theaters; according to MGM records it earned $2,049,000 in the US and Canada and $1,068,000 overseas, resulting in a profit of $1,140,000.[1][9][10]
Bataan was released byWarner Home Video on Jan. 31, 2005 as a Region 1, double-sided DVD set that also contained theRKO Radio Pictures World War IIfeature filmBack to Bataan (1945).
So controversial was this film at the time that Bataan actually had trouble being shown in parts of the Deep South in the 1940s.