THEY WERE EXPENDABLE (John Ford, Robert Montgomery, 1945)

In the Philippines the attack on Pearl Harbor is announced. Based on John Bulkeley, Naval Lieutenant John Brickley has been promoting the war-readiness of motor torpedo (“PT”) boats, which the U.S. Navy regards as too flimsy for anything other than message delivery. Once the boats start proving themselves, however, their crews are consigned to a no-man’s-land of official concern. These sailors are “expendable.” Sacrifice is war duty’s calling, and the only realistic orientation for sailors and other soldiers is the presumption that they will be killed.
     Based on William L. White’s book, Frank Wead’s script is brilliant; but John Ford’s filmmaking raises the result to an even higher level. Dramatizing elements of the fall of the Philippines while the Second World War was yet in progress, Ford’s They Were Expendable has its rousing, patriotic moments and its poetic, elegiac ones; it is a film of hope and of solemn tribute to lost warriors and those who will be lost. Flanked by The Long Voyage Home (1940) and Mister Roberts (1955), it occupies the middle position in Ford’s seafaring war trilogy. It’s an American masterpiece.
     Hauntingly, Ford and his black-and-white cinematographer, Joseph H. August, create scenes where characters appear as shadows. The lighting achieves a suggestion of humanity drifting into mystery, myth. The scenes of military engagement, despite a necessary reliance on studio back projection interwoven with outdoor shooting, electrify and terrify; they impress upon the viewer the reality of war to a greater degree than any other U.S. nondocumentary does.
     The acting is excellent—with one exception. As Brickley, Robert Montgomery is laconic, compassionate without being sentimental, sly, funny, worn and weary, resolute. In his greatest role he gives the performance of a lifetime.
     To this tremendously moving film “We shall return.”

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THE EYES, THE MOUTH (Marco Bellocchio, 1982)

Giovanni, an actor, has not been successful in life; his identical twin, Pippo, has. But Pippo hasn’t been lucky in love. The bullet hole in his left temple testifies to this; and to what else? There’s a terrible burden in being the family black sheep; is there a subtle burden to bear in being its prince? Giovanni is in Bologna for his brother’s funeral. The family has closed ranks in a kind of play; for Mother’s sake the others hide that Pippo’s death was a suicide, which according to her ardent faith would bar Pippo’s soul from Paradise. Or is Mother herself hiding (perhaps even from herself) that she also is participating in this charade?
     Many consider Gli occhi, la bocca Marco Bellocchio’s lamest piece of work, in part because it uncomfortably plays off his legendary first feature, Fists in the Pocket (1965). The same brilliant actor who played Alessandro, the black sheep of a highly dysfunctional family, now plays Giovanni and Pippo, who also belong(ed) to a highly dysfunctional unit—a reflection of the postwar erosion of the hierarchic, patriarchal Italian family structure; whereas Ale kills off his family, starting with Mother, everyone now is protecting Mother from the truth about Pippo. What strikes most viewers as diciest occurs when Giovanni wanders into a darkened movie theater, and what should be playing? Fists in the Pocket! Color collides with black and white; briefly, there is another, less tender image of Lou Castel with which to contend. Preparing us for this burst of postmodernism have been surreal flashes of Giovanni’s imaginings that interrupt “reality.” Almost inevitably, according to script, Giovanni becomes his twin’s fiancée’s lover.
     This is Bellocchio’s worst film; but it isn’t fraudulent, as some claim. And Castel, of course, is wonderful.

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