BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

bkoganbing So Proudly We Hail was Paramount Pictures tribute to the nurses who were tending the casualties at Bataan. The film got four Oscar nominations and great roles for some of Paramout's female stars like Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, and Veronica Lake, all playing nurses and also joined by Barbara Britton, Mary Treen, Dorothy Adams, Ann Doran and so many others.Claudette is in charge of this group which sets out from San Francisco for assignment at Pearl Harbor. But the Japanese attack diverts the ship for the Phillipines where the nurses are rushed into tending the casualties on Bataan and Corregidor.Having gone to the Phillipines as a tourist and having seen both places I thought Paramount did a remarkable job in re-creating both areas. The battle and evacuation scenes were very well done, one of the nominations that So Proudly We Hail got was for Special Effects.Colbert gets herself involved with George Reeves and this was probably his best big screen performance. What an incredible tragedy that he went in the service and could not get his career momentum back as so many others did. Of course we all know he went on to be television's Superman and the tragedy that came out of that.The military's no fraternization policy got a second wink when Goddard gets herself involved with Sonny Tufts in the film that got him his first notice. He plays a former football star from Kansas and appropriately named same in the film with a kind of goofball charm that was his trademark. Now wartime audiences either didn't notice or didn't care, but his New England accent stood out all over for a guy who was supposed to be from Kansas. Tufts was from the old New England WASP family that among other things endowed Tufts University. Why didn't they just call him Boston for the film? The other Oscar nominations that So Proudly We Hail got was for Best Supporting Actress for Paulette Goddard, for Screenplay, and for Original Story. The film has held up remarkably well over the past several generations and it's a great tribute still to our army nurses in any war.

kenjha This WWII film looks at the lives of a group of nurses as they serve from Pearl Harbor to Bataan. Made while the war was still raging, it's understandably patriotic. It offers a rare glimpse at the distaff side on the war front. Colbert is solid as the head nurse. Goddard is wonderful in an Oscar-nominated performance. Although a popular star at the time, Lake has a brief and rather strange role as a disgruntled nurse. Future Superman Reeves plays Colbert's hunky love interest. Coincidently, there's a scene where Goddard is telling kids about Superman. Sandrich, a veteran of Astaire-Rogers musicals, is surprisingly effective in staging the Bataan battle scenes.

ltlacey Let's get the ending of the film over with first. Janet is catatonic because she thinks that John has died. But we really do not know that he has. Now, this, as an ending works fine, as it leaves the viewer wondering as well. I like endings that you just do not know what's what. But it's her reaction when the doctor reads the letter from John, and we do not know when he wrote it, other than he was not at the front and fighting, but sitting in some bar drinking that just ruins this movie. She hears his words, and the doctor's voice becomes John's voice, and she comes out of her trance, so we know that she will be okay" Whether John is alive or not. So we are to assume that she will go straight to the farm and either he is there, or not, but whatever, she will wait for him. My main problem with this movie was the age of the actresses portrayed to play the nurses. Colbert was 40 and Goddard 38, but at least Goddard could pull off being a nurse in her 20s. Colbert, though, looked every one of her years. And what really got me was that Reeves was 11 years younger than Colbert, and looked at least 5 years younger than he was when this film was made. She looked like she could have been his mother in some of those scenes. And then we have all the makeup she wore as well. I know they were trying to make her look younger, but it did not work. And in the middle of a war, there they all are, especially Colbert and Goddard, all dolled up. I had read that the studio was trying to make this movie as believable as possible, and there are some actresses, even now, who refuse to go bare-faced, but come on. Colbert was beautiful and probably could have pulled it off sans all that makeup. Most of the others seemed to do without too much. Overall, a decent representation from a nurse's point of view, but otherwise, not worth the time.

irish23 You pretty much know you're getting an heroic picture about Americans in battle when watching a war movie from 1943, so that helps set the stage up-front. The characters are idealized and thin, though certainly not as much as they could have been, and the pacing and narration don't quite hang together.This picture is best seen as a collection of stories, some of which are so disturbingly human that they must be true. Veronica Lake does an outstanding job in her role, which consists of little dialogue but tremendous meaning. Claudette Colbert is perfect in her role, as are many of the other actors. The two main male lead characters were almost painful to watch, with rotten dialogue and not much acting ability to pull it off. The overall messages of the film are a real eye-opener compared to the propaganda we hear today (2008) regarding America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Themes of compassion, tolerance, and "sentimental virtues" make one realize just how far we've fallen in the last 60 years. As others have commented, it was surprising and at times shocking to see how far the filmmakers went to expose the horrors of war and the many ways people respond to it. It was wonderful to see women of the same rank as men, and being portrayed as competent leaders and essential contributors. Courage and ingenuity shine through in memorable vignettes, reminding us that everyone near a war zone is affected by that war -- whether officially military or not.My only wish is that the overall picture held together better as a whole. It's definitely essential viewing for its historical value, but isn't a classic film on its own.