gimlet_eye
This is a pretty good movie, with two first rate actors (Brando and Clift), and if it hadn't been based on a first rate book by best-selling author Irwin Shaw, I'd have rated it a bit higher. I realize that a movie is not a book, but when a book has high merit and a distinctive character, and is then bowdlerized in typical Hollywood fashion, the resulting film cannot just be judged on its own merits.Shaw's book is considered one of the great WW2 novels (though many "elite" critics have characteristically dissed him because his books were popular), but it's more accurate to think of it as a book about anti-Semitism set in the context of America's war with Germany, than as simply a war novel. At the same time, The Young Lions is a long book, indeed, an epic, rich in both incident and observed detail, with many well realized episodes of combat and wartime crime, barbarity, and horror. It's a story of three young men of disparate backgrounds (ironically dubbed "young lions"), two Americans and one German, drawn together by fate, much like the characters in War and Peace, which this book resembles in many ways, though it has more focused themes.All three of these men are in their own way exceptional, and they rather epitomize than typify certain elements of the cultures they represent.The German, Christian Diestl, is meant, both in the book and the movie, to represent the mythic "good German". Diestl is good looking, attractive to women, and athletic (an expert skier and part time ski instructor), and he is reasonably well-mannered, well-educated, and cultured in the Germanic mode, though he is no intellectual. Diestl is also, however, somewhat naively politically active, and is in fact (in the book but not the movie) an avowed Nazi, but only after several years as a communist, and given Hitler's persecution of the communists in the 1930's there's more than a suggestion that Diestl has switched allegiances to survive.The American, Noah Ackerman (played by Montgomery Clift), is the typical, largely assimilated, second generation American Jew—not overtly religious, but introverted, intellectual, and subtly alien. In the book, he is called out to California to attend his dying father, a reprehensible man and a caricature of a refugee Eastern European Jew, for whom Noah feels only revulsion. After his father's death, he removes to NYC and obtains a low-level job there.Finally, the Michael Whitacre character (played by Dean Martin) is a middling journeyman in the artsy NY theatrical business, loosely married to a more successful movie actress, and generally at loose ends in his life, and already tending toward dissolution in his early 30's. He too is attracted to communism, or at least to a die-hard communist whom he meets at a NYC theatrical party, in town to raise money from the feckless show biz set for the Republican cause in Spain for which he fights. Michael's problem is that he has talent but no character, and nothing that he believes in very much, including himself. As a result of his anomie, he is doing what he can to evade the war, and the inevitable duty that he feels as a man and citizen, yet he's not really a coward, any more than the next man of imagination.If these thumbnails already seem a bit different from their opposite numbers in the movie—more complex and problematic—I am here to tell those who haven't read the book that their significant evolutions in the course Shaw's epic, through seven wartime years (horribly telescoped in the movie) are vastly different from the realizations of these characters in this rather routine Hollywood WW2 movie, despite the distinguished acting by Clift and Brando.I've hardly broached the deliberate sanitizing of the book's major theme, anti-Semitism, American as well as German, which is at most hinted at in the movie. For starters, Whitacre's half-hearted show business infatuation with communism, and Diestl's overt Naziism, and earlier communist background have been scrubbed from the movie by its Hollywood creators, who were at the time living through the HUAC and McCarthy era. Also, the overt American anti-Semitism that Noah encounters, the loathsome caricature of his dying Jewish father, etc. have all been meticulously expunged or retouched. I don't remember a single word or phrase suggestive of American anti-Semitism being uttered beyond the one time identification of Noah as a Jew.But the evisceration of one of the book's major themes, pervasive anti-Semitism, isn't the only unforgivable distortion. Shaw's novel has also been largely gutted of its character development. In the book, we have three young men of different backgrounds being sucked into a common war between their countries and cultures, but each is primarily fighting his own personal war: Noah, provoked by discrimination he encounters in the army, is intent on proving that he is a better man and soldier than those of his fellows who despise him as a Jew; Michael, to become a man in the larger senses of the word; and Diestl to measure up to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Hardenburg, a German superman.In the movie, Michael's only issue is to prove that he's not a coward; Noah that he's a regular American guy, despite his somewhat exotic and intellectual bent; and Diestl that he's still a decent person despite the horrors he has experienced as a dutiful German soldier. At the end of the movie, Diestl is ground down by war, but morally he has hardly evolved at all, yet in the book he slowly degenerates into a monster.The book is far darker and disturbing, but also more absorbing and rewarding, than the movie, as one becomes invested in each of these characters, their personal crises, and their ultimate fates, and for those who have a taste for old-fashioned adult fiction on the grand scale, my recommendation is to read the book and skip the movie.
dimplet
The best movies are ones that have a message that cannot be conveyed easily in a few words. Such is The Young Lions. And the core of the message is found in the ending, which I do not want to disclose. But it is a relatively quiet scene that is actually a kick to the solar plexus, intellectually.Yes, Brando delivers the more interesting and even sympathetic performance, once he warms up. But Clift's performance is perhaps finer acting, displaying great emotional vulnerability.The message of this movie was daring for 1958. It treats the enemy - the Germans - with objectivity, compassion and even some sympathy, while being critical of American faults and anti-Semitism. I think it is saying that we are all human, regardless of side, and we are all capable of committing evil acts if put in the wrong situation, up to a point. If your inner character is good and strong, you will not participate, though, as we see with Brando's character, Diestl. This is a message that is as important today as it was half a century ago, if not more so, as we see with atrocities such as those committed by American servicemen in Abu Ghraib prison, acts that we might have seen from Nazis. A key difference is that in America such acts are illegal and punished in courts. Yes, the anti-Semitic root of the harassment of Ackerman in the barracks is implied, rather than spelled out, unlike in the book. Why? Hollywood, which was largely controlled by Jewish moguls at the time, was reluctant to make anti-Semitism an issue, fearing a backlash. (The only movie to tackle anti-Semitism was a Gentleman's Agreement, made in 1947, just before Congressional HUAC hearings on Hollywood, and the blacklisting of writers, actors and directors.) I, for one, being Jewish, don't miss the anti-Semitic expletives. And the movie turns Ackerman into a representative of any American minority in the Army who is harassed but eventually accepted. But what has been largely forgotten is that there once was virulent anti-Semitism in America, and active, organized support for the Nazis in areas such as the Midwest during the 1930s run-up to Pearl Harbor. We're talking pro-Nazi meetings in middle class homes. This is the real subtext of Irwin Shaw's story. However, America was not Nazi Germany, in ideals or actions. And one of the key differences is America's objectivity and ultimate honesty. That is what makes The Young Lions great. I am proud that it treats the Germans objectively. Another movie along these lines is "The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel," made, remarkably, in 1951. What many viewers do not understand is that it was illegal for members of the German military to enlist in the Nazi Party or engage in politics, even during the war. So officers such as Diestl were not Nazis, at least technically. They did swear an oath to support Hitler early on. It was the SS, the Schutzstaffel, a paramilitary organization, that was the arm of the Nazis. Nevertheless, plenty of regular German soldiers engaged in war crimes. But The Young Lions is saying do not judge each soldier or citizen by the acts of the group or nation. It is as wrong to engage in such prejudice toward Germans as it is against Jews or any group or nationality. The German people, to their credit, have largely faced up to the wrongs of WWII objectively. I think the tradition of intellectual honesty at the heart of Germany and Europe helped. The result is the modern world of reconciliation of former European enemies, something that is at least partially absent in Asia.The movie Stalingrad - 1993 is a stunning, raw German mea culpa that provides additional background for understanding movies such as this and Rommel. Watching The Young Lions lacks the drama and intensity found in many war movies. But it is a story that makes you think, and that lingers in your memory long after the movie is through. That is what gives it greatness. It is a movie more people should watch.
