This WWII film, in honor of the "battered bastards of Batogne," the US soldiers who fought and won the Battle of the Bulge, is notable for being one of the first war films to hint at the real horrors of battle. Dozens of war films preceded it, but the ones made during the war had to walk the narrow ledge between showing how bad war could be while stoking patriotic fervor; the rank fear and chaos of battle would likely dampen that fervor, and I'm sure studios, censors, and the government had guidelines of what could and could not be shown. But four years after the end of the war, with another war looming, MGM decided to nudge open the door that later generations of filmmakers would kick off its hinges.

If its structure is familiar to us, it's probably because it's the most effective way of dealing with war. We get a grunt's-eye view of the war, spending the duration of the film with a single squad of the 101st Airborne Divsion. Bickering and teasing each other all the while, they march, dig foxholes, march some more, and wait—mostly wait, with extended periods of downtime that, instead of lulling us, heighten the tension until the expected but still alarming, staccato battle scenes explode. Bodies fall in heaps, and the wounded cry out for their mothers, something that was probably lacking from earlier WWII films. There's no room for personal heroics here, and the flag-waving is kept to one scene that should probably have been excised. This isn't the war of Back to Bataan; it's more the seed of such later films as Saving Private Ryan—not an antiwar film, but one urging caution.

We get to know the soldiers underneath the grime by the limited number of personal traits an ensemble cast allows. Holley (Van Johnson) is a joker who spends much of the first half of the film attempting to eat some eggs he stole from a Belgian damsel; Jarvess (John Hodiak) was a reporter who wrote with such moving patriotism that he believed his own words and joined up; "Pop" (George Murphy) is the guy who gets a hardship discharge but can't leave because his squad is surrounded; Layton (Marshall Thompson) is the scared young kid who becomes hardened by battle; Kipp (Douglas Fowley) lost his teeth and spends the film annoyingly clacking his false teeth, even when asleep (am I a bad person for wishing the Germans would get him first?); Roderigues (Ricardo Montalban) is the Hispanic guy from LA who's never seen snow until the squad gets buried in it; and Kinnie (an Oscar-nominated James Whitmore) is the James Whitmore type character, the likeable, dependable guy who's quick with a joke or to light up your smoke, sort of the poor man's Spencer Tracy. There are others, but I honestly couldn't tell them apart, and I'm guessing that was part of the point.

(If you haven't seen the film, skip this paragraph.) Sometimes the film is too clever for its own good, such as when an individual soldier's small cache of personal characteristics predicts his doom. Was it necessary to have the guy who had never seen snow freeze to death in it, or to have the guy who prides himself on his ability to throw a football get his passing arm half blown off, or to have the guy who always takes his boots off when he goes to sleep, against the advice of his foxhole-mate, get killed reaching for his discarded boots? But at other junctures it avoids this kind of death-by-character-trait: merely pining for home, or being promised a trip out of the war zone, is not enough to call in the fates.

For a war film, there's a surprising amount of downtime; even during action scenes, Oscar-winning cinematographer Paul Vogel's stationary camera emphasizes the sense of waiting for something to happen. The soldiers tell the same jokes, sing the same songs, and have the same arguments they've probably had for as long as they've been together; sometimes the film gets too cutesy with running gags, such as the Southern hick soldier's catch phrases, Holley with his eggs, and Layton's bad luck digging foxholes. All of this manly camaraderie, typical of war films, leads us to expect certain plot developments—heroic rescues, selfless sacrifice, noble last stands—but Battleground subverts most of these, leaving the impression both that screenwriter Robert Pirosh (who won an Oscar for his work here) knew what he was talking about, but also that he was allowed to include things that wouldn't have been possible in earlier films. One of its finest moments occurs when a likeable character has an ambiguous moment when he might be deserting his fellow soldiers during a firefight; Pirosh draws enough attention to it to make us wonder, but doesn't turn it into the focus of the film because similar things probably happened all the time.

Through it all, there's a repeating theme of uncertainty: the soldiers often don't know where they are or what they're doing there; orders come down from on high only to be changed as soon as the company starts to act on them; rumors, propaganda, and week-old newspapers are the only sources of information; that shell rocketing down could be a bomb or a leaflet. Germans are wandering around in the woods dressed as Americans; they have spies to tell them secret American passwords, and they know where the men of the 101st are before the soldiers do. Everything is shrouded by a thick blanket of fog that muffles gunshots and makes planes overhead sound like they could be trucks or tanks (and where was the Best Sound Recording nomination, Mr. Oscar?). This is one of the best WWII films made by people who experienced it, but who had enough hindsight to see through to the essential elements. And 1949 was a good year for that; Twelve O'Clock High, one of the best films to depict the airborne side of things, came out the same year.

Battleground won two Oscars, for Pirosh's Best Writing, Story and Screenplay and for Vogel's Best Cinematography, Black and White. It was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (William A. Wellman), Best Editing, and Best Supporting Actor (James Whitmore).

—October 13, 2006