25 Mar A Walk in the Sun
A Walk in the Sun, WWII Movie starring Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, John Ireland and many others …
(1946) During the 1943 Allied invasion of Italy, a platoon of soldiers land on the beach near Salerno, Italy with orders to capture a Nazi-held farmhouse six miles inland. A Walk in the Sun follows the thoughts and conversations of this diverse group men as they journey toward their destination.
The movie is based on the 1944 book of the same name by Harry Brown. Brown had been a writer for Yank, the weekly Army magazine. After the book was made into a movie, the director Lewis Milestone asked Brown to come to Hollywood as a screenwriter.
Lewis Milestone was born Leib Milstein in Russia to a Jewish family. After coming to the US he enlisted in WWI and worked on Army training films. He went on to direct a long list of films in Hollywood and won Oscars for Two Arabian Nights and All Quiet on the Western Front.
What was different about this movie and the reason it may be one of the best WWII movies out there is that it is all about the men, not the action. There really isn’t one main character … the scenes shift back and forth from one conversation to another. We see how they get through the morning (because at 12 noon the story ends) and what they say and think in order to fight back the fear.
Nobody dies.
A Walk in the Sun on amazon.com
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