1951 - THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE - interesting Civil War film

 This film is probably known more for the book "Picture," which was an account of the making of The Red Badge of Courage a film which got caught up in power struggles between MGM executives.  The director John Huston who also wrote the screenplay had been a veteran of World War II and had produced some interesting documentaries during that war.  He clearly wanted to articulate his very mixed feelings about war and battle.

Probably MGM was not the place to make this film.  By the early 1950's Hollywood was producing more films with serious content however MGM kind of stayed with the tried and true, pumping out musicals and lightweight entertainments.  Not to say that the other studios didn't generate these kinds of films but MGM was always kind of the glossy never land of films that were big on nostalgia for family values and the American way of life.

A strong director like John Huston was invariably going to clash with this type of corporate mentality.   To make a very long story short.  Huston filmed The Red Badge of Courage  and delivered a two hour cut.  After an apparently disastrous preview, MGM recut the film to it's present length of 69 minutes.  Clearly all the nuance of the story had been taken out and what was left were some very good battle scenes.  The motivations of the central character Henry Fleming who goes from coward to hero was probably left on the cutting room floor.  In the film Fleming runs from battle but then goes back to his regiment for the final fight for no apparent reason.

 

The film certainly had an interesting cast, Audie Murphy was cast as Henry Fleming.  Murphy was known as one of America's most decorated war heros.  He killed a lot of men during the war.  Murphy was one of the earliest victims of PTSD long before anyone knew what it was.  Bill Mauldin as Tom Wilson had been a cartoonist during the war for the Army newspaper " Stars and Stripes."  He had no acting experience but he did a good job playing Fleming's friend.  The rest of the cast was made up of character actors.  

 

What's left of the film is entirely watchable Huston and has cameraman Hal Rossen did an excellent job staging the scenes. The movie itself is hardly the disaster that the resulting extreme edit of the film ended up being as it's final form.