1979 - YANKS, disappointing World War II love story

The love story is one of the hardest genres to make a good film out of.  YANKS would appear to have everything going for it.  The film had the then hot actor Richard Gere, Vanessa Redgrave was as usual no slouch in the acting department and John Schlesinger an Englishman of taste would seem the perfect person to direct a story about 1940's England during the war years. 

The film chronicles the romances between three American soldiers during World War II.  Richard Gere is the army cook who falls in love with a local girl who already has a fiance fighting the Germans.  Toothy William Devane get involved with upper class Englishwoman Vanessa Redgrave and Chick Vennera ends up marrying a local British woman. So much for a complicated story line.

An expensive production filmed on location in England.  It has good photography, a large scale cast and impressive production design. If all those things could make a great love story YANKS probably would have been a hit.  As it is the film moves along at a rather slow pace and good if understated acting and direction can't seem to generate any heat to make it a romantic classic,  everything is completely underplayed.

 

The major set piece in the film is a race riot at a dance hall between white and black American soldiers.  While this scene is interesting it  throws the entire picture out of wack.  It's becomes two different films at this point.  In order to teach the white American soldiers a lesson the British women end up dancing with the black soldiers.  However this really doesn't ring true, say what you want but the British are hardly what I would call that open minded when it comes to race relations.

 

YANKS  flopped badly,  John Schlesinger got one more shot at the big time with a dumb comedy called Honky Tonk Freeway which featured a water skiing elephant, another disaster.  That was it for him the A list projects dried up.

The film was written by Colin Welland and Walter Bernstein, the running time is an overlong 141 minutes.