THE STORY OF G.I. JOE

(1945) Drawn from the writings of legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle (here played by Burgess Meredith), the story of an infantry company as it fights its way up the Italian boot. Wellman’s personal favorite of all his films. Mitchum’s only Oscar nomination. Print courtesy Academy Film Archive.
4:10, 8:25

BATTLEGROUND

(1949) As the Nazis attack across the snowfields of Belgium, a squad of the 101st Airborne division — including Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban, and James Whitmore — struggles to hold on. Labor of love for Oscar-winning scripter Robert Pirosh, a Battle of the Bulge vet, with Paul C. Vogel’s camerawork also winning, plus nominations for Wellman and three others.
2:00, 6:15

REVIEWS

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THE STORY OF G.I. JOE
"The greatest of war films ... Final judgment must wait on time, but I feel that Wellman's film deserves to stand beside Three Soldiers, Brady's Civil War photographs, and the pioneer work of Ambrose Bierce and Stephen Crane, as one of the great American documents of war."
– Richard Griffith

“Wellman's personal favorite of all his movies – and probably his greatest film… Few war films before or since have matched the simple eloquence and savage realism of The Story of G. I. Joe.”
– John Andrew Gallagher & Frank Thompson

“Shot almost documentary style, with deliberately sketchy characterisation of individual soldiers (though Mitchum makes a powerful impression), it presents what is very much an infantryman's view of war as a meaningless vista of mud, muddle and fatigue, ending very probably in a wooden cross. Its masterstroke is to use Pyle himself (beautifully played by Meredith) as the omnipresent eyes and ears of the film, struggling to fathom the mystery of the ordinary soldier and to find the words to explain it to the folks back home. His homely dispatches may fringe sentimentality at times, but Wellman's images magnificently capture their compassion for the GI 'who lives so miserably, dies so miserably.’”
– Tom Milne, Time Out (London)

"Firmer about its feeling and its concept than any other Hollywood movie has been about anything in years."
– Manny Farber

“It would be impossible to say enough in praise of the performance of Robert Mitchum as the Captain, or of Wellman for his directing... a tragic and eternal work of art”
– James Agee

"Extraordinarily moving."
– Terrence Raffterty, The New York Times

"Frontline reporting transformed into a narrative that showed the folks back home as much of the truth about the sacrifices their men were making overseas as it dared, with some reassurance that those sacrifices were worthwhile. When used well, the language of classic Hollywood—now and then—has a way of making the awful truth something we can understand, and maybe even bear."
– Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club

BATTLEGROUND
"Effective despite showing relatively little combat. His soldiers march from place to place without knowing exactly where they’re going, or why, and wait, and grumble, and wait some more, but they’re constantly ready, twitchy with anticipation — as men in their dire circumstances ought to be."      
– Terrence Raffterty, The New York Times

“A return to the gritty, grunt’s-eye view of G.I. Joe. Yet in Battleground the tragic absurdity of infantry combat is accentuated by some truly surreal touches; or rather the pretense of verity touches upon the surreal fabric of the whole… Brilliantly meshes stylized longeurs with the wearisome slogging—punctuated by moments of freezing terror—of infantry life, in the depths of a French winter no less.”
– Andrew Tracy, Cinemascope