A World War II double-bill comes to DVD with the pairing of The Young Lions (1958) and D-Day the Sixth of June (1956). Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions is one of the most thoughtful films about the War. Based on a novel by Irwin Shaw, it tells parallel stories of two American soldiers (Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin) and one German officer (Marlon Brando), whose war experiences we follow until they intersect outside a concentration camp. Martin plays what he calls "a likable coward", Clift is intense as a Jewish GI, and Brando experiments with the limits of his... part as a Nazi re-evaluating his beliefs. Legend has it that Clift accused Brando of bleeding-heart excessiveness. Interestingly, the two Method actors share no scenes together. --Tom Keogh D-Day the Sixth of June is a misleading title for a very tame wartime romance with barely 10 minutes of combat in the last reel. What we mostly get is a year's worth of flashbacks depicting the reluctant, London-based affair of a married US staff officer (Robert Taylor) and a British Red Cross worker (Dana Wynter) whose commando suitor (Richard Todd) is fighting in Africa. To be sure, the emotional desperation and embattled decency of good people in time of war is as worthy of film treatment as any military campaign, and the script works pre-invasion Anglo-American tensions into the story. But the CinemaScope production is utterly formulaic, with leaden direction by Henry Koster. Wynter's porcelain beauty apparently didn't permit changes of expression, and Taylor looks about 15 years past his prime. --Richard T Jameson [show more]
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