The onscreen meeting between Brando and Clift, the two defining actors of their generation, is akin to, for instance, the one of De Niro and Pacino in Heat, down to the frequency both pioneering champions of Method acting were related in people's minds and even mistaken for each other. As for the rest of the film, you can say that, also like with Michael Mann's production, The Young Lions is a most worthy narrative space, one which has a few interesting traits besides its stellar cast.

Director Edward Dmytryk, as efficient as ever in the delivery of a story full of conflict and human struggle --just remember Warlock or Broken Lance, two fine Westerns from the era--, takes a celebrated…

The Young Lions is a solid and absorbing look at the toll war takes on its combatants.

Based on Irwin Shaw's 1948 novel, Edward Dmytryk's adaptation focuses on its three central characters; two American GI's played by Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin, and a Nazi officer, played by Marlon Brando. Where the film differentiates from the novel is the noticeably sympathetic light it places upon Brando's Nazi, Christian Diestl. The novel depicts an increasing dehumanisation of his character as the war progresses, leaving him blind to all but his desire to survive. The film however opts for a different path and explores his commitment to do his duty without question until he realises just what is being asked of him,…

The Young Lions doesn't hold the reputation which several similar World War II films maintain, but it deserves an equally prestigious stature based on how it depicts very relevant yet under-discussed issues. For instance, art and history textbooks alike tend to color the Germans as villainous scoundrels during the war. You'd expect more modern perspectives to shine a light on the fact that numerous Germans had no choice but to comply with the order from their superiors. Given how understated and uncommon words of German empathy are these days, it's bewildering to see an American film from the 50s that sympathize with a conflicted Nazi. The theme of The Young Lions is equality; the Americans are parallel alongside the German…

Film #5 of Smiler Grogan's September 2016 Scavenger Hunt
Task 5/30: A film starring Marlon Brando

"After all the arms and the legs have been blown off it doesn't really matter because nothing really changes."

The Young Lions is one of the first post-Hollywood blacklist revisionist war films - and I'll always be amused about how, like westerns, the "revisionist" label refers to the subgenre that actually doesn't over-romanticize and white wash the era - that takes an unsentimental look at three different soldiers and the way their experiences in war differ.

This is a movie about characters more than anything else, so their journeys are what makes up the story. Marlon Brando plays Christian Diestl, a Germany soldier who…

Well gee whiz, this movie had everything I could have wanted: too-cool-for-war Dean Martin and hot-Nazi Brando. Actually, this was a great movie to compare old and new acting styles against. Brando really stands out as a breath of fresh air in comparison to everybody else in this, which isn't to say everybody else was bad but he just has this great way of getting in small gestures and "um"s and just these little human things that are just fascinating. I mean, the guy is so effortlessly charming and believable that you want him to make it through the movie. To see his arch from "maybe Hitler will be okay" to "you're killing how many people? screw this" felt real,…

Thoroughly entertaining would-be epic has many good moments and performances but seems a little under-plotted in retrospect considering its length and how little actually happens on screen. Apolitical German ski instructor Marlon Brando is oblivious to the evil of his country's regime as he unsuccessfully tries to bed visiting American Barbara Rush in a prewar prelude, then captures a few French soldiers before trying unsuccessfully trying to bed a French widow during the Springtime for Hitler. Marlon recoils from the distasteful duties of occupation and wants to get into the fight so seeing as he is a ski instructor army personnel naturally assign him to the Afrika Korps, where he fights gallantly and dispatches scads of English Tommies (all off…

This should be an easy favorite, but instead it is a big mess all over the map. I have no idea how true this was to the Irwin Shaw novel, but the Shaw/Montgomery Clift Critiques I have read about seem to indicate that the movie may have improved upon the novel in some respects. To whit, the complaint was essentially that the Marlon Brando role was expanded and humanized too much. My guess is that the novel is largely from an American perspective and chauvanistically so. The Brando character was probably structured to show how bad the Germans were and we were to identify with Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin.

The first problem is that Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin…