The Big Red One
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Griff: I can't murder anybody. |
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The Big Red One (1980) is a classic War Movie directed by Sam Fuller set during World War II and starring Lee Marvin, Robert Carradine and Mark Hamill. It follows a squad of soldiers and their Grizzled Veteran sergeant from the beginning of America's participation in the war in the African and European theater to the end.
Tropes used in The Big Red One include:
- Action Girl / Badass Bystander: Civilian women are shown killing on several occasions; the Sicilian peasants who scythe a wounded German soldier, the Resistance woman cutting throats in the madhouse, and the Belgian innkeeper who shoots dead a German infiltrator.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The unit receives a ton of medals for their thwarting of an ambush and killing a platoon of Germans, but not a word of praise for their delivering a baby just after that battle.
- Author Avatar: Robert Carradine's character Zab is based on Fuller.
- Based on a True Story: The opening credits are "This is fictional life based on factual death."
- Bittersweet Ending: The squad saves the surrendering German, but Zab realizes that so many others had died during the whole damn mess.
- Black Comedy: Whatever humor pops up in the film is countered by the macabre horror of war happening at the same time.
- Topped by the sequence where Sarge's unit is tasked with taking out a heavily-fortified German base... which happens to be an insane asylum. Our heroes work quietly enough into the building, but get caught in a big gunfight in the cafeteria. The mental patients (save one) are too engrossed with their meals to notice all the Germans and Americans dying around them.
- Blood Is Squicker in Water: The D-Day sequence ends with blood washing up on the beach.
- Book Ends: The movie opens - during World War I - and ends - during World War II - with Lee Marvin knifing Germans who both insist their wars are over. They're both right. the squad is able to save the life of the second German in time.
- Break the Cutie: Near the end of the film, Griff discovers a furnace full of burnt human remains at Falkenau concentration camps. While hesitant to shoot people at the beginning of the film, upon discovering a live German soldier hiding in another over, Griff shoots the German dead, and then shoot his corpse repeatedly until he runs out of ammo. Sarge investigates, and upon discovering the situation immediately gives Griff more ammo to continue shooting.
- California Doubling: Most of the film was shot in Israel. Led to a Unfunny Aneurysm Moment for the director when he noticed a large number of film extras take off their German helmets to reveal their Jewish yarmulkes during lunch breaks.
- Handwaved when someone asks what palm trees are doing in a Belgian monastery. Apparently the monk "had a yen for them".
- Child Soldier (deleted scene): A sniper who killed one of the squad turns out to be a member of the Hitler Youth. Everyone votes to shoot the kid, so the Sarge challenges each man individually to do so. When they refuse, the Sarge is shown spanking the kid until he stops shouting "Heil Hitler!" and starts crying for his papa.
- Creator Cameo (deleted scene): Sam Fuller plays a war correspondent.
- Dirty Business: A major theme of the movie is the difference between killing and murder.
- Evil Twin: Schroeder, the German sergeant who keeps popping up on the opposite side of the battlefield from our heroes. He's the German that Sarge stabs on the eve of Germany's surrender.
- Friend to All Children: The Sarge.
- Go Among Mad People: The Resistance woman pretends to be insane so she can move among the German soldiers cutting their throats.
- Subverted by the one asylum resident who picks up a rifle and joins the battle, declaring himself sane in the process.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: Along with Luke Skywalker the other members of the squad include Lewis and a T-Bird.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Alluded to in a fairly literal sense when the soldiers having to set a Bangalore Torpedo(a device filling a similar niche as a Shakespearian petard)complain about the job.
- Home Guard (deleted scene): The Squad find themselves confronted by Volksturm armed with pitchforks and pictures of Adolf Hitler. It looks like a massacre is about to take place, but they quickly surrender when the Sarge fires his gun over their heads.
- Ironic Echo: Several.
- The conversation about killing others between Sarge and Griff are mirrored by a similar conversation between The German Sergeant and his soldier. However, the German Sarge shoots his pacifist soldier for being a coward.
- The squad are told it's bad PR to call down an airstrike on the insane asylum, and Griff says sardonically "Killing sane people is OK?" During the subsequent shootout an inmate picks up a submachine gun and shoots another inmate, declaring gleefully: "I am one of you. I am sane!"
- A deleted scene had Sarge's superior officer from World War I show up as a General by World War II. In Real Life Major General Clarence R. Huebner leading the Big Red One during World War II had served as a Captain in the earlier war.
- Made of Explodium: By design, the Bangalore Torpedo: Basically a pipe bomb attached to the end of a long tube. One character has to assemble one of these while being shot at by the Germans. When he hesitates, Sarge shoots at him to keep him moving.
- A Man Is Not a Virgin: Griff gets some grief among his buddies for being a little too shy around women. Zab spots Griff providing cover for the La Résistance woman during the asylum raid and grins mischievously.
- Moral Myopia: Sarge has no problem killing a German who's trying to surrender, but is shocked to find that the war was over when he did so.
- Not So Different: Lampshaded at the end when it's pointed out the squad have more in common with the German soldier they're carrying to an aid station, than the replacements who were killed before they knew their names.
- Playing Possum: Shroeder's men lie among real corpses around a knocked-out panzer and its dead crew, planning to ambush the main troops once The Squad of Americans have finished their recon. Fortunately Lee Marvin's character notices the mixed uniforms (panzer troops have red piping on their shoulder tabs, but infantry have white).
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Many of the incidents in the film are based on director Samuel Fuller's experiences as a member of the 1st Division during World War II (including the baby being delivered in the tank).
- Was one of the first war movies to not focus on a specific battle or person, detailing instead the drudgery and sudden shocks that happen in every battlefield any Army unit enters.
- Red Shirt: Replacements get killed, but not the 'four horsemen' veterans who've learned to survive on the battlefield.
- Sergeant Rock: "Sarge" played by Lee Marvin.
- Marvin was a Marine in Real Life who served in the Pacific where he was wounded in battle.
- Schizo-Tech: A deleted scene has French Moroccan cavalry fighting Germans armed with machine guns and a tank, in the ruins of an ancient amphitheater.
- Screaming Birth
- Screw the War, We're Partying: The soldiers blow 50,000 Belgian francs (1000 US dollars) on food and girls for a party.
- Spot the Imposter (deleted scene): During the Battle of the Bulge the men are dining at a Belgian inn; the woman who owns it realizes one of them is a German infiltrator from the way he eats.
- Tanks, But No Tanks: Sherman Firefly tanks are painted with iron crosses to somehow turn them into German Panzers.
- The Tape Knew You Would Say That: A German propaganda truck is broadcasting a recording of an Axis Sally-type telling the GI's that their wives back home are shagging other men, etc.
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Sarge: "Knock off the bratwurst, Brunhilde, and sing us a lullaby." |
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- Unfriendly Fire: Sergeant Schroeder gets shot in the back by a Panzer's machine gun in the Kasserine Pass. Earlier he'd gunned down one of his men who refused to continue fighting. Lee Marvin's character is regarded by The Squad as perfectly capable of this, and on Omaha Beach he starts shooting at Griff when he hesitates to run forward with the Bangalore torpedo.
- War Is Hell
- Was It Really Worth It?: A continual theme of the movie, as it highlights the insanity and grotesqueness of war. Of course, then the squad liberates the concentration camp, and it becomes a tentative "Yes".
- World War I: The story actually starts with "Sarge" scouting on Nov 11, 1918, and killing a German soldier after the 11 am official end to the War. It's bookended with the German Sergeant at the end of the movie