Film Dialogue

SARAH KOZLOFF

A vocal segment of my class on war films wanted me to know that they scorned the week’s assigned film, Battleground, the 1949 movie directed by William Wellman about the Battle of the Bulge, the World War II battle during which the Germans almost succeeded in punching through the Allied lines. I was flummoxed: screening it again had only raised my esteem for its subtleties and intelligence, its bitterness and pride. What could account for the difference in our reactions?

A few questions revealed that the students had not been listening to the dialogue. While I had been following the development of the young, jejune replacement into battle-scarred veteran and the cynical frustration expressed towards the army and home front by men who consistently risked their lives for one another, these students were waiting for all the chatter to stop so they could get to scenes of combat spectacle. And the spectacle in this case is decidedly unfulfilling, since Wellman’s mise-en-scène fluctuates between unconvincing studio sets blanketed in fake snow and blurry, edited-in documentary footage. Until I informed them that the script, written by Robert Pirosh, a master sergeant who fought with the 101^st Airborne at Bastogne, had won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, the students hadn’t paid any real attention to what the soldiers were saying. Thus, they had missed the characters’ development and the script’s intelligent irony.

For example, at the end of Battleground the squad members, having lost half their number, endured days of freezing, starvation, and terror, and yet somehow managed to keep the German offensive from breaking through, are collapsed, exhausted, in the sun in a pile of dirty snow at the side of a muddy road. As in most World War II movies, the different soldiers represent different social types, but instead of crude geographic and racial labels, Pirosh mostly differentiates the men more subtly. Each has displayed his own mixture of faint-heartedness, would-be malingering, crankiness and almost accidental heroism. At the finale, as tanks and reinforcements at last rumble by, joining the fray, ‘Pop’ Stazak, the oldest member of the squad addresses the youngest and greenest, Jim Layton.

POP STAZAK: Hey Daddy, what are them things?

LAYTON: Ah. It’s a new kind of warfare, son. Mechanized, I think they call it. Read about it in the ‘Stars and Stripes’.

POP STAZAK: Well, what will they think of next?

Whereas when Layton first joined the third platoon he was nervous, hesitant and unknown, his relaxed, cynical tone, and the shared upending of age relationships show how accepted and acculturated Layton has become. As the scene progresses, the paratroopers cadge a two-day-old issue of the service newspaper, ‘The Stars and Stripes’.

JARVESS: You’ll be happy to know we’re in Belgium not Luxembourg.

POP STAZAK: Just so we’re going back. That’s all that counts.

HOLLEY: You mean you’re not happy in the service?

POP STAZAK: I didn’t say that. I love it.

KIPP: You found a home in the Army, chum.

LAYTON: Me too! Never had it so good in my life.

Printed text cannot capture the tone of Pop Stazak’s quick, solemn retort, ‘I didn’t say that. I love it.’ On the one hand, such a comment is sheer irony, because all the paratroopers have made it clear that they hate everything about the Army. But on another layer, Pop’s answer carries a deeper truth, a truth that Kipp and Layton immediately jump in to echo, something understated that has to do with brotherhood, loyalty and pride.

This same pride bursts out a few moments later as the platoon is marching away from the battle lines towards respite. As they stumble along, filthy and tattered, wounded and hobbling on frozen feet, they see a fresh platoon approaching. Holley, the smooth operator who almost deserted earlier in the film, reminds his sergeant of their traditional cadence count, a satirical ditty about some home front ‘Jody’ stealing their girlfriend.