SPOILER ALERT!
For a film fanatic, the real meaning of Memorial Day on May 31 followed shortly by the anniversary of D-Day on June 6 is that there will be a whole bunch of war movies available for viewing on television. And so it is that I thought it would be fitting to review one or two war movies today. And in that spirit, I thought I would focus on the special treatment of Italians in World War II movies.
Though the Italians were part of the Axis Powers, if you were unaware of this historical fact, you might never suspect they were our enemy from watching the movies. When they are portrayed as the enemy, it is usually in the act of surrendering, happy to become prisoners of war, in some cases enthusiastically greeting an Italian-American who happens to be part of the platoon that has captured them. Interestingly, the Italian-American soldiers typically have the rank of private, almost never that of an officer or even a sergeant. Perhaps that would be pushing it a little too far. On the civilian side, Italian-American gangsters are portrayed as very patriotic, as in The Godfather (1972), where Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is referred to as a war hero.
The first movie for consideration is To Hell and Back (1955), starring Audie Murphy as himself. He was never much of an actor. This is the only movie he starred in that is worth watching and in which he does a decent job of acting, though one suspects that other actors could have done much better. And yet, the movie just would not have been the same without him. The movie is based on his autobiographical book of the same name, presumably ghost written. He tells his story in the first person and in the present tense. Perhaps this was to create a surreal tone, as if in a dream, for we always tell our dreams in the present tense. Also, it was probably told this way to avoid a thrasonical quality as well, for if told in the past tense, it would sound like bragging: “And then I single-handedly charged up the hill and took out two machine-gun nests. They gave me the Medal of Honor for that one.”
In the book, Murphy referred to his “thin frame and cursed baby face,” which made his commanding officer want to keep him away from the front, giving him light duty, but Murphy kept sneaking off with patrols and scouting parties. Eventually, the company commander gave up and put Murphy back in the front lines. Because cinema’s idea of a hero is someone who looks like Rambo, Murphy would never have been cast for this part had the movie been fictional. Even knowing that the movie was based on a true story, the audience might still have been incredulous had a little man with a baby face other than Murphy played the part. But by having Murphy play the part himself, we are forced to accept the fact that the kind of actor who plays the hero in a typical movie and the kind of man who is a real hero can be two very different things. And when we reflect on the fact that Murphy was thirty years old when he made the movie, we realize he must have really looked like a baby when he enlisted at the age of seventeen.
We all know that movies often diverge from the books they are based on, and we usually just assess the movie on its own terms. There is one event described in the book, however, that is worth calling attention to, especially since almost no one has read it. Early in the war, when Murphy’s company is in Sicily, they come across a couple of Italian officers. Murphy describes the way the Italians mount their magnificent white horses and ride away at full gallop. Murphy raises his rifle, fires twice, killing them both. The lieutenant is horrified. He asks Murphy why he did that, saying he should not have shot them. Murphy argues back, telling the lieutenant that that killing the enemy is “our job.” Murphy notes that new men are trained to talk tough and act tough, but it takes a while before they accept the fact that they are supposed to “deal out death,” and that the lieutenant had not yet accepted that fact.
The Italian officers were the first two men Murphy killed, and it is the most unforgettable passage in the book, but there is no mystery as to why it never made its way into the movie. We do not like to see our heroes shoot retreating men in the back in cold blood. In most war movies, bullets are flying back and forth, and so it is kill or be killed. But Murphy’s life was not in danger when he pulled the trigger. Better still, we like it when something happens that makes the war personal. Later in the movie, in the scene where Murphy charges up a hill and takes out two machine-gun nests, what precipitates his heroism is the death of his friend, which makes him angry. But Murphy was not angry when he killed the Italian officers.
There is another reason why that event never made it into the movie. There is an unwritten law that in any movie set during World War II, under no circumstances will an American soldier be seen killing Italians, just as there must be no scene of Italian soldiers killing Americans. Granted, the early surrender of the Italians meant that there were fewer occasions for Americans killing or being killed by Italians than was the case for the Germans and Japanese, but they were not so infrequent that it never happened. However, the Italians did not sneak-attack us at Pearl Harbor, and the Italians did not run camps like Auschwitz. They were a seemingly benign and ineffective nation that never had much of a chance to do anything to us, and so we suppress combat scenes between American and Italian soldiers.
Along these lines, in the typical combat movie made during and after World War II, there is the obligatory ethnic diversity: an Anglo-Saxon officer, a Mexican, a Pole, an Irishman, an American Indian, and an Italian, usually with the rank of private: Objective, Burma! (1945), Miggleori (Anthony Caruso); The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), Pvt. Dondaro (Wally Cassell); Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Pfc. Benny Regazzi (Wally Cassell again); From Here to Eternity (1953), Pvt. Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra); The Longest Day (1962), Pvt. Martini (Sal Mineo); The Big Red One (1980), Pvt. Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco); and last but not least, Pvt. (later Cpl.) Valentino (Paul Picerni) in the movie presently being reviewed. A notable exception regarding this convention of assigning a low rank to Italians, however, is The Naked and the Dead (1958), in which there is a Captain Mantelli (John Beradino). Perhaps the fact that this story is set in the Pacific rather than in Europe made the producers of this film feel comfortable enough to make this Italian an officer.
But I have never seen a German-American or Japanese-American as part of the mix. Though a lot of Japanese-Americans were sent to relocation centers, many still did serve in the American armed forces. But we don’t see them so much in the movies (though reference is made to one having done so in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)). In The Dirty Dozen (1967), it was necessary to have someone in the group that spoke German. But instead of having a German-American fill that role, the needed language skill was given to Joseph Wladislaw (Charles Bronson), who is of Polish extraction. The unremarkable presence of Italian-Americans in combat movies, in contrast to Americans of German or Japanese extraction, is America’s way of saying that the Italians were not evil. They just got fooled by Mussolini.
Even if there is a remake of To Hell and Back, I doubt that Murphy’s killing the Italian officers would be depicted in it either. In fact, such a remake would undoubtedly have a scene showing Murphy suffering from PTSD after the war was over. In the 1950s, we were perfectly comfortable with the idea that soldiers fought World War II with an untroubled conscience. Today, the depiction of a soldier being in perfectly good mental health after the war is over might disturb us, especially after seeing him kill in cold blood.
The second movie in keeping with this theme is Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001), based on an actual incident during the war, when the Italians teamed up with the Greeks to fight against their former allies, the Germans. But that comes later. At the beginning of the movie, the Italian soldiers have occupied a Greek island. They have not seen any real action. In other words, Italians not only do not kill Americans in World War II movies, they practically never kill anybody. The only exception is when they eventually kill some Germans. But, as I said, that comes later. While they are still part of the Axis Powers, these Italians don’t seem to care about the war. They just want to sing opera. Isn’t that nice?
The idea, you see, is that people who love music couldn’t possibly be evil. That is the reason for the emphasis given to the title musical instrument of the title character. It is a naïve sentiment, of course, that anyone who loves music must basically be a good person, but movies often code their characters this way. An exception to this rule is when the music is Wagner. That codes for evil. In Brute Force (1947), an evil warden (Hume Cronyn) plays the overture to “Tannhäuser” while torturing a prisoner. And having the helicopters play “The Ride of the Valkyries” as they attack in Apocalypse Now (1979) makes it clear that the war we fought in Vietnam was an immoral one. On the other hand, Germans in World War II can be shown to be good guys if they don’t care for Wagner. We know we are supposed to like the crew of a German submarine in Das Boot (1981) when they start singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” But I digress.
On account of the Italians’ love of music, the Greeks come to like these Italians as much as we Americans do. Despite the fact that the Italians are still part of the Axis forces at this point in the movie, nobody seems to have a problem with the fact that Palagia (Penélope Cruz) is obviously in love with an Italian officer, Captain Corelli (Nicolas Cage), and even has sex with him; but another girl, who just gives a German officer a friendly kiss on the cheek, is lynched by the Greeks for being a traitor.
The decision by the Italians to fight with the Greeks against the Germans, rather than simply handing over their arms when Mussolini surrenders to the Allies, turns out to be a big mistake, because except for Corelli, they are all slaughtered by the Germans for being traitors. But then, that only makes us like the Italians even more.