Between Heaven and Hell

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dauri f 07/31/2023 Great movie. Must see. Lessons of humanity can be applied to any time period. Especially the horror of war, battle fatigue and how we are all akin. See more 04/10/2011 "Between Heaven and Hell" ("Le Temps de la Colère") 1956 (de Richard Fleischer) avec Robert Wagner (couleurs) ... revu dans la nuit du dimanche 10 au lundi 11 avril 2011 (de 00h50 à 2h25) en VO à (C)tats-unienne sous-titrà (C)e en français (sur la chaà (R)ne de tà (C)là (C) publique France 3) dans le cadre de l'à (C)mission "Le Cinà (C)ma de Minuit" (prà (C)sentà (C)e par Patrick Brion) ! See more bill t @Spuzz 11/17/2010 Not very good, and sometimes very boring tale of one man's story of the war, and how he got there. Told partially through flash-back (his whole cotton industrialist past is fully explained, for what reasons heaven only knows) and the reason he was demoted during the war are fully explained before we get to the main part of the story. By the time that starts rolling around though, I didn't really seem to care, as all the flashbacks did was to tell almost a complete story, and the rest of the story it seems, is padding material to get to the 90 minute mark. The acting here is ok, Robert Wagner, never a huge star, just strolls through this one, and is easily overshadowed by one Broderick Crawford, giving all he's got as a captain of a army base full of soldier castouts. That's all I can reccomend for this movie though. See more 08/15/2010 One of the more memorable ww2 movies from the 50`s. Wagner gives a heartfelt performance of a brave but scared soldier. Great direction from Flischer, one of his finest films. See more 01/23/2010 VIOLENT SATURDAY director Richard Fleischer made an explosive, bullet-riddled epic called BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL that combines the plot about clashes between subordinates and their superior officers set against the backdrop of World War II combat in the Pacific with the problem melodrama about Old and New South social consciousness. Robert Wagner starts out as an elitist, bourbon & branch water swilling, Southern cotton gin operator who displays no sympathy for his poor sharecroppers. Before this sturdy 94-minute, Cinemascope movie fades out, the protagonist turns over a new leaf and becomes a more considerate individual who is concerned about the welfare of his workers. The clash between subordinates and superiors in the Fleischer film reached the screen a mere six days before THE DIRTY DOZEN director Robert Aldritch released his cynical wartime thriller ATTACK. BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL came out October 11, 1956, while ATTACK debuted October 17, 1956. Nevertheless, ATTACK ranks as a more compelling outing because the Robert Wagner NCO does not kill the pusillanimous officer, while Lt. Harold Woodruff (William Smithers) in ATTACK kills a cowardly officer. Interestingly enough, Buddy Ebsen appeared in both movies as a G.I. Unlike ATTACK, BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL confronts the issue of inequity between poor whites and affluent whites in the Old South. Actually, ATTACK surpasses BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL, but the latter picture adds weight to the trend in American World War II movies about clashes between commanders and subordinates. Like the Aldritch film, BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL painted an unsavory portrait of life in the military that showed American soldiers with feet of clay that films such as THE NAKED AND THE DEAD, TARAWA BEACHHEAD and THE VICTORS would build on in later years. The Fleischer film opens with two soldiers escorting Private Sam Francis Gifford (Robert Wagner of TITANIC) to see Lieutenant Colonel Miles (Frank Gerstle of D.O.A.) about a disciplinary problem. The military authorities have arrested Sam for attempting to kill a superior officer, Lieutenant Ray Mosby (Tod Andrews of IN HARMS WAY), who ironically was one of his closest drinking buddies before the war broke out. Matters are complicated somewhat because Sam has received a Silver Star for dangling himself off the side of a cliff to sling explosives into a Japanese machine gun emplacement in a cave, a setting that suggests that this exploit occurred on Guadalcanal. Since Sam has won the medal, Miles prefers to send him to serve with George Company rather than imprison him in Leavenworth. The grim dialogue between Sam and the driver of the jeep, Private Willie Crawford (Buddy Ebsen of PARACHUTE BATTALION) suggests that prison would be preferable. Later, Sam meets his superior officer, Captain Waco Grimes, Commanding Officer, who stipulates that nobody can call him by his rank. Waco dreads that a Japanese sniper will kill him, so he insists that nobody refer to him by his rank. Waco keeps two Thompson machine-gun wielding soldiers at his sides at all times, Private. Swanson (Skip Homeier of THE GUNFIGHTER) and Private Millard (Frank Gorshin of “BATMAN), and they wear only t-shirts on this upper chests rather than proper combat fatigues. Waco makes Sam his radio operator and Sam leaves to wander the new camp. He stretches out on the ground after Waco dismisses him and stares into a mud hole. The surface of the mud hole ripples when Sam tosses a pebble in it and the film shifts into flashback mode some 15 minutes into the action to take us back before Pearl Harbor to the South when Sam was a heartless but well-heeled cotton gin operator who had married Jenny (Terry Moore of MIGHTY JOE YOUNG and they were living high off the hog. We learn that Colonel Cousins (Robert Keith of BRANDED), commands the National Guard outfit that Sam belongs to and Cousins organizes it to mobilize overseas. Cousins turns out to be the father of Jenny, the wife of our hero, making Cousins the father-in-law. Before his call to duty after Pearl Harbor, Sam reprimands the laziness of his sharecroppers and treats them like dirt. Sam becomes buddies up with several G.I.s, and they become fast friends, foremost a down-to-earth country boy named Private Crawford. They really bond when Pvt. Bernard Meleski (Harvey Lembeck of STALAG 17) pretends that he is an officer to obtain two case of beer. Lieutenant Mosby sends Sam and his friends in to check out a village. The sight of a snake sends a shiver through Mosby. Caught up short by a case of frayed nerves, Mosby accidentally fires the machine gun after Meleski knocks down a porch awning. The sight of watching Meleski and his friends getting mowed down propels Sam headlong toward Mosby. He clobbers the lieutenant with his rifle butt and ends up behind the stockade. According to the American Film Institute, John Sturges was scheduled to helm it. Guy Madison was up for the Robert Wagner role and Twentieth Century Fox contract actress Joan Collins was considered for the role that Terry Moore inherited. BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL suffers minimally from the usual idiocy that afflicts many Hollywood World War II movies. Specifically, American officers wear their rank on the front of their helmets—rather than the rear--making him easy for vigilant Japanese snipers. Unlike most World War II movies, an officer here who dons his helmet with his rank prominently on show dies from a sharpshooting enemy marksman. Top-notch photography by THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL lenser Leo Tover gives BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL a sprawling, virile look, that belies its actual location at the Twentieth Century-Fox ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains, while DEAD RECKONING composer Hugo Friedhofer received an Academy Award nomination for his orchestral score. Fleischer conjures up commendable suspense and excitement primarily with the standard theme of friendship; soldiers who buddy up suddenly have to confront the loss of their new-found friends. Meanwhile, this above-average combat opus boasts a cast of first-class thespians that includes Broderick Crawford, Buddy Ebsen, Brad Dexter, Ken Clark, Frank Gorshin, Skip Homeier, and Harvey Lembeck. Fleischer and D-DAY, THE SIXTH OF JUNE & A WALK IN THE SUN scenarist Harry Brown, who adapted the 1955 fiction book THE DAY THE CENTURY ENDED by Arkansas-born novelist Francis Gwaltney. Fleischer and company give their military fans more than enough firefights to past muster. Interestingly, Rod Serling tried without success to adapt the Gwaltney novel. Moreover, Gwaltney was a Pacific campaign veteran. See more 10/06/2007 A bit too melodramatic and not very well acted. Broderick Crawford is under-utiailzed. See more Read all reviews

Between Heaven and Hell

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