Beach Red
Beach Red is a 1967 World War II film starring Cornel Wilde and Rip Torn. The film depicts a landing by the United States Marine Corps on an unnamed Japanese Army|Japanese]-held Pacific island. The film is based on Peter Bowman's 1945 novella of the same name, which was based on his experiences with the United States Army Corps of Engineers in the Pacific War.
Title
During the Allied amphibious operations in World War II, designated invasion beaches were given a codename by color, such as "Beach Red," "Beach White," "Beach Blue", etc. There was a "Beach Red" on virtually every assaulted island, in accordance with the standard beach designation hierarchy.Plot
The 30-minute opening sequence of the film depicts an opposed beach landing. Its graphic depiction of the violence and savagery of war was echoed years later in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. In one scene during the landing, a Marine is shown with his arm blown off, similar to Thomas C. Lea III's 1944 painting The Price.As Americans are shown consolidating their gains, flashbacks illustrate the lives of American and Japanese combatants. Shifting first-person voice-over in a stream-of-consciousness style is also used to portray numerous characters' thoughts. Like Wilde's previous production of The Naked Prey, the film does not use subtitles for characters speaking Japanese.
The film contains large sections of voice-over narration, often juxtaposed with still photographs of wives, etc.. Many soldiers in the film shed tears, and the narrative displays an unusual amount of sympathy for the enemy.
In one scene, an injured Cliff is lying close to an injured Japanese soldier in a scene paralleling the one from All Quiet [on the Western Front (1930 film)|All Quiet on the Western Front] with Paul Bäumer and Gérard Duval. Just after the two soldiers bond, other Marines appear and kill the Japanese soldier, distressing Cliff.
Director, producer, and co-writer Wilde plays a Marine captain, the company commander. Rip Torn plays his company gunnery sergeant, who utters the film's tagline, "That's what we're here for. To kill. The rest is all crap!"
Cast
- Cornel Wilde - Captain MacDonald
- Rip Torn - Gunnery Sergeant Honeywell
- Burr DeBenning - Egan
- Patrick Wolfe - Cliff
- Jean Wallace - Julie
- Jaime Sánchez - Colombo
- Dale Ishimoto - Captain Tanaka
Production
Beach Red was filmed on location in the Philippines using troops of the Philippine Armed Forces. The sequence of the Japanese dressed in Marine uniforms was inspired by Bowman's book, which mentions Japanese wearing American helmets to infiltrate American lines. There were no incidents in the Pacific where large numbers of Japanese donned American uniforms and attempted to infiltrate a beachhead. The action, though, is similar in some ways to a large-scale Japanese counterattack and banzai charge conducted on July 7, 1944, on Saipan, which was defeated by U.S. Army troops with heavy losses.When seeking assistance from the U.S. Marine Corps, Wilde was told that due to the commitments of the Vietnam War, all the Corps could provide the film was color stock footage taken during the Pacific War. The film provided had deteriorated, so Wilde had to spend a considerable part of the film's budget to restore the film to an acceptable quality in order to blend into the film. The Marine Corps was grateful that their historical film had been restored at no cost to them.
The film's title sequence incorporates various paintings that suddenly segue into the preparations for the landing.