The Young Lions (1958)

Based on the best selling novel by Irwin Shaw (RICH MAN, POOR MAN) and adapted by Oscar winning screenwriter Edward Anhalt, this remains an absorbing wartime drama despite its excessive near three hour length. The film opens with a prologue set in 1938 Germany prior to WWII and introduces us to two of the characters, a German ski instructor (Marlon Brando) and an American tourist (Barbara Rush). He's apolitical and she's disturbed by the rise of Nazism. Jump four years later, Brando is in the German army, Rush is in the war department and we meet the rest of our characters. A young Jew (Montgomery Clift), a Broadway star (Dean Martin), a Vermont ingenue (Hope Lange), a politically ambitious Nazi captain (Maximilian Schell) and his glamorous wife (May Britt). For the remainder of the film, their eight lives criss cross as the war rages to its conclusion. Brando is uneven here but when he's on it, he's mesmerizing. Alas, Clift's part and situation are too similar to his Prewitt in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY for comfort. Edward Dmytryk tries to juggle everyone without any blunders and for the most part he succeeds. Also in the cast: Lee Van Cleef, Liliane Montevecchi, Arthur Franz, Vaughn Taylor, Dora Doll and Ann Codee and with a wonderful Oscar nominated score by Hugo Friedhofer. In B&W and CinemaScope.