Major Reisman (played by Lee Marvin): \u201cWell, I can’t think of a better way to fight a war.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Robert Aldrich\u2019s 1967 The Dirty Dozen<\/em> (now streaming on HBO Max<\/a>) is a meathead masterpiece of bare-knuckle brutality, a testosterone touchstone shared by young men and their dads during lazy Sunday afternoon TV viewings for generations. Based on a novel by E.M. Nathanson, it\u2019s a WWII men-on-a-mission movie with a cruel, countercultural kick. Aldrich is said to have intended it as a reaction to the war in Vietnam that by then was really starting to rage, and the film is notably absent any of the usual pieties about God and country or apple pie Americana. It\u2019s a thoroughly rotten picture in the most wonderful ways, with Marvin\u2019s miserable Major assigned a collection of convicts headed for the gallows, their only possibility for reprieve a suicide mission behind enemy lines, to go blow up a French chateau where Nazis like to get their rest and relaxation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what a mangy bunch of thieves, rapists and murderers this is! With John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland and (somehow) Trini Lopez, you\u2019ve got some of the meanest mugs in movies. They\u2019re subject to psychological mind games by Marvin, who has no choice but to try and trick these misfits into working together as a cohesive fighting force. Some critics complain that The Dirty Dozen<\/em> is lopsided in its emphasis on the training camp \u2013 these men don\u2019t even embark on their mission until 105 minutes into the two-and-a-half-hour film \u2013 but such sequences are essential in establishing the soldiers\u2019 slow-forming rapport, watching them unite against a common enemy. First it\u2019s Marvin\u2019s Major Reisman they hate, then the rest of the Army brass. They\u2019ll get around to the Nazis eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a good stretch of its running time, The Dirty Dozen<\/em> is a proto-Stripes<\/em>, WWII variation on the slobs-versus-snobs comedy, with our scrappy hellions humiliating the stuffy soldiers at softie Robert Ryan\u2019s parachute school, ultimately embarrassing the best and brightest during wargame maneuvers at which our guys are naturally adept at cheating. (The slow-dawning, gap-toothed smile on the face of Ernest Borgnine\u2019s General Worden when he figures out their scheme is one of the movie\u2019s most contagious delights.) Cassavetes received an Oscar nomination for the kind of performance in the kind of movie that doesn\u2019t usually get Oscar nominations, but his frustrated felon Victor Franko is such an electrifying anti-establishment figure that the film falters slightly in the second half when Bronson steps up to second lead status. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Aldrich originally wanted John Wayne to play Major Reisman, but the Duke declined because he disapproved of an adulterous affair by the character in an early draft of the script. Wayne would have been all wrong anyway, foursquare and heroic whereas Marvin plays him as a sleepy-eyed sneak \u2013 cool, canny and not entirely trustworthy. He was one of our most malevolent movie stars, only 42 years old at the time of filming, but looking a good two decades older thanks to his premature white hair and the kind of hard living that was the stuff of legend. Wounded at the battle of Saipan –where shrapnel severed his sciatic nerve– Marvin was famously haunted by his tour in the Pacific, bristling at some of the more preposterous action sequences upon which Aldrich insisted. (The actor called the movie \u201ca dummy moneymaker\u201d and much preferred working on Samuel Fuller\u2019s more realistic The Big Red One<\/em>, which he felt better reflected his combat experiences.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jack Palance was supposed to play the bigoted rapist Maggot, but the role went to Savalas when Palance wanted the character\u2019s racism removed. (It\u2019s amusing that he didn\u2019t seem to mind the rape stuff, but I suppose I wouldn\u2019t want to have to call Jim Brown the n-word, either.) Sutherland only had one line of dialogue in the script, but Aldrich took a liking to \u201cthe one with the ears\u201d and kept coming up with more scene-stealing stuff for the unknown Canadian actor to do, impressing producer Ingo Preminger to cast him in a little anti-war comedy 20th<\/sup> Century Fox was putting together called M*A*S*H<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shoot dragged on for months behind schedule– so long that, at the urging of his friend Frank Sinatra, Lopez quit the movie and went back on tour, which is why his character is abruptly and unceremoniously killed offscreen. With football season fast approaching, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell demanded that Brown choose between Hollywood and his team, at which point the superstar running back held a press conference announcing his retirement from the sport. \u201cI never had a better time making a movie,\u201d Brown later said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The set was infamous for all sorts of shenanigans. Lopez recalled arriving one morning to see a limousine pull up with Marvin, Cassavetes and Savalas emerging, still in their tuxedos from the night before. Bronson threatened to kill Marvin more than once, especially on days when his co-star had to be pulled out of a pub and poured into a scene. At one particular cocktail party, a slurring Marvin was said to have lewdly propositioned Sean Connery\u2019s aunt, spared a pasting from the Scottish star only because producer Kenneth Hynan begged, \u201cPlease don\u2019t hit him in the face, Sean! He\u2019s got his close-ups tomorrow!\u201d (\u201cYou fucking producers,\u201d Connery laughed.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s an almost comical level of cruelty and overkill in The Dirty Dozen<\/em>, capped by a notorious finale in which our characters flagrantly commit war crimes, trapping the Nazis and their women in an underground bomb shelter and dousing the air vents with gasoline and grenades. Nearly the entirety of Roger Ebert\u2019s original review \u2013 from his first year as a film critic \u2013 was spent decrying the sick spectacle of these burning bodies, while the New York Times called it “an astonishingly wanton war film” with \u201ca studied indulgence of sadism that is morbid and disgusting beyond words.\u201d Even Charles Bronson said he felt the movie was too violent. And folks, when you\u2019ve lost the star of Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects<\/em>\u2026But this, I contend, is the entire point of The Dirty Dozen<\/em>. It\u2019s a war movie for people disgusted by war, fed up with battlefield myths about valor and noble sacrifice. It\u2019s about cheating and breaking bullshit rules and killing the enemy in cold blood because you can and because you have to. It\u2019s a movie where death is ugly and everywhere and only the meanest, most irredeemable sons of bitches survive, if they\u2019re lucky. I can\u2019t think of a better way to film a war. “The Dirty Dozen” is now streaming on HBO Max<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/dirty-dozen-1024x575.jpg\")
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