In Harm’s Way (1965)

(On Cable TV, September 2022) I thought I had seen most of the big WW2 epics by now, especially those revolving around Pearl Harbor, but In Harm’s Way had somehow slipped past me. There’s no denying its pedigree: Directed by Otto Preminger, featuring no less than Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Henry Fonda and a few other familiar names in smaller roles, it’s clearly made with a good budget and long enough (at 165 minutes) to qualify as an epic, even if the black-and-white cinematography in 1965 makes it one of the last big monochrome films. The tone of the film also feels like one of the last of an era—while it’s considerably more even-handed, realistic and occasionally cynical about military politics than the propaganda films of WW2 or the war-is-an-adventure films of the immediate post-war era, it’s still part of the noble-war zeitgeist that existed between 1954 and 1970. Wayne remains one of my least favourite superstars of the classic Hollywood era, but he’s almost tolerable here—less histrionic than usual (a consequence of serious health issues during the film’s production), in a role that’s not quite so reverential. Preminger does well in orchestrating a big story with a sweeping scale—the battle sequences are fine for a film of its era. (Amusingly enough, though, the stylistic focus of the film is 1940s events with 1960s fashions, creating an almost-parallel reality atmosphere.) Where In Harm’s Way falters, however, is when it’s measured against other films: It particularly goes wanting against the much-superior Tora! Tora! Tora!, made barely five years later. But there’s a sense that Preminger was pushing as hard against the grain as he could in a pre-Vietnam era, and in this light In Harm’s Way is perhaps more interesting both as a demonstration of what a seasoned director could do, but especially as a transitional film in-between the soldier-friendly films of 1945–1965, and the far harsher war films of the post-Vietnam era.