I love this movie so much

Powerful

Good start, but then it gets ruined

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"In Love and War" was one of that group of Hollywood films of the 1950's based on best selling novels about WW2. They were written by men who had experienced the war first hand: "The Young Lions", "Between Heaven and Hell" and "Battle Cry" among others. Being around 10 years of age at the time, they were the kind of movies I couldn't wait to see. However they usually had as much time devoted to the bedroom as to the battlefield - lots of mushy stuff. "In Love and War" wasn't kidding when it put 'Love' first in the title. At the time though, I thought Dana Wynter was about the most beautiful woman in the world - I'm not sure that I still don't.These days I can handle the mushy stuff better and actually appreciate it more than the rather bloodless, unrealistic action scenes that were the norm for those films. "In Love and War" had an overload of beautiful people. Along with Dana Wynter there was Robert Wagner, Jeffery Hunter, Hope Lange, Bradford Dillman, Sheree North and France Nuyen - stunning in her second movie.The story is about three marines from different backgrounds. Their lives reflect different levels of society, but there are problems all around: the spoilt rich girl bored with life (Dana), a bit of interracial tension (France Nuyen) and an evil stepfather for Robert Wagner's character. By 1958, anti-war sentiment was de rigueur - Brad Dillman's character rages against the senselessness of war. Unfortunately the various strands of the story seemed plucked from a file of alphabetically listed stock plots.The island the marines storm is unnamed. The author, Anton Myrer, was wounded serving with the marines on Guam, but the battle here seems to be representative, not specific.Many war films at the time combined documentary footage with the recreations, and it was never seamless. That was the case in this film despite a few gritty scenes. However they pale when compared to the 2010 mini series, "The Pacific"."In Love and War" has one element that pulls the whole thing together, a magnificent score by Hugo Friedhofer. It captures the heroism and tragedy of war, the epic along with the intimate. The score for this film is one of its stars.I can still enjoy this movie even if nostalgia plays a part. As for modern audiences, this is what a big glossy movie of the time looked like with stars who seemed better than life.

Wonderful acting by a superb cast, especially Robert Wagner, in a real breakout performance, as a Marine who comes home on leave to face a demeaning stepfather, abusive to both him, his younger brother and sister and his mother. He never lets her forget what her first husband was like while he totally demeans his eldest stepson.Jeffrey Hunter was also quite good as a guy coming home to wed his got in trouble girlfriend, Hope Lange, in one of her best performances as well to almost rival "Peyton Place." She begs him not to return to conflict in the same manner as Donna Reid pleaded with Montgomery Clift in "From Here to Eternity."Bradford Dillman is the third marine, from a wealthy family, whose father wanted to use his connections to get Dillman out of combat. Dillman must also contend with his fiancé, a very troubled, heavy drinking Dana Wynter, in also one of her finest performances. France Nuyen is the girl he ultimately falls for after a chance meeting in a hotel.The picture is ripe with prejudice, anti-war sentiment and all sorts of social ills brought out very well by this ensemble cast.

Anton Myrer was a very good writer, smooth, palatable. But I'm not sure about Edwar Anhalt's commercially oriented adaptation. Three Marines visit their San Francisco homes in 1944 and face the kinds of familial and romantic problems that were found in "Payton Place" and so many other stories of the 1940s and 50s. Everything is spelled out at once, as in a brief television advertisement. Jeffrey Hunter is an experienced gunnery sergeant. His Greek family loves him but his problem is that his girl friend, Hope Lange, is now preggers. I particularly like Hope Lange. She was pretty in a wholesome, wistful way. I may have patronized her family's restaurant in Greenwich Village in the 50s and she was my costar in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet." Robert Wagner is the cocky young Irish enlistee from the slums, also my costar in the unforgettable mini series whose title I've forgotten. (You ought to see what San Francisco considers a slum; in my neighborhood that would have been in the middle range of the middle class.) His problem is that he drinks too much and his step father constantly insults him. Then there's Bradford Dillman, a native San Franciscan actually, who is the well-educated rich kid engaged to the willful drunk, the self-described "rich tramp", Dana Wynters. He's also got a thing going with the very attractive France Nuyen but that's headed nowhere, this being the 1940 and Nuyen being a person of color, even though it's a very attractive color. I sobbed like a child through all this exposition.Next, the three men wind up in the same hotel. Hunter takes his new wife to the honeymoon suite and as the lights go out and they embrace, she whispers, "This is the first time. The baby came from the first time." (I'd always thought you were entitled to only one first time.) Meanwhile Robert Wagner is courting his old girl friend, Sheree North, who has become a WAVE in his absence. A third-class yeoman, she outranks him but this doesn't bother either of them. Wagner gets loud and drunk, as expected, and when he starts a fight or passes out we're expected to be amused. In Hawaii, Dillman also gets a thing going with the very attractive France Nuyen but that's headed nowhere, this being the 1940s and Nuyen being a person of color, even though it's a very attractive color. Dillman, by the way, is an interesting actor: prep school, Yale, the Marine Corps. And when he speaks, the intonations conjure up the ghost of Charlton Heston. The men remain as before: one grown-up Greek; one boisterous Irish drunk; one polite but confused aristocrat. All of this trite exploration of characters and their conundrums, accompanied by a lush, fulsome romantic theme, takes up the entire first half of the movie. They all argue passionately about one thing or another, until the viewer gets the impression that the battlefield might be a relief. All the girls yield. All the men score. And, yes, I was racked by tears throughout.Finally the men depart for landings in the Pacific. "God. Damn war," says France Nuyen as they sail. "God" and "damn" are two separate words. I don't think "God damned" was quite acceptable at the time. As the landing craft approach the erupting beach of an unnamed island, we meet Mort Sahl, a now mostly forgotten comic of the 50s, who at least introduces some necessary humor. Reading from one of those "Know Your Enemy" books, he announces, "Remember, if you are captured give them nothing but your name, rank, and the exact position of your unit. What would they want with your serial number?" There follows some combat footage and some reasonably well-done enactments. The cocky Irish kid is humbled by a fit of cowardice. Dillman breaks down with dengue fever. Hunter is already suffering from malaria.But enough about the Marines and their tsuris. The film, as if undergoing withdrawal, twitches and flips in spasmodic fits back to pointless scenes of the girls in San Francisco. You will not be surprised that Hunter's wife, Hope Lange, meets her husband's Greek family for the first time, and she and the baby are greeted with ebullience. Nor will you be surprised to learn that Dana Wynter, the "rich tramp," has slit her wrists and wound up in the hospital where she is treated by -- get this -- France Nuyen, her ex boyfriend's new girl friend, who happens to be a nurse. Dana Wynter wakes up in a state of anguish and full make up and begins babbling to Nuyen, who is a complete stranger to her. "I didn't mean to do it. I need HELP!" She expires with a piercing shriek. Nuyen is compelled to look away sadly, but surely she, a grown woman, must realize that with the departure of Wynter, there is no one else left for Dillman, the very wealthy aristocrat, to come home to. She wastes no time before visiting Dillman's rich family, the family with the butler. By this time the tears had stopped and I was dissolved in laughter.The battle is well-done and the final scenes of the returning men are moving, but what can redeem that soap opera? Dynasties rose and fell, geological epochs came and went, while we watched young men and women wrestle with emotional problems so familiar and predictable that they might have come directly from Screen writing For Dummies. I'm sure that Myrer's novel was better.

Anton Myrer's novel, "The Big War," was published in 1957 with some degree of success and, not surprisingly, 20th Century-Fox bought the film rights. After all, World War II movies were a staple of this time and Myrer's novel provided a number of parts for those rising young performers then being groomed by 20th. The novel's three central Marine characters remained in Edward Anhalt's screenplay but their backgrounds were simplified, various supporting characters were eliminated, and the background for the domestic scenes shifted from the East Coast to California. Robert Wagner's back-story remains truest to the book. He has a doting mother and adoring younger siblings but fights with his hateful step-father. Bradford Dillman plays the rich, college-educated Marine and the movie sketches in his background but now gives him a drunken socialite of a fiancée, Dana Wynter, who's largely a screenwriter's invention. (His new girlfriend, France Nuyen, seems to have been inspired by another, unrelated character in the book.) Dillman's fate has also been re-written from Myrer's version. Jeffrey Hunter plays the conscientious Marine with the pregnant wife but his strained relationship with his mother-in-law goes unmentioned in the movie. (He does, however, get a bare-chest scene.) The second half of the movie shifts from homefront scenes in California to battle scenes in the Pacific. These scenes are done in a perfunctory style -- laced with occasional footage from actual World War II photographers -- and the actors' identities sometimes blur in those similar uniforms and under those metallic helmets. The result of all this is a glossy, mildly entertaining, but unmemorable movie which never rises above the "B" level of its "B" level performers. (Acting honors, such as they are, go to Sheree North as a practical-minded WAC.)