Au-delà de la gloire (1980)

The story of a sergeant and the inner core members of his unit as they try to serve in and survive World War II.

Director:

Samuel Fuller

Writer:

Samuel Fuller

Stars:

Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine

2 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Lee Marvin	...	The Sergeant
Mark Hamill	...	Pvt. Griff - 1st Squad
Robert Carradine	...	Pvt. Zab - 1st Squad
Bobby Di Cicco	...	Pvt. Vinci - 1st Squad
Kelly Ward	...	Pvt. Johnson - 1st Squad
Stéphane Audran	...	Underground Walloon Fighter at Asylum (as Stephane Audran)
Siegfried Rauch	...	Schroeder - German Sergeant
Serge Marquand	...	Rensonnet
Charles Macaulay	...	General / Captain
Alain Doutey	...	Broban - Vichy Sergeant)
Maurice Marsac	...	Vichy Colonel
Colin Gilbert	...	Dogface POW
Joseph Clark	...	Pvt. Shep - Soldier on Troop Transport
Ken Campbell	...	Pvt. Lemchek - #2 on Bangalore Torpedo
Doug Werner	...	Switolski

Storyline

The story of a hardened army Sergeant and four of his men from their first fight at the Kasserine Pass after the invasion of North Africa through to the invasion of Sicily, D-Day, the Ardennes forest and the liberation of a concentration camp at the end of the war. As the five of them fight - and survive to fight yet again in the next battle - new recruits joining the squad are swatted down by the enemy on a regular basis. The four privates are naturally reluctant to get to know any of the new recruits joining the squad, who become just a series of nameless faces.

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Plot Keywords:

infantry | spanking | sniper | hospital | child with gun | 

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Taglines:

The real glory of war is surviving.

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Genres:

Action | Drama | War

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Certificate:

Tous publics

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English French Italian German

Release Date:

28 May 1980 (France)

Also Known As:

Au-delà de la gloire

Filming Locations:

Israel

Box Office

Budget:

$4,500,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Lorimar Productions, Lorac Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

113 min 162 min (reconstructed)

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital (reconstruction) Dolby (original release)

Color:

Black and White Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This is regarded as Lee Marvin's final war movie, as Les douze salopards 2 (1985) was made for television.

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Goofs

1st Infantry Division on 11th November 1918 held the line along Meuse river, near the town Mouzon (that were the final stages of Meuse-Argonne offensive, and whole war altogether); in the movie, when sergeant and his team approach an ambush by the old cross, we see that this is the spot from the first scene, the last day of the WWI. And on the memorial ("But the names are the same...") it reads "Killed in action - Soissons". Big Red One actually did fight near Soissons, but that was during the so-called Second Battle of the Marne, July to first week of August 1918.

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Quotes

Johnson: [concerning a woman in labor] How do you say "push" in French?
The Sergeant: Poussez.
Johnson: [to woman] Pussy! Pussy! Pussy!

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Connections

Referenced in Hellboy (2004)

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Soundtracks

Nocturne in E Flat Major No. 2
(uncredited)
Music by Frédéric Chopin

User Reviews

Perhaps the last great movie of Lee Marvin...

Some movies are like buried treasure; someone manages to slip them into the theater, practically under every critic's nose, where they either thrive or famish and then vanish into the nearest video catalog. "The Big Red One" is one of those films. For all the hoopla created by "Saving Private Ryan" (another excellent film, which, in my opinion, had a better understanding of it's subject than a lot of it's critics gave it credit for), it owed a great deal to what Sam Fuller did a decade and a half before.

Lee Marvin, an actual WWII veteran himself, holds the film together as the tough but exhausted seargent. When he tells Mark Hamill (yes, Luke Skywalker, folks) that you don't murder animals, you kill them, the look on his face after that seems to say that he wished it could be some other way. It's hard to grab defining moments in this film as stand-out, but the two sequences that stick the most to my mind are the taking of the insane asylum and the horrors of the concentration camp. While other movies have focused on specific campaigns, "The Big Red One" deserves high marks for painting the broad canvass of the Second World War from the perspective of the guys who actually had to do the work.