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I’ve been watching a good ‘old’ movie lately: The Young Lions.
The Young Lions is a movie that follows the seemingly unconnected lives of three ordinary men involved in World War II. It stars Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and…Dean Martin (I guess they thought that between Brando and Clift, there was enough method acting for 10 movies, so Martin was needed for ballast).
Montgomery Clift plays Noah Akerman (my favorite character), an intense yet awkward young man. Noah is Jewish and one of my favorite strands in the movie is his at first tentative but beautiful romance with the very very WASPy Hope. The scene where he goes to meet her father, a Vermont famer who has never even met a Jew before, to ask for his daughter’s hand? Is awesome. Noah joins the military, wanting to fight the Nazis, only to be confronted with antisemitism in the ranks of the very military he serves in. He will not give in and not be bullied, only that very well might result in him dying even before he fights a single Nazi. ( ”Spoiler )
Dean Martin is Michael Whiteacre, a spoiled, womanizing singer, who ends up in the army much despite his will. His main goal is to avoid combat and to spend the war as compfortably as he can. I am not particularly interested in him, so that’s all the summary he gets.
The third story is perhaps the most unusual one, for a Hollywood movie. Marlon Brando plays Christian Diestl, that rarest of creatures, a ‘good German.’ Think Sebastian Koch’s character in “The Black Book.” The apolitical Christian is supportive of Hilter because he believes he will bring prosperity and opportunity to the Germans, and war is a necessary if regrettable side-effect. But serving at the front, his illusions begin to crumble as he gets brutalized by the reality as opposed to the abstrct ideals to which he clings. Brando has a small cart of angst that he uses up entirely by the end of the movie. This being Hollywood, yes, he does get a love story of his own, and this being Brando, no, it doesn’t end well.
Of course, all three stories intersect by the end, some sooner than others.
The Young Lions is a movie that follows the seemingly unconnected lives of three ordinary men involved in World War II. It stars Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and…Dean Martin (I guess they thought that between Brando and Clift, there was enough method acting for 10 movies, so Martin was needed for ballast).
Montgomery Clift plays Noah Akerman (my favorite character), an intense yet awkward young man. Noah is Jewish and one of my favorite strands in the movie is his at first tentative but beautiful romance with the very very WASPy Hope. The scene where he goes to meet her father, a Vermont famer who has never even met a Jew before, to ask for his daughter’s hand? Is awesome. Noah joins the military, wanting to fight the Nazis, only to be confronted with antisemitism in the ranks of the very military he serves in. He will not give in and not be bullied, only that very well might result in him dying even before he fights a single Nazi. ( ”Spoiler )
Dean Martin is Michael Whiteacre, a spoiled, womanizing singer, who ends up in the army much despite his will. His main goal is to avoid combat and to spend the war as compfortably as he can. I am not particularly interested in him, so that’s all the summary he gets.
The third story is perhaps the most unusual one, for a Hollywood movie. Marlon Brando plays Christian Diestl, that rarest of creatures, a ‘good German.’ Think Sebastian Koch’s character in “The Black Book.” The apolitical Christian is supportive of Hilter because he believes he will bring prosperity and opportunity to the Germans, and war is a necessary if regrettable side-effect. But serving at the front, his illusions begin to crumble as he gets brutalized by the reality as opposed to the abstrct ideals to which he clings. Brando has a small cart of angst that he uses up entirely by the end of the movie. This being Hollywood, yes, he does get a love story of his own, and this being Brando, no, it doesn’t end well.
Of course, all three stories intersect by the end, some sooner than others.
