Review: The Thin Red Line (1964)

The ambitious 1964 war film, famously remade by Terrence Malick in 1998, has finally been released on DVD. After all these years, is it worth watching?

In 1962, James Jones’ bestselling novel The Thin Red Line came out to glowing reviews. The second in his trilogy of war novels, beginning with ‘From Here To Eternity’ (which was film as well, and remains famous for the beach scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr), it was considered the best war novel ever written. No wonder then, that it was made into a film shortly after its publication. But why do so few of us know of the book’s first film adaptation, a low budget take by director Andrew Marton that has been virtually forgotten in the shadow of Malick’s elegiac modern version?

It’s obscurity is a mystery. Even as a pared down version of a more complex story, ‘A Thin Red Line’ has everything a war  tale requires: an enduring conflict between a young handsome private (Keir Dullea in his third feature film role) and a tough-nut, apparently illogical and irritating sergeant with the American fight at Guadalcanal its setting.

Two things have prevented this film’s automatic inclusion in the pantheon of great war movies: the director was not an A-List name and the lack of money spent on physical production is palpable.

Hungarian Marton is better known as a second unit helmsman for big titles like Ben Hur (1959), Cleopatra (1963) and for the location shots in The Longest Day (1962). However, its main stars are Jack Warden, twice an Oscar nominee, and the strangely named Private Doll, played by Keir Dullea whose career peak was 2001: A Space Odyssey. Marton, who also directed 55 Days in Peking, the rather fun King Solomon’s Mines and latterly TV’s Daktari and Flipper, does well with a visibly limited budget (it’s rather a case of “the money that was not spent on this film is all up there, on the screen”) and acquits himself best in the smaller scenes. Larger, grander set pieces benefit from the solid work of cinematographer Manuel Berenguer, who was also DOP on King of Kings and Krakatoa, East of Java. Oddly enough, the haunting score is top notch: someone hired Oscar-winning British composer Malcolm Arnold to write music you can’t get out of your head.

The Thin Red Line has, in some ways, aged badly. Many of its set pieces – when Pvt Doll steals a gun, for example – seem gawky and stagey. But the film hits hardest when it shows what we all know and want to forget: that war does not make sense and it never ends.

As a war film, The Thin Red Line works on three levels: as a typical war film, with sentiments and scenes that are now stereotypical of the genre; as a post-war paen to the inner man as a real, feeling creature. He may be a warrior, but he feels immense pain, lost and mortal fear. Third, maintains the ability to shock. The scenes of hand-to-hand combat and of the dead with their gaping mouths, the wounded, frightened young soldier doomed to die on the hillside who becomes quiet and almost happy once he’s filled with morphine – all of these are heartbreaking, awful, nightmarish moving images that seem to reach out and grasp your memory.

In all, The Thin Red Line is an ambitious, if uneven film that struggles in the larger scenes, and is blindingly strong on the smaller ones. It is as if a bigger, stronger film wants to climb out of this one – and maybe with a bit more money, it would have. Watch it passively if you will, but look out for its sucker punches. It may be old, but it’s got more chops than most.

R/T: 95mins / Aspect ratio: 2.35:1 / Region: 2 / B&W / Pal / Single Layer / English Language / Mono / Catalogue number: OPTD2054 / Cert: 12 / Price: £15.99