ZapTown

[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting The Dirty Dozen on Friday, February 5. The show starts at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 for Members and students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on ZapTown:

The Blue Angel
Nashville
Arsenic And Old Lace
Touch of Evil

By the time Robert Aldrich made The Dirty Dozen, he was already very familiar with the war film genre, constructing several war films in the previous decade and leading up to his monumental and shocking creation includes Attack, one of the more powerful war films since All Quiet On The Western Front, and the post-war twist of Ten Seconds To Hell.

Instead of using film as a catalyst to propagate patriotism, as the ‘50s did, or use it as a vehicle for protest and present the realities of war as a catalyst for peace — as the ‘70s did with films like The Deer Hunter or Johnny Got His Gun, Aldrich did a little of both by using the human condition within a war-like environment and exploiting a dire situation to show the true essence of humanity.

In a way, The Dirty Dozen is an anti-war film as much as it is a film about patriotism (again, more so in a personal sense than in a national sense), just not as evident as in Attack. But what is more evident is the sense of nobility — notably defined by the end of the film — that echoes throughout the characters in The Dirty Dozen. With Aldrich’s films, he loved to use situations to bring out the best and the worst in the human condition, as well as show the strengths of people and their ability to overcome horrible experiences and situations.

However, when we speak of nobility and patriotism here, it is a conflictual situation with the audience because with E.M. Nathanson’s book, our heroes of the film are the bad guys in society. The plot of the film is fed by the military’s actions to gather a group of mass murderers, rapists, and various criminal convicts who are given the chance to be brought back into society, rigorously trained, and to undertake a suicide mission that involves infiltrating a chateau and kill important Wehrmact officers as well as anyone else who might get in the way. It’s a win-win situation for those in command. If these hard criminals win, then the military succeeded in their goal. If they die, it is, in turn a service to society as many of the Dozen had a death sentence to begin with. Either die with dignity or die by the rope.

Aldrich liked a good challenge and using unlikely characters and put them in unexpected challenges was a weapon to creating progressive and surprisingly delightful films even for their common dire circumstances and gross realities, something we see in something like Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglorious Basterds. In Flight Of The Phoenix, Aldrich experimented with this technique, using the least definable characters that have to overcome and persevere a crash landing in the Sahara as the film is their fight for survival. In an interview with Chris Petit and Richard Combs, Aldrich admits being a fan of the “unwise martyr” and the attraction that lies in the fact that the world has been peppered with historical martyrs. [1]

This personal struggle in his films leaked into the making of The Dirty Dozen. Script problems and personnel problems, Aldrich was in a constant pre-production fight to see this film off the ground. This degree of dissentient either reflected or molded the sense of anarchy and anger in the film, as Peter Bogdonavich noted all of his films being that in some way or another. [2]

Take The Frisco Kid, a film about the Wild West. Gene Wilder portrays a Polish Rabbi (a symbol of good and morality in society) and put him into situations that would stretch his patience and beliefs. There was always a fine line where this comedy could turn into an angry film at any given moment.

But it’s the overlaying quality of anarchy that bonds these Dozen together. One of the main concerns Aldrich had over The Dirty Dozen was how to not only show the unity and spirit of these misfit soldiers, but also show that they are indeed bad people. By making apparent the corruption of establishment, you begin to feel something for these criminals as through circumstance unify for the common cause. It’s the underdog versus authority factor that turns the enemy into the hero.

In the end, war is still war and that in itself is cause for desperate measures and desperate solutions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have approved of Aldrich’s film as Rousseau observed that “men are crazy, and because to be sane in a world of madmen is in itself a kind of madmen.” [3] Aldrich being overtly aware of all of these factors is what set The Dirty Dozen apart from films of the genre.

[1] and [2] Miller, Eugene L., Jr., and Arnold, Edwin T., Editors, “Robert Aldrich Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, Jackson: 2004).

[3] Adler, Mortimer J. “How To Think About War And Peace” (Simon And Schuster: New York, 1944).

Further Reading:

Nathanson, E.M., “The Dirty Dozen” (Random House: New York, 1965).

Arnold, Edwin T. and Miller, Jr. Eugene L., “The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich” (The University of Tennessee Press: Knoxville, 1986).

Silver, Alain and Ursini, James, “What Ever Happened To Robert Aldrich? His Life And His Films (Limelight Editions: New York, 1995).