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| Lewis Milestone: A Walk in the Sun (US 1945). Richard Conte (soldier Rivera). |
Salerno, ora X / He vaelsivat auringossa / De vandrade i solen (Swedish title in Finland) / Attack i sol (Swedish title in Sweden).
US © 1945 Lewis Milestone Productions [according to the opening credits. But according to the AFI Catalog "the title is not included in the Catalog of Copyright entries"]. Prod.: Lewis Milestone per Lewis Milestone Productions, Superior Pictures, Inc.
Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog.: from the novel of the same name (1944) by Harry Brown. Scen.: Robert Rossen. F.: Russell Harlan – b&w. M.: Duncan Mansfield. Scgf.: Max Bertisch. Mus.: Freddie Rich. Int.: Dana Andrews (sergeant Bill Tyne), Richard Conte (soldier Rivera), George Tyne (soldier Friedman), John Ireland (soldier Windy), Lloyd Bridges (sergeant Ward), Sterling Holloway (McWilliams), Norman Lloyd (Archimbeau), Herbert Rudley (sergeant Porter), Richard Benedict (soldier Tranella).
117 min
US premiere dates: 3 Dec 1945, 25 Dec 1945, 11 Jan 1946 – released by Twentieth Century Fox.
Helsinki premiere: 25 May 1951 – Aloha – Valio-Filmi – 99 min version
35 mm print from UCLA Film & Television Library Archive
By courtesy of Kit Parker
Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.
Introduced by Ehsan Khoshbakht.
Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian at Cinema Jolly, 28 June 2025.
Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "“Just a little walk in the warm Italian sun” provided the basic material for one of Milestone’s greatest films of the 1940s. To be precise, the “walk” in question spans the six miles covered to capture a modest, crumbling farmhouse. During the course of the walk, the implications of heroism, country, responsibility, and camaraderie are redefined."
"After the paranoid and pathetic The Purple Heart (1944), which felt almost like an apology for the Communistic excesses of The North Star, Milestone’s fifth WWII film in a row was his most accurate depiction of military absurdity since All Quiet on the Western Front. The film looks remarkably modern, with its barren landscape so stripped down it feels like watching a Dreyer film. It’s a study of faces and the psychology of characters set against a faceless (but not vilified) enemy. It’s in keeping with Milestone’s method of combining realism and stylisation, the latter so extreme as to strain credibility. The film captures the most agonising aspect of every war: the long stretches of waiting for something to happen."
"Robert Rossen’s script, based on a novel by Harry Brown, includes some of the most consistently memorable dialogue written in American cinema. It stays close to the bone, reflecting the sarcastic cynicism of soldiers under duress, when fear and self-loathing feed into each other."
"It was Milestone who suggested that part of the soldiers’ experience be turned into ballads sung on the soundtrack. “I got the idea from my childhood in Russia. Very often, in the town where I lived, you’d see war veterans on street corners who’d become troubadours.” The communist and soon-to-be-blacklisted Earl Robinson wrote the lyrics, which helped develop both the characters and the plot. Years later, Carl Foreman confessed to Milestone that he had lifted the idea of the ballad for High Noon."
"A trace of A Walk in the Sun can be found in many war films that followed, emphasising the meaninglessness of combat and its unbearable pressures, leaving everyone with some sort of scar. In a way, in an unvarnished war film, everybody dies." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)
AA: Seen in June 2025, Lewis Milestone's A Walk in the Sun appears in the perspective of the 80th Victory in Europe Day / Tag der Befreiung / Jour de la Victoire. We are witnessing the end of Pax Americana, and the end of a period of hope that followed the Fall of the Wall in 1989. Arms race is being relaunched. We will miss the 80 years of peace that we gained thanks to the fighters that took a walk in the sun.
I see for the first time the full version of A Walk in the Sun, which was released in Finland in an abridged 99 min version. I have only seen it once, in November 1970, at a film society screening of the vintage nitrate release print, too long ago to make comparisons, but I guess the full presence of the theme ballad and the concept of the photo album to introduce the fighters of the infantry platoon give an uplift to the movie that remains otherwise so much on grassroots level. In a film like this, each detail matters.
A Walk in the Sun is a classic combat film covering a lethal mission of a platoon. Like Story of G.I. Joe made in that same year by William A. Wellman, it inspired the Finnish writer Väinö Linna in his classic novel The Unknown Soldier which has been filmed thrice with distinction.
Lewis Milestone was a great director of men in war, and after All Quiet on the Western Front this is his second war-themed masterpiece. Authenticism like this soon appeared in Samuel Fuller's cycle of war films, inspired by his own experience.
Made under the full weight of the Production Code, the dialogue has been sanitized to an idealized fantasy of soldier speak. (Milestone would have wanted to make a limited release parallel version with more authentic dialogue). Otherwise A Walk in the Sun has dated well. There is honesty in registering extreme psychological pressure. These soldiers are human beings, not killing machines. Even the best of us can break under the circumstances and under such responsibility. A Walk in the Sun is not a fairy-tale of heroes and villains. It is a film about the true face of war.
The restoration does justice to the extraordinary cinematography by Russell Harlan (Red River, Gun Crazy, Lust for Life, Rio Bravo, To Kill a Mockingbird). Might A Walk in the Sun have been the movie that demonstrated his full greatness for the first time?
Väinö Linna said that he wanted to strip war of all its glory and bestow it on the soldiers. The same could be said about Lewis Milestone's war films.
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