Tonight on Amazon: A huge, little-known war film from the director of The Bastard 12

Winter 1944, in the Belgian Ardennes. Faced with a massive Allied push, German forces launched a counterattack that was both ferocious and desperate. Directly under their fire, Lieutenant Costa and his platoon suffered heavy casualties twice, for lack of support from Captain Coon, an officer who was cowardly and incompetent.

Fearing his superior’s criminal behavior, Costa vows to pay the price of his men’s blood if he ever abandons them again, embarking on a new mission. Returning alive from the front dangerously behind, he could put his words into action…

We can never say enough about what a great director Robert Aldrich was. Irreplaceable and unclassifiable, radical and visceral, the man nicknamed “Hollywood’s Tara Bulba” was often at odds with the Hollywood studios, who criticized him for excesses and brutality.

A specialist in war films, the most famous of which is undoubtedly The Bastard 12, which was also a huge popular success, he touched virtually every genre. His filmography is full of masterpieces. Thriller (in fourth gear). Several westerns (Vera Cruz, Apache Fury, Bronco Apache…). The horrifying and extraordinary What Happened to Baby Jane? which suggested a confrontation between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. No less successful Hush, hush, dear Charlotte, must we kill and George?…

A tremendous filmmaker who contributes to the lack of means

After first hiring him to make The Big Knife, Aldrich asked Jack Palance again a year later to cast him in the lead role in his film Attack. A true movie face, with a chiseled face, Jack Palance works wonders in this sensational war film that paints a dark picture of the devastating effects of war, the brutality of combat, as well as the incompetence and corruption of high officials. . A tone and message that was not to the taste of the US Department of Defense, which refused to help make the film.

“With a small budget it is difficult without figures and materials” Aldrich commented in a 1956 interview with François Truffaut in Cahiers du cinéma. “The two tanks you saw go out and come back are still in my garage, I had to buy them myself and two motorcycles. I rented two semi-trucks and a Japanese van that I had prepared for an American ambulance. To show all this material at once in just one scene.

Bolstered by his apparent lack of means, Aldrich forgoes color, paring down his plot to get to the essentials: delivering a visceral and highly realistic war film with a fabulous cast, including Eddie Albert and Lee Marvin playing cowardly soldiers.

It’s the exact opposite of what they were during the war, in a real irony. Eddie Albert was involved in the rescue of seventy Marines under enemy fire. Marvin, on the other hand, was seriously injured The terrible battle of Saipan in June-July 1944. A traumatic experience that will haunt the actor for the rest of his life.

Attack!, to watch (or re-watch!) on Prime Video.