From the 1960s: Five Branded Women

1960 War Drama
From Paramount Pictures
Based on novel by Ugo Pirro
Screenplay adapted by Igo Perilli
Directed by Martin Ritt

Starring
Silvana Mangano
Van Heflin
Jeanne Moreau
Vera Miles
Richard Basehart
Barbara Bel Geddes
Alex Nicol
Harry Guardino
Carla Gravina
Steve Forrest

If war movies are different from the usual fare I am known to somehow develop an interest.  I will venture forth and say that a war film starring five women is different.  

Prolific Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis apparently felt the same.  He was looking for three things:  a different type of war story, to secure American backing and therefore turn the film into an Italian-American co-production, and a role for his wife.

The action takes place in WWII Yugoslavia and centers on five peasant women, unknown to one another, who are caught by the partisans and have their hair chopped off because they consorted with one of the studly Nazi officers (Forrest) occupying their town.  One of them actually did not sleep with him but it was felt she compromised herself by being with him otherwise.  After the hair-cropping, they are paraded before their fellow townsfolk to humiliate them then run out of town.  After the partisans got a hold of the officer in question, he was studly no more.

A silly, seductive poster since none of the women appear looking like this in the film

We hear that Jovanka (Mangano) admits to sleeping with him because she was looking for love.  She claims to not hate the Germans but rather war.  Moreau (Ljuba) slept with the German because he threatened to send her brother away somewhere.  Marja (Bel Geddes) admits she wanted to get pregnant while Mira (Gravina) did get pregnant by him and is happy about it.  The only one to not actually sleep with him is Daniza (Miles) and she is the one who is most emotional about her punishment.

Before long they are in the thick of things.  Walking along a rural road, they encounter a squad of Germans driving by them.  A short distance away there is much gunfire and the women observe the Germans being killed by people hidden among the trees.  They quickly discover the group is the same resistant fighters who cut their hair and shamed them.

Heflin is the tough leader and is not amenable to accept the women into his group.  He's not opposed to women in his group since there are some; he resists these particular women.  Eventually his right-hand man (Nicol) and the group's troublemaker (Guardino) help talk him into it.  

The blending of the two groups works out well until one of the women becomes intimate with Guardino while they are on guard duty.  Heflin is furious because their actions allowed German soldiers to make an advance and it was a rule to not get romantically involved.  In the saddest part of the film, both were put before a firing squad. 

A touching sequence involves Moreau and Basehart as a captured German officer.  She is in charge of watching him and their dialogue becomes the heart and soul of the story although things end badly.

There's skirmish after skirmish, all excitingly played out.  It ends as it needs to... Heflin and Mangano perched on the side of a mountain, staying behind as their compatriots run for their lives and a large German army down in the valley on their way up the mountain.  

Moreau & Mangano posing for Life Magazine

It certainly can be a grim film, in black and white, with a few touches of art house.  To the filmmakers' credit they never lost track of the goal, the story they want to tell.  I've always found it to be a very unusual, emotional war film.

Kudos in the acting department go first and foremost to Mrs. De Laurentiis, Silvana Mangano, an actress who fascinated me since my childhood, and to the always reliable Van Heflin.  They worked together two years earlier in Tempest.  Moreau, Basehart and Guardino were also most effective.

While Miles and Gravina (an Italian actress I'd never heard of and have never seen in another film) are fine but not given a lot to do.  Miles does, however, have an especially key scene.  Bel Geddes seems such an odd choice for such a war film especially considering she has the least to do and no major scenes.  She was also the only actress who did not have her hair cut.  She wore a wig because she was immediately going into a Broadway show.  Miles, who did have her hair shorn, wore a wig throughout her next film, a little thriller called Psycho.

In reading an article once on De Laurentiis, it said that he hired Miles and Bel Geddes because he needed them to secure American interest and to obtain American dollars.  (Bel Geddes would assure American dollars?)  But it didn't make comment that all five actors listed above, two playing Germans and three playing Yugoslavs, are Americans.

And how about an American director?  Martin Ritt is a most unusual choice to helm a war film, the only one in his 30-film career.  He never spoke of the film beyond saying that he hated making it.  While he apparently didn't elaborate, it's likely he had problems with his control-freak boss, De Laurentiis, who was even more controlling when a film involved his wife.

Mangano and De Laurentiis at premier of film

Acclaimed Italian cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, who knew his way around war films, was the right man to film this one.  A few of his shots looked like paintings.

This is a gem of a film, largely forgotten by American audiences, which is a shame.  The fact that women dominate the movie lends an air of poignancy not often associated with war films.  It has something to say about patriotism and hypocrisy and is rife with realism.  Yugoslavia would not allow filming so it was shot in Italy and Austria.

Here's a clip:

Next posting:
Visiting film noir with
one of these stars