'' is a
1967 War Film directed by
Robert Aldrich from the novel by
E.M. Nathanson .
Starring
Lee Marvin ,
Ernest Borgnine ,
Telly Savalas ,
Charles Bronson , and
NFL Hall Of Famer turned actor
Jim Brown , it was a huge
Box Office success for
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , and the year's high-grossing film. It was nominated for four
Oscars , including a
Supporting Actor Nomination for
John Cassavetes , and won
One Oscar For Its Sound Effects . In
2001 , the
American Film Institute included it on its list of
100 Years...100 Thrills .
The movie takes place during
World War II , not long before
D-Day . Twelve
Allied Soldiers , all imprisoned and several facing
Sentences Of Death , are given the chance to go on a very risky mission. If they survive, their sentences will be set aside.
Major John Reisman (Marvin) an outspoken US Army officer, already viewed unfavourably by his superiors, is "volunteered" to take command of the mission, in which his team is to assault and destroy a
Chateau in
Brittany , frequented by
German officers, and kill all officers. The mission is set to take place just prior to the
D-Day Invasion , as the chateau is frequented by German officers on leave from their units.
The soldiers don't take kindly to Reisman's tough training regime, and some try to sabotage it, but eventually they start to work as a team and prove that they're ready for anything. The mission goes ahead, and the chateau is assaulted. Most of the occupants are killed when the building is blown up. Only Reisman, Sergeant Bowren, and one of the Dirty Dozen, Wladislaw (Bronson), survive the mission.
Jim Brown announced his retirement from professional football during the filming of this movie.
For its time, the film was an unconventional and extremely violent depiction of war.
Roger Ebert , in his first year as a movie critic for the ''
Chicago Sun-Times '', was shocked by its violence. He wrote (sarcastically):
:I'm glad the Chicago Police Censor Board forgot about that part of the local censorship law where it says films shall not depict the burning of the human body. If you have to censor, stick to censoring sex, I say. ... But leave in the mutilation, leave in the sadism, and by all means leave in the human beings burning to death. It's not obscene as long as they burn to death with their clothes on.
It may be noted however that, in the same way as graphic sex is omitted but largely implied in the film, the burning of trapped human beings is treated in the same way. While this event is hardly defensible on a moral or ethical basis, it is disputable whether such a sequence was meant to have been read in a laudating first degree. Rather, while the central theme of the film is clearly the overall glorification of the dirty dozen, the hesitation of the soldiers to execute the captives by fire and the directorial and editing choice to include the captive's panic and terror at the thought of their imminent and horrifying fate in the final cut could point to a desire to depict war's atrocities and challenge the good vs. evil cliché popular in such blockbusters.
In the novel ''The Dirty Dozen'', EM Nathanson states that he heard of such units in existence.
Though there are frequent rumors of such units existing nothing has ever been verified. The story may be based on the
Filthy Thirteen a small group of airborn demolision experts whose story was documented by a
book by the same name. Unlike the ''Dirty Dozen'', the Filthy Thirteen was not a unit composed of convicts, though some of this group did have criminal records.
