"To Hell And Back" is based on the autobiography of Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of the second world war, with Murphy playing himself. The film begins by establishing Murphy's humble beginnings as the eldest of several children abandoned by their father in rural north-eastern Texas. After their mother dies, Audie's siblings are put into an orphanage, and he joins the armed forces. After being turned down by the Marine Corps and the Navy, he joins the Army and soon arrives up in North Africa as a replacement with B (Baker) Company, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. (Given how susceptible Murphy is to sea-sickness, it was probably for the best that the more nautical services rejected him.) He is too late to see action in Africa, but he gets plenty as the division proceeds to fight its way through Sicily, the Salerno and Anzio bridgeheads in Sicily, lands in southern France and fights its way up to the German border. Along the way, Murphy rises through the ranks from private to lieutenant and is leading B Company before his military career is cut short by a piece of shrapnel just a few months before VE-Day. A number of episodes also touch on his background, such as when discovers that one of his squadmates abandoned his wife and child, much like Murphy's dad, and when he meets an Italian family where the father similarly disappeared.
It's a spectacular story (I should note I read the book before seeing the movie), and the film's main failing is that it really doesn't do the story justice. The combat scenes are too few and too sparse, given all Murphy went through, but the real problem is that Universal was too stingy with funds for extras and locations. The action takes place in the Mediterranean and France, in a variety of terrain and seasons, but none of the locations look like Europe; there's not a paved road, village or church steeple in sight, and the vegetation screams western United States. I would guess that the combat sequences were all filmed on the training grounds of the Fort Lewis Military Reservation (just up the road from where I live in Washington state) in the space of a couple of weeks in late spring/early summer. All the sequences of naval vessels, amphibious landings and aircraft are all plainly stock footage. Naples looks suspiciously like a "generic southern European town" set on a Hollywood backlot, and there are too few people on the street for such a major city. Similarly, the battle scenes seem to have way too few people in them, causing the front line to look about 30 meters long. ("The Big Red One" had similar problems, being mostly shot in Israel, though that location at least looks Mediterranean.) Furthermore, the film suffers from being too sanitized, and I don't just mean the language. Murphy and his fellow "dogfaces" look freshly shaved and showered at all times, with the creases still visible in their pants. Any mud on their clothing looks like the costume department painted it on. Rather than a harrowing ordeal, "To Hell And Back" feels like a day trip to the nearest National Park, with the enemy presenting only a minor and brief annoyance. Bill Mauldin's "Willie and Joe" cartoons did an infinitely better job of conveying the miserable conditions under which the infantryman did his job.
"To Hell And Back" is a perfectly adequate 1950s war movie, but it falls far short of the lofty goal it sets itself.
It's a spectacular story (I should note I read the book before seeing the movie), and the film's main failing is that it really doesn't do the story justice. The combat scenes are too few and too sparse, given all Murphy went through, but the real problem is that Universal was too stingy with funds for extras and locations. The action takes place in the Mediterranean and France, in a variety of terrain and seasons, but none of the locations look like Europe; there's not a paved road, village or church steeple in sight, and the vegetation screams western United States. I would guess that the combat sequences were all filmed on the training grounds of the Fort Lewis Military Reservation (just up the road from where I live in Washington state) in the space of a couple of weeks in late spring/early summer. All the sequences of naval vessels, amphibious landings and aircraft are all plainly stock footage. Naples looks suspiciously like a "generic southern European town" set on a Hollywood backlot, and there are too few people on the street for such a major city. Similarly, the battle scenes seem to have way too few people in them, causing the front line to look about 30 meters long. ("The Big Red One" had similar problems, being mostly shot in Israel, though that location at least looks Mediterranean.) Furthermore, the film suffers from being too sanitized, and I don't just mean the language. Murphy and his fellow "dogfaces" look freshly shaved and showered at all times, with the creases still visible in their pants. Any mud on their clothing looks like the costume department painted it on. Rather than a harrowing ordeal, "To Hell And Back" feels like a day trip to the nearest National Park, with the enemy presenting only a minor and brief annoyance. Bill Mauldin's "Willie and Joe" cartoons did an infinitely better job of conveying the miserable conditions under which the infantryman did his job.
"To Hell And Back" is a perfectly adequate 1950s war movie, but it falls far short of the lofty goal it sets itself.