Film review: Cry 'Havoc' (1943)

If you look this film up, it mostly says "covers the same story as the superior So Proudly We Hail!" which stars Claudette Colbert, Paulette Godard and Veronica Lake.  Well, I don't care, I liked this one a lot.  It's based on a play which was based on an actual story of nurses on Bataan as the Japanese close in (in 1942).  So the film was made as the women involved were [SPOILER ALERT] still in Japanese prisoner of war camps, and the outcome of the war very much in doubt.  This means that the film is pretty downbeat and surprisingly gritty, especially as it's an almost entirely female cast (one thing it's got over SPWH, which seems to have a mostly male cast after the three stars).  I ordered the DVD after being impressed with Margaret Sullavan 

in The Good Fairy, and finding this one listed among her films, and co-starring our pre-code fave, Joan Blondell, here playing a "burlesque dancer" (i.e., stripper) who has to escape the Philippines and volunteers as a nurse.  In fact, that's one of the features that critics of this film cite the other as being superior: the real events feature a group of army nurses, while in this one, only Sullavan's Lieutenant Smith and her loyal assistant Flo (Marsha Hunt) are real army nurses and the rest of her crew are civilians who've had the minimum of first aid training who are recruited on the spot from refugees because they're running out of nurses.  This allows a colorful cast of characters: Smith's beloved-by-Flo but somewhat tightly wound Smith, Blondell's stripper Grace, Ella Raines' posh fashion-writer Connie,

local Filipina Luisita, 

humorously ditzy Mississippian Nydia (who has some of the funniest lines in the movie), 

young sisters, both students, Sue and Andra, 

and most of all, Ann Sothern's belligerent itinerant blue-collar worker Pat, who instantly takes against Smitty because, she says, she hates taking orders from a dame.  She also instantly falls for Lieutenant Holt, who would be the main male character in the film, except that he is never seen.  He's a bit like Norm's wife in Cheers or Niles's wife in Frasier, in that we never see him, we just hear a couple of words from him as people go into his office.  Pat pursues him incessantly, unaware that he and Smitty are an item, in fact [SPOILER ALERT] they are married, something Smith can't ever admit because it's not allowed in the forces.  Meanwhile, the new recruits are quickly settled in, and the first night they arrive, the hospital is bombed, and they're introduced to mayhem pretty quickly.  Most affected are Connie, who is obviously terrified, and whom Pat initially seems annoyed by (Pat is frankly a bit of a jerk), and the two sisters.  The first night, before the bombing starts, younger sister Sue (having just given an impassioned (and rather over-the-top - a reminder that part of the function of this film was to rally support for the ongoing war effort) speech about the point of this war being life itself, making it a simple war) goes out for air and disappears.  She is found days later having been buried under a pile of corpses the whole time, and essentially has lost her marbles.  Meanwhile, the soldiers never stop coming, and Grace is grabbed by one who says that nobody will tell him how he's doing or if he's going to make it (Grace makes eye contact with the doctor behind him who shakes his head) and she has to listen to his speech about how he's done more than he ever dreamed of anyway, including having a honeymoon (for all of two days)).  Connie gets to hold a soldier (after the second time the hospital is bombed, this time to smithereens) who says "I'm all right." and then dies in her arms.  (The actor?  Robert Mitchum!)  This incident puts some steel into Connie's soul, so that later, when Smitty tells them all that there's no hope and the Japanese will overrun them in a matter of days, and they have a chance to evacuate if they go the next morning, everyone decides to stay.  Alas, this decision is to prove fatal for Connie.  Meanwhile, Grace gets shrapnel in the leg and we also discover that Smitty has "malignant malaria" which essentially means it's chronic and keeps recurring until it will eventually kill her, and meanwhile they've basically run out of Quinine (as well as food - they eat hash made of monkeys and horses).  This sounds like relentless misery (leading to a very downbeat ending - remember what I said at the beginning), but it somehow isn't - it's completely gripping.  

And having just complained (see Grand Hotel) about "stagey" films, this one manages to be based on a play and largely about the interplay of a lot of characters in a very limited range of locations without feeling claustrophobic.  Partly this is because of some excellent seeming-location scenes, including one where an enemy fighter is shot down just yards away by (as we later discover) Andra!  Sadly, one other person who bites it is Lieutenant Holt, and it's only while mourning him that Pat discovers the truth of his marriage, and admits to Smitty that it was entirely one way and she never got anywhere with him.  This is as they are the last two leaving their underground quarters to go up to the sound of their Japanese captors (who, in keeping with the treatment of Holt, we never see).  I'm not a big fan of war movies - they so often come off as fake or falsely triumphalist, and while this one has a fair amount of hokum (some of the music is over-the-top, the Pat-Smitty-Holt love triangle is contrived), this one got to me.  I think part of it is that, as with M*A*S*H, you only ever see the effects of fighting, you never see actual fighting, and (apart from Andra shooting down a plane) none of our characters ever fires a shot.  And it's downbeat (especially the heartbreaking scene where two of the nurses go through piles and piles of dead soldiers' effects, making note of what they had (one soldier has a marble, presumably given him by one of his kids, and a "lucky" rabbit's foot)) - it ends in defeat, with victory very much in doubt.  And finally, of course, everyone in it is good, including minor characters like Smitty's commanding officer Captain Marsh, and Sadie, the cook who keeps them alive with the scraps that are left in the stores when their supply lines keep getting cut.  Ann Sothern was a revelation, though (you hate her at first, but she wins you over), 

so we may have to check out the Maisie films. SPWH would have to be very good indeed to be "obviously superior" to this one.  And I suspect it will certainly lack two strengths of this one: the almost entirely female main cast, and the ethnic diversity (and large representation of Filipino actors) of the soldiers they're treating, both pretty progressive for 1943, I think.  Also no Robert Mitchum!