Battle Hymn

Rock Hudson

Douglas Sirk is most noted for the melodramas he directed for Universal producer Ross Hunter in the 1950s. However, he yearned for some variety and was particularly interested in filming aircraft, so Battle Hymn, also produced by Hunter, provides him a break from luxe interiors. The 1957 Cinemascope feature, shot in gorgeous Technicolor by frequent collaborator Russell Metty, is loosely based on a best selling memoir by Dean E. Hess. Hess was a Colonel in the Air Force who served in both World War 2 and the Korean conflict. While in Korea, he helped found an orphanage and saved the lives of many young refugees fleeing the war. Initially, Robert Mitchum was to play Hess, but Hess had doubts about Mitchum's character, so the role was given to Sirk and Hunter's standby leading man, Rock Hudson.

The eventual script for Battle Hymn, which has little to do with the actual events, is too pious, cliched, and hackneyed to build into a coherent and tolerable film. There are compensatory pleasures, though. Chief among them is Rock Hudson's performance. Hudson is sensitive enough to underplay his character's resolve and sanctimony. As we open the film, Hess is working as a minister in Ohio. However, he is haunted by his bombing of an orphanage in World War 2 which killed 37 children. He leaves ministry and wife (Martha Hyer in an extremely thankless role) behind as he departs for Korea. Hess is only supposed to instruct South Korean fighter pilots, but by film's end he has taken to the skies to wreak havoc. He finds the time to create an orphanage with an elderly sage and comely Anna Kashfi. Kashfi had the dubious fortune to marry Marlon Brando and only appeared in four films. Battle Hymn suggests she could have been a reliable screen presence. Certainly, she turns up the erotic heat in a film that badly needs it. 

The director stages this tendentious spectacle with equanimity. A belief in God's will is trumpeted as a bulwark against nihilism, but all religions and races are embraced in an egalitarian spirit. Sirk shoots characters in spiritual turmoil from the back, reinforcing a sense of something, trauma say, hidden and repressed. The film acknowledges American war atrocities well before My Lai and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Battle Hymn features Dan Duryea in a rare good guy role, plus Carl Benton Reid, James Edwards, Alan Hale Jr., and an uncredited James Hong.