Main Cast: David Niven, Raymond Huntley, William Hartnell, Stanley Holloway, James Donald
Release Year: 1944
Country: UK
Run Time: 115 minutes
Plot
The Immortal Battalion has a bit of a convoluted history. It started life as a training film, The New Lot, which ran 44 minutes. When Winston Churchill approached David Niven about creating a film that would do for the British Army what In Which We Serve had done for the Royal Navy, he contacted Carol Reed and suggested expanding The New Lot. The result, written by Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov, was the acclaimed The Way Ahead. For its U.S. release, Way Ahead was edited to a shorter length and retitled The Immortal Battalion. In either of its feature length forms, the film is concerned with the training of a bunch of raw recruits into a capable and efficient fighting regiment. Niven stars as Jim Perry, a lieutenant and former ordinary guy who finds that he must learn to take a tough line in order to make his wildly diverse crew come together and understand the importance both of the war and of their place in it. Although it takes time and constant effort on the part of Perry and his sergeant, the eight men eventually overcome their different backgrounds and feelings, and transform themselves into a unit which performs its tasks with admirable skill and dexterity, preparing them for their battle against the Desert Fox in Africa. Told in a semi-documentary style, Battalion also features the screen debut of Trevor Howard. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
The film was written by Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov and directed by Carol Reed. The three had originally produced the 1943 training film The New Lot, which was produced for the Army Kinematograph Service. The Way Ahead was an expanded remake of their earlier film, this time intended for a commercial audience. The two films featured some of the same actors, including John Laurie, Raymond Huntley and Peter Ustinov.
Plot
In the early days of the Second World War, Lieutenant Jim Perry (David Niven) does his strenuous best to turn a bunch of grumbling ex-civilians into soldiers, earning himself their intense dislike. Eventually however, the men come to respect their officer.
After their training is completed, their battalion is shipped out to North Africa to face Rommel's Afrika Korps. However, their ship is torpedoed en route, and they miss the fighting. They are assigned to guard a small town. Perry appropriates a cafe as his headquarters, much to the disgust of the pacifist owner, Rispoli (Peter Ustinov). When the Germans attack, Perry and his men fiercely defend their positions. The last scene shows them advancing in a counter-attack. Instead of the film ending with the words "The End", it concludes with the more uplifting "The Beginning", an attempt to galvanise support for the final push in the war effort. The final scene of the advancing soldiers was also copied for the closing credits of the long-running sit-com Dad's Army(John Laurie appeared in both and his performance in the sit-com credits mirrors this film).
