Main Cast: Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, Hope Lange, May Britt, Barbara Rush
Release Year: 1958
Country: US
Run Time: 167 minutes
Plot
Though several concessions to the censors and the box-office were made in adapting Irwin Shaw's bestseller The Young Lions to the screen, the end result is generally effective and satisfying. Set during World War 2, the film concentrates on three individuals, one German, two American. Marlon Brando (whose accent ebbs and floes from scene to scene) plays an idealistic German whose early fascination with Nazism leads to doubt and disillusionment. American entertainer Dean Martin, on the verge of the Big Time, does his best to dodge the draft but ends up in uniform all the same. And American Jew Montgomery Clift, so sensitive that he's practically breakable, must come to grips with anti-Semitism, not only from the Germans but also from his fellow soldiers. Romance enters the picture in the form of Hope Lange as Clift's gentile girlfrind, Barbara Rush as the socialite who shames Martin into joining up, and May Britt as Brando's vis-a-vis. Screenwriter Edward Anhalt was obliged to shoehorn in a boot-camp sequence indicating that the Brass disapproved of the bigoted behavior of Clift's topkick Lee van Cleef (as if racism was a mere aberration during the 1940s), and to "slightly" alter the ending of the book, in which the embittered but still patriotic Brando character, shouting "Welcome to Germany!," machine-guns the Martin and Clift characters (in the film, it is Brando who bites the dust, symbolically dying for Hitler's sins). Maximillian Schell offers a starmaking turn as Brando's cynical comrade, while an uncredited John Banner, "Sergeant Schultz" on Hogan's Heroes, shows up as a pompous burgomeister who feigns ignorance of the hellish concentration camp in his community. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
An ambitious anti-war movie that combines politics, romance, nationalism, and morality, The Young Lions was a distinctive entry in the post-World War II re-examination of Hitler's legacy. Released in 1958, it was one of the few important movies from that era that questioned conventional attitudes about the war. Adapted from Irwin Shaw's best-selling novel, the would-be-epic was daring enough to disturb censors. In his first attempt at a German accent, Marlon Brando continued his image-smashing roles by portraying a disillusioned Nazi officer. In his first dramatic role, comedian Dean Martin also confounded expectations. Montgomery Clift played an American Jewish soldier who fights anti-Semitism on all fronts. The rambling plot includes romantic entanglements for all the principals, but it manages to maintain a challenging edge. Unsettling and brooding, the drama was directed by Edward Dmytryk from a screenplay by Edward Anhalt. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
Maximilian Schell - Capt. Hardenberg; Lee Van Cleef - Sgt. Rickett; Liliane Montevecchi - Francoise; Parley Baer - Sergeant Brandt; Arthur Franz - Lieutenant Green; Hal Baylor - Pvt. Burnecker; Richard Gardner - Private Cowley; Herbert Rudley - Capt. Colclough; John Alderson - Cpl. Kraus; Sam Gilman - Pvt. Faber; L.Q. Jones - Private Donnelly (uncredited); Julian Burton - Pvt. Brailsford; John Banner - Burgermeister; Stephen Bekassy - German Major; Joe Brooks; Robert Burton - Col. Mead; Ann Codee - French Woman; Paul Comi - Pvt. Abbott; Ashley Cowan - Maier; Dora Doll - Simone; Robert Ellenstein - Rabbi; Harry Ellerbe - Draft Board Chairman; Milton Frome - Physician; John Gabriel - Burn; Kurt Katch - Camp Commandant; George Meader - Milkman; Clive Morgan - British Colonel; Alberto Morin - Bartender; Voltaire Perkins - Druggist; Otto Reichow - Bavarian; Gene Roth - Cafe Manager; Henry Rowland - Sergeant; Jeffrey Sayre - Drunk; Norbert Schiller - Civilian; Harvey Stephens - Gen. Rockland; Vaughan Taylor - Plowman (uncredited); Alfred Tonkel - German Waiter; Ivan Triesault - German Colonel; Stan Kamber - Acaro; Hubie Kerns Sr.; Michael Pataki - Pvt. Hagstrom; Art Reichle; Joan Douglas - Maid; Nicholas King - Medic; Christian Pasques - French Boy; Ed Rickard - Mailman; Michael Smith - Draft Board Member
The Young Lions is about the destiny of three young soldiers involved in WWII. The German officer, Lt. Christian Diestl (Marlon Brando), approves less and less of the war, while the American-Jewish GI, Noah Ackerman (Montgomery Clift), tries to survive the very bigoted military and Michael Whiteacre (Dean Martin), who starts out as a coward who tries to avoid the war, but becomes more and more blood-thirsty as the war progresses.
Christian is caught in the middle of this war because he fancies two women who are American and French. He does his duty in the German Army but realizes at the end that the war, and just about everything else except his French girlfriend, is lost. Ackerman is befriended by a fellow draftee, the reluctant soldier Michael Whiteacre (Dean Martin), and falls in love with a New England woman named Hope (Hope Lange) whose father is anti-Jewish.
Plot summary
German ski instructor Christian is hopeful that Hitler will bring new prosperity to Germany and when war breaks out he joins as a lieutenant. Dissatisfied with police duty in Paris, he requests to be transferred and is assigned to the front in North Africa. He sees what the war has done to his captain (Maximilian Schell) and the captain's wife (May Britt), and he is sickened by their behavior. The film also follows the stories of actor-cum-cynic Michael and nice guy Noah when they befriend each other during their draft physical and are stationed together in boot camp. They are then stationed in London. Michael has dated socialite Margaret (Barbara Rush) for a long time, who coincidently in 1938 dated Christian in the Bavarian Alps when she went on a skiing vacation. But she was upset by his Nazi beliefs and deserted him on New Year's Eve to return to Michael. Just prior to the U.S. entry into the war, she enlisted to do clerical work in the army. Noah is Jewish and works as a lowly department store clerk, attends a party Michael throws, where he meets Hope. She falls in love with him and introduces her fiancé to her provincial father, who doesn't like Jews because he never met one. But after a chat with Noah, dad approves of the marriage. Once in the service the boot-camp commanding officer and some of the tough guys in his company try to bully Noah. But Noah gains the respect of the enlisted men by fighting back in a series of fist fights, even though he's much smaller.
The film tells in great detail how each of these soldiers comes to view the war, as it makes its appeal as an anti-war film. Christian turns into a conflicted Nazi, who hates the war and what it has done to his fellow Germans but can't escape from it. He despises what his fellow soldiers have done in the name of the Fatherland but fulfills his duty to the end. Michael spends most of the war in a comfy job nowhere near any fighting, thanks to his Broadway name. He finally decides to join the fight after Margaret shames him into it. By pulling strings, he rejoins his old outfit on the front in the war's final days, almost too late to matter. Noah simply does his duty to the best of his ability, hoping to live through all the horror and get home to his wife and their new baby. He has a heroic moment where he risks his own life to save a fellow soldier, one who was especially prejudiced against him in boot camp. He then helps liberate a concentration camp full of Jews and comes face-to-face with the German result of virulent anti-Semitism.
By the film's end the three main parties cross paths and prove the film's premise: the futility of war.
The Dean Martin casting conflict
The film, a smashing box-office success, was the key to Martin's huge comeback in the wake of his split with partner Jerry Lewis. Tony Randall originally had Martin's role but talent agency MCA insisted that Martin replace Randall so they'd have "a quadruple threat" (an audience from four sectors): night clubs, recordings, television, and movies.
The agency understood that whoever played Randall's role of Michael Whiteacre opposite Brando and Clift, the 1950s' two most intriguing movie actors, would be in a completely different position from that time forward, and they were right.
This was the only film (aside from home movies) that Brando and Clift made together. The picture was produced by Al Lichtman and was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Film and three Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Sound and Best Music in 1959.
