TAKE THE HIGH GROUND
(M.G.M.) MANY people will suppose when they read some .of the advertising for Take the High Ground that it’s one of
those rollicking films of army life that either bore you to tears or have you rolling in the aisle. Quite a number of filmgoers seem to have found bits of it funny, but the overall impression I got was quite different. Set and. apparently filmed in an American. army training establishment, it isn’t much more than a record of how a ragged group of recruits is turned into a disciplined squad of soldiers, Much of this is interesting. enough and wellphotographed in: Ansco colour; and, assuming it to be accurate, it has a certain semi documentary interest. Like the off-the-beat passages of South of Algiers it will be for many people the best part of the film. It is held together by a fairly thin story in which the recruits react in varying ways and Sergeant Ryan (Richard Widmark) and Sergeant Holt (Karl Malden) become involved with a (continued on next page)
girl (Elaine Stewart) they meet in town. Ryan gives the recruits such a bad time that even Holt rebels in the end. The idea seems to be that they are driven partly for their own good and partly because Ryan can't help it. He is a problem child, as his relations with the girl show. So is she for that matter; and, properly worked out, the part of the story that concerns these two might have been worthwhile. As it stands, it’s a gesture in the direction of some study of character which, at any rate, isn’t allowed to ruin the film by giving it a conventional happy ending. And that’s what I expected and feared. In brief, Take the High Ground is not very good but might have been much worse. Richard Brooks directed.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 768, 9 April 1954, Page 20
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312TAKE THE HIGH GROUND New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 768, 9 April 1954, Page 20
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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