TO HELL AND BACK
(Universal-International-CinemaScope) JN war, says General Bedell Smith, in a prologue to this film, men are given new and different rules of conduct which | they learn to accept. At:'the movies also, he might have added. We all tend re identify ourselves with heroes we, wouldn’t care to emulate, but ig from an audience for such exploits as a bomb tossed into a roomful of Germans | is new to me and recalls wartime hate. To Hell and Back is the story of Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated soldier. It’s odd that a man apparently so | modest should play himself; odder, that ) he should do so without losing our sympathy. (Perhaps because there are echoes of his fine performance in The Red Badge of Courage?) The story suffers, though, from its concentration on his personal bravery: as one exploit suc- | ceeds another we begin to feel that the U.S. Army had to call on him, like a sort of Walter Mitty, to get it out of every tight spot on the road to victory. Apart from its central theme, the film tells a story of the private soldier at war, and manages at times to con- vey something of the horror and futility of the thing.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19560413.2.50.1.5
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 871, 13 April 1956, Page 27
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207TO HELL AND BACK New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 871, 13 April 1956, Page 27
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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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