Battle Hymn

Starring:Rock Hudson, Anna Kashfi, Dan Duryea, Don DeFore, Martha Hyer, Jock Mahoney, Alan Hale Jr., James Edwards, Carl Benton Reid, Richard Loo, Philip Ahn, Bartlett Robinson, Simon Scott, Teru Shimada, Carleton Young, Jung' Kyoo Pyo, Art Millan, William Hudson, Paul Sorenson, Earle E. Partridge
Director: Douglas Sirk
Studio: Universal Studios
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Korean War Story
Rock Hudson in Korean War Melodrama
A HYMN TO HIM AND HER - MORE LOVE THAN WAR!
Finding God Amidst The War
this is the film to watch over the next few weeks.

Battle Hymn
Starring: Rock Hudson , Anna Kashfi , Dan Duryea , Don DeFore , and Martha Hyer
Director: Douglas Sirk
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0001FGC1A
Release Date: 2004-05-25

Customer Reviews:

Korean War Story.......2007-03-16

Based upon a true event from the "forgotten war", this film should be remade and credit given to ALL who made the orphan rescue happen. History shows that the true heros of this event were the ones given little or no credit. Sgt Meryl Strang is not even mentioned. Oh well...the story is compelling and the actors although not Korean do a fine job. Even Rock Hudson gives a good performance...now if only they would remake it and tell the whole story...

Rock Hudson in Korean War Melodrama.......2006-01-28

This story of a preacher who leaves the ministry to alleviate his conscience by joining the Korean War effort and ends up helping Koren orphans reteams producer Ross Hunter, director Douglas Sirk and star Rock Hudson. However, this war melodrama is not as good or entertaining as their previous collaborations, the grand-scale soap operas "Magnificent Obsession" and "All That Heaven Allows". Probably because its based on the true story of a war hero, Sirk doesn't push genre conventions as he did on his better-known melodramas. Still, Battle Hymn is a very good film, with more emphasis on human relationships, especially "white male guilt" (a favorite theme of Sirk), than war. There is also the suggestion of interracial desire between Rock Hudson and Indian-born actress Anna Kashfi (who would become better known as Mrs. Marlon Brando), who plays a beautiful and noble foreign woman who helps Hudson take care of hundreds of orphans (while his white wife waits back home pregnant). Her attraction for Hudson, of course, is very nobly repressed throughout the film.

A HYMN TO HIM AND HER - MORE LOVE THAN WAR!.......2004-05-25

"Battle Hymn" is the story of a minister (Rock Hudson) who returns to train Korean soldiers to fight after he feels he has lost his calling. Of course he finds redemption and his true faith when he becomes involved with a group of Korean orphans and a young Korean/Indian woman that cares for them. Despite several brilliantly staged action sequences this film is not so much a war saga as it is a tale of introspection and finding courage in religion to carry on. The reason is simple; the film's director is Douglas Sirk - known for his soppy, sloppy and gushy melodramas that ooz treacle over substance, like "Imitation of Life" and "Written on the Wind". The blend of both adventure and drama is seamless. "Battle Hymn" is an intelligently-crafted and inspiring without being stoic or preachy.
THE TRANSFER: Overall the picture quality is nicely rendered but the ravages of time have not been kind in a few spots. Age related artifacts are present throughout - sometimes glaringly so. Black levels are often weak and fine detail is lost in the darkest scenes. Digital anomalies are not an issue for a generally smooth visual presentation. The audio is nicely presented - if somewhat dated.
EXTRAS: None.
BOTTOM LINE: "Battle Hymn" is finely wrought melodrama tinged with the prerequisite of combat that all war films have in common. The DVD is admirably realized but is not reference quality. Still, it's definitely worth a look.

Finding God Amidst The War.......2002-01-02

Rock Hudson stars as a minister who feels he has lost his calling and returns to the Air Force (he had fought in WWII) to train Korean soldiers during the Korean War. He and his men become involved with a group of Korean orphans and a young Korean/Indian woman that cares for them. While the war rages on, Hudson begins to find his way back to God, while also trying to protect the orphans. I initially believed that this was a war-action film, only to be surprised that, although there are several good fighting sequences, this was a more personal story of finding faith. Surprisingly, it meshes together well with the action. Hudson is earnest in his portrayal of the real life colonel, and he is well supported by Dan Duryea as one of his men/sidekick. There are some great lines about faith, and some of them made me think, especially the belief that God allows things to happen for reasons that may not be clear to us now, however bad they may seem at the time. In light of what has gone on in the world lately, this is a comforting thought. Battle Hymn is a well crafted, inspiring movie that never seems to preach, yet it certainly makes its points.

this is the film to watch over the next few weeks........2001-10-10

A tribute to the essential benevolence of the US Army, and a justification of necessary warfare, 'Battle Hymn' was made with the full co-operation of the army (which allows for some spectacular airfights and picturesque bombings). It is introduced by an endearingly stolid miltary mandarin, General Earle Partridge of the US Fifth Air Force, posing against the eloquent priapic might of a grounded bomber. This is a propaganda film that shows the army as decent saviours of the world, protectors of the innocent; it displays the urgent need for heavy armaments and the engagement in warfare with totalitarian threats to that innocence.

The film is directed by Douglas Sirk, who has been for the last three decades the test case for the possibility within the monolithic global Hollywood industry of inserting a critical voice, of working within the system but producing films that go against the grain. Sirk's major legacy is a series of Universal melodramas from the 1950s, in which he took a despised, 'female', corny, conservative genre, and created the most devastating critiques of 50s America we have, with its mindless and mind-destroying conformism, its patriarchal repressions, its racism.

the films, being 'women's pictures', naturally focus on the domestic, on the interior lives of socially imprisoned characters. 'Battle Hymn', on the other hand, is a war film, male-dominated and set in the wide-open desert spaces of Korea. Nevertheless, Sirk finds a way to 'domesticate' this macho genre, with his feminised, camp soldiers; with his preponderance of cramped, interior shots.

there is a conscious opposition in this film that goes to the heart of the American 'problem' that would explode so traumatically in Vietnam. In the 1950s, when this film was made, America was led by a grounded military man, fetishised the family, and encouraged socially adhesive religious values. And yet Dean Hess, a vicar, a man of god, a family man, cannot live in this America. America is no longer fit for American men, primed by the Second World War, to live in. His marriage is sterile - only when he leaves does his wife become pregnant, and does he find the possibility of family in the shape of the teacher and Chu.

In an America so brightly optimistic and confident as Eisenhower's, any trauma cannot be spoken publicly. Any 'illness' must be taken outside and dealt with there. Hence the profusion of US military activity in the 20th century, a doomed attempt to atone for guilt and failure, which only results in the mass murder of foreigners.

'Battle Hymn' is quite a provocative film, with a hero and his sidekick called Herrmann and Hess, with two graphic bombings by the army of an orphanage and of fleeing refugees. The film is called 'Battle Hymn', and is an attempt to unite the conflicting US ideals of religion and militarism - Hess flails around wildly for the assurance that his murderous actions are not his fault, but part of God's will, sanctioning further brutalities. He is often ironically compared to Christ, when he is actually a mixture of the antiChrist and Midas, killing everything he touches. The only way he can save lives is to 'sacrifice' others.

'Battle Hymn' does not equate war with religion (a deus ex machina is epically ironic), but exposes the pathology of the army: the predominantly dull mise-en-scene matching the grey uniforms. American military imperialism is mirrored in the attempts to Americanise the Korean children, teaching them to eat 'candy', swallow Christianity and sing English. Any native rituals don't exist as examples of an alternative or older culture, but as theatrical expressions of Hess' moral progress.

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