Identity Unknown

Starring:Richard Arlen, Cheryl Walker, Roger Pryor, Bobby Driscoll, Lola Lane, Ian Keith, John Forrest, Sarah Padden, Forrest Taylor, Frank Marlowe, Harry Tyler, Nelson Leigh, Charles Williams, Charles Jordan, Dick Scott, Marjorie Manners, Eddie Baker
Director: Walter Colmes
Studio: Alpha Video
Product Type: DVD

Description

Stricken with amnesia, a desperate American soldier (Richard Arlen) searches for his lost identity after surviving a bloody WWII battle in France. Three fellow soldiers perished during the fierce fighting, and he goes AWOL to visit their homes hoping to find clues to his past. Along the way he falls in love with one soldier's widow, Sally, but marrying her is out of the question until he knows his true identity. By the time he completes his long and lonely journey, he is more confused than when he started. He is about to give up hope when the Army catches up with him and arrests him for desertion. With his past and future both on the line, he battles to reclaim his life.With guy-next-door good looks, Richard Arlen began his career during the silent film era, most notably appearing in the silent action epic, Wings (1927), and working nonstop as an actor until the 1970s. He also served in the Royal Canadian Flying Corps as a pilot during WWI.

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful film and quite a tribute to the American soldier.......2006-01-16

Identity Unknown (1945) is just a wonderful film that touches the heart and pays tribute to all the brave men who had just seen to the total defeat of fascism in Europe and Asia. The premise of the story, an amnesiac soldier trying to establish his identity, may sound trite, but Identity Unknown is immensely rich in emotion and human drama. Former silent film actor Richard Arlen is well-nigh perfect as "Johnny March," an actor's actor playing a soldier's soldier.

"Johnny" is the only survivor among four men who single-handedly held back German forces for two days before their location was bombed. The three casualties were burned beyond recognition, and all of the soldiers had their dog tags blown off. Since all four men shared the same physical build, the army can't tell which soldier belongs with each dog tag (not until fingerprints can be compared with each soldier's files, and that will take a little while). "Johnny" knows he must be one of the four men, so he sets off on his own to find his home among the four stateside addresses (technically going AWOL in the process). He ends up enriching the lives of all those he meets - and in a number of ways. At the first address, he meets Sally MacGregor (Cheryl Walker), who is now a young widow. "Johnny" falls in love with Sally, and that only heightens the importance of his mission to learn who he is - after all, he might have a wife waiting for him at home. At his second destination, he meets a little boy who calls him Daddy - this is undoubtedly the most poignant scene in the film. He eventually works his way through all four names on the list, bringing the kind of cloture he seeks to the lives of the bereaved families he meets. The film ends beautifully, delivering quite a tribute to nature of the American soldier in the process.

It's wonderful to watch a film like this and to reflect upon a time when the American soldier was a man to be honored. Complete strangers took "Johnny" in and trusted him implicitly simply due to the uniform he wore. It's quite a contrast to the way the American soldier is often treated these days by the very people he is fighting for. This is a film that should be aired annually on Veterans Day because it truly encompasses the nobility of the American soldier and pays tribute to him in a way that is far too often lacking in today's society.

DVD:

DVD

DVD

DVD

Robocop

Anna Netrebko - The Woman The Voice : DVD

Spider Baby

DVD: High School Confidential!

Meat Puppets - Alive in The Nineties