Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions - with its stark, monochrome lensing - is a particularly unique war film that examines both sides of the European front and the men whose fragile psyches, ideals and relationships inhibit them.
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Marlon Brando plays Christian Diestl, a Nazi officer whose view of the party as necessary for peace soon turns to apathy and then embarrassment, as he struggles to find his true motivation, bouncing from a glorified policeman to a active participant in the North African campaign to a witness to the horrors of a concentration camp.
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Meanwhile, Montgomery Clift plays a Jewish store clerk Noah Ackerman, who is drafted alongside the selfish, resistant Broadway actor Michael Whiteacre (Dean Martin) as the two form an unlikely friendship during the course of their basic training.
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As the war comes closer and closer to a conclusion, these men, on different sides of the struggle, seem to pass one another in their view of this great conflict, with Christian and Noah's efforts becoming more and more futile while Michael's becoming more and more brave.
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Quite predictably, the film ends in a fleeting moment of Bridge on the River Kwai madness, but The Young Lions is ultimately too coincidental and overbearing and yet scarce of the smaller, profound moments that make the former film so decidedly major. [C+]
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