MovieChat Forums > The Young Lions (1958) Discussion > I thought my razor was dull. . .

I thought my razor was dull. . .

posted 11 years ago by aciolino
10 replies | jump to latest

. . . until I watched, "The Young Lions."

A basic snooze-fest. Predictable, badly cast and essentially, pointless. Oh, yeah, "war is bad." Holy smelt. Are you kidding?

First, the cast? Is this Brando's most embarrassing performance? Hard to tell in a career of so many embarrassing performances.

Did ANYONE buy ONE thing Dean Martin did?

And what's with Monty Clift getting beaten up in every damn Army movie he makes? I felt I was watching a clone of Robert E. Lee Prewitt - a misunderstood, abused, soldier, fighting, for his dignity, only this time without Donna Reed. As a matter of fact, this film needed Donna Reed. Reed should have played Clift's part -- she'd have been more convincing as a 120 pound tough guy.

So, instead of stabbing the poor soldier in the next bed with the bayonet, stab the guy who created this dreck.

[–] FeloniousMunk 11 years ago

Read the book, by the same name...it's by Irwin Shaw...it came out some nine years before this movie was released, and bears little resemblance to this Hollywood production.

But it's one of the classic WWII novels, in case you've never heard of it, and one of the earliest...came out right after Norman Mailer's famous book about the Pacific Theater (as in WWII, not the movie palace).

Try it...you might like it. And you might learn something about what all those men fought for...and died for (on both sides). Get it from the library, so you won't lose anything...except your time...if you decide you hate it and don't want to finish it.

Which, unfortunately, is what I have a feeling you'll do.

I was a kid whan this came out...and it was my first exposure to the Nazi death camps on the big screen. Hollywood hadn't discovered the Holocaust yet...it didn't even have that name yet...and neither had the mass media.

Just a little, teeny-tiny foretaste of what followed in the next few years (early Sixties).

And it was before I was old enough to know that my grandmother's whole extended family had become ashes and chimney smoke in one of those places.

Read. Learn. Or don't. No skin off my ass, either way.

HONK if you love Jesus...
TXT if you want to meet Him...

[–] Alfriend 11 years ago

True enough, a great book and very well said.
I'm very sorry for the loss of so many in your family. A large portion of my mother's side of the family also suffered the same fate.

[–] Alfriend 11 years ago

....no it's just your mind.

[–] xdayton 11 years ago

Feloniusmonk, it's actually possible to not like this movie and be a patriot at the same time. What an idiotic post you wrote.

This movie is dreadful. Horrible musical score, Clift acts like he's brain damaged (which he just might have been), Brando gives an horribly mannered performance and Dino seems to have wandered in from a different movie altogether.

And Christ is it dull! Long stretches of nothing. Scenes (like the boxing scenes) repeated over and over. And scenes, like Monty & Hope Lange's first date, that feel so oddly paced and awkwardly acted that it's almost surreal.

And then, out of nowhere, we get these almost documentary-like battle scenes (and that nearly comic Lewis & Martin-like scene with Brando & Maximillian on a fake scooter with the phoniest background projection I've ever scene.)

And don't get me started on Brando's hair. Or his accent. Or the way he lets his eyes drift upward after every sentence, as if to lend a thoughtful, sensitive air to his Nazi.

Dreadful movie.

[–] FeloniousMunk 11 years ago

Thanks for sharing, patriot. Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!

Every time you make a typo...the errorists win...

[–] mrmathexpert4 10 years ago

Agreed. One of the worst war pictures made of all time.

[–] mike-848 10 years ago

I thought it was very good and everyone did a fine acting job. Brando was great but Maximilian Schell stole the show.

[–] mark-1589 9 years ago

I have to agree with aciolino, IMHO this film did absolutely nothing for me. Not much of interest happens. The script is very poorly written. It is about an hour too long. Etc., etc., etc. It just seemed like a disparate and uncoordinated set of slices of life with no underlying theme or anything to tie them together. The entire film felt like the build-up to something, and in the end nothing happens. I was fully expecting Dean Martin and Marlon Brando to meet up - because they both loved the same woman, but their meeting is anti-climactic to say the least. All in all a truly dull film.

[–] chrissso 9 years ago

NAILED IT!!!!

[–] Wuchak (8835) 4 years ago

I was fully expecting Dean Martin and Marlon Brando to meet up - because they both loved the same woman

They didn't both love the same woman. Diestl (Brando) simply tried to date Margaret when he was a ski-instructor in Barvaria and Margaret was vacationing from America. She plainly told him that Broadway entertainer Michael Whiteacre (Martin) was her beau even though he wasn't paying enough attention to her. Diestl later falls for the cute French woman Françoise.

When Whiteacre and Diestl finally meet up at the end it's supposed to be ironic. Michael doesn't know who Diestl is (and vice versa) and he shoots him on sight because he's a German officer even though Diestl was disillusioned and repentant at that point.