THE DIRTY DOZEN: Blu-ray (MGM, 1967) Warner Home Video

The 1960’s were an especially fascinating, if uneven time in American picture-making. Hollywood's self-governing Production Code, to have basically held film-makers to a stringent ethical standard, had been irrevocably eroded with the debut of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), increasingly leading to a new laissez faire attitude in the industry. No, it still was not a free-for-all – but the times…they were a changin’!  And Hollywood’s artisans, eager to loosen the yolk even further, continued to push the boundaries of permissible screen behavior in all directions – arguably, to the detriment of the public good and the art in movie-making. Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967) is a picture that could never have been made while the full breadth of the Code stood intact. Nor would E.M. Nathanson’s scathing examination of military decorum – or lack thereof – have found a favorable home at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer under the creative aegis of Louis B. Mayer; the studio with more stars than there once ‘were’ in the heavens. So long as Mayer reigned supreme, and the Code presided judiciously over excellence in art, MGM’s dream factory remained quite simply that – a place where the stars shone bright and regal in a resplendent artifice of its own design. The movies made after Mayer’s ousting from power in 1950, many also done under Dore Schary, even after Schary, too, found the tether on his studio-contract cut short by his inability to maintain control and turn a profit at the same time, illustrate an all-pervading and very awkward disconnect in these artistic sentiments. MGM tried – gallantly and otherwise – to hang on to its one-time façade as a close-knit community of creatives, toiling in unison for the common good of making great movies. But increasingly in the sixties, MGM became a place where healthy competition gave way to jealous rivalries and where opposing factions sincerely hoped their opposition would miserably fail to achieve this same level of artistry that, at one time, had been the studio’s united motto: do it big and give it class.  

In hindsight, Robert Aldrich would not have been able to work at Metro during its glory days – or, for Mayer, for that matter. Aldrich, with his unvarnished, clear-eyed view of the world, as an oft dark and ugly place, populated by even darker and uglier people, flew in the face of Mayer’s opinion that all men should be virtuous, and all women beautiful. So, The Dirty Dozen emerges as one of the most provocative war movies ever created. For although its plot is firmly situated in a timeline marking its espionage at the tail end of 1944, the picture is most definitely a product of the 1960’s. Fronted by an uncompromising performance by Lee Marvin – the self-described “action kind’a guy” and featuring a superb roster of rough-hewn men, including ex-footballer, Jim Brown (as Robert Jefferson), John Cassavetes (Victor Franko), Richard Jaeckel (Sergeant Bowren), Telly Savalas (Archer Maggott), Donald Sutherland (Vernon Pinkley) and muscle-giant, Clint Walker (the aptly named Samson Posey), with plum parts devoted to Robert Ryan (Col. Everett Dasher Breed) and Ralph Meeker (Captain Stuart Kinder), The Dirty Dozen is the kind of movie that seems very contemporary today, because it suggests no sense of loyalty or duty outside of responsibilities to one’s self. In Hollywood’s past, war movies had been the proving ground for stories about valor and sacrifice. But The Dirty Dozen is about a troop of ne’er do wells having all committed some egregious crime and whose only salvation now is tethered on the short end of an impossible mission virtually none of them are likely to survive.

The Dirty Dozen was shot far away from the prying eyes of money-conscious executive intervention – just the way Aldrich preferred to work, on free-standing sets built at MGM’s Borehamwood Studio, first acquired by Mayer in the mid-1930’s as a means of producing ‘British-made’ and oft British-themed movies to feature and promote American stars overseas.  The studio’s prominence was cut short by WWII – a fallow period in which no productions were mounted. After the war, Metro could no longer afford to operate these facilities and they were sold outright to Borehamwood, under which they continued to function until being shuttered for good in the early 1970’s. Interiors and set pieces were all shot at Borehamwood, including scenes at ‘the château’ created down to the last detail by art director, William Hutchinson. The faux château proved problematic, however, in that Hutchinson had built it so solid that 70 tons of explosives would have been needed to blow it up as depicted in the movie. Instead, Hutchinson was commissioned to rebuild a section of the chateau from break-away cork and plastic, bombed using far less TNT. Most of the exteriors for The Dirty Dozen were shot in Southeast England, some inside the ancillary courtyard of Ashridge House in Hertfordshire, as well as the RAF Hendon in London and the village of Aldbury.

Aldrich cast his picture mostly from WWII veterans - Lee Marvin, Robert Webber (as Brig. Gen. James Denton), Clint Walker and Robert Ryan, all serving in the US Marines, while Telly Savalas, Ernest Borgnine (cast as Maj. Gen. Sam Worden) and Charles Bronson (Joseph Wladislaw) all hailed from the US. Navy and Army Air Forces respectively.  In its preliminary stages, casting The Dirty Dozen hit a minor snag when Jim Brown, of the Cleveland Browns’ was painted into an impossible corner by the Browns’ manager, Art Modell, who demanded Brown choose between his NFL career and one in acting.  Having already established his legacy in football as the NFL's all-time leading rusher, as well as the only player in league history to have a career average 100 yards per game, Brown chose acting over football now. Decades later, Modell acknowledged he had been the one to fumble the proverbial ball on this fifty-yard line, having fined Brown $100 per day for his participation on The Dirty Dozen. Meanwhile Lee Marvin proved an able assistant to Aldrich in getting the technical aspects of the picture just right, although he sincerely felt the scene where Reisman wrestles a bayonet free from an enraged Posey to be idiotic and untrue.  To his defense, Aldrich offered that the entire plot of the movie was ridiculous, but added that its overwhelming concentration on action would easily anesthetize the audience into forgetting such lapses.

Alas, it did not stop the critics from taking out their hatchets when the movie debuted. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert, then newly ensconced, was particularly pithy in his retort, adding “If you have to censor, stick to sex...but leave in the mutilation…sadism and, by all means…human beings burning to death. It's not obscene as long as they burn to death with their clothes on!” New York Times’ Bosley Crowther cited The Dirty Dozen as an ‘astonishingly wanton war film…studied (in its) indulgence of sadism.’  “It is not simply that this violent picture of an American military venture is based on a fictional supposition that is silly and irresponsible... But to have this bunch of felons a totally incorrigible lot, some of them psychopathic, and to try to make us believe that they would be committed by any American General…is downright preposterous. Marvin's taut, pugnacious playing of the major ... is tough and terrifying. John Cassavetes is wormy and… Telly Savalas… swinish and maniacal as a religious fanatic and sex degenerate.” Naturally, such eviscerating comments only fueled the public’s interest further, making The Dirty Dozen a blockbuster.

The Dirty Dozen headlines Lee Marvin as Maj. Reisman. To his superiors, Reisman is a wild card. In point of fact, he is insubordinate, tart-mouthed and utterly disdainful of the military’s handling of localized covert operations. Major Armbruster (George Kennedy) advises Reisman against ruffling the army’s feathers any more with his own smug superiority. But Reisman simply does not give a damn. In fact, in seeing through his commanders’ hidden agendas, he fails to realize just how much of an expendable threat they consider him to be. General Worden knows this too well. In fact, he has received reports from Reisman’s acting superior, Colonel Everett Dasher Breed to have Reisman pegged for a swift court martial…that is, if he survives his latest mission. Instead, Worden orders Reisman to an unthinkable task – find twelve soldiers convicted to hang, train them and set them loose on a nest of Nazis conducting secret military operations inside a remote chateau behind enemy lines. To be certain, Reisman has his work cut out for him. The ‘trainees’ assigned range from petty criminal and cheap crook, Victor Franko to a Bible-thumping rapist, Archer Maggott. The rest of Reisman’s motley crew is rounded out by the defiant, Joseph Wladislaw and muscle-bound, Samson Posey, the sly sycophant, Vernon Pinkley, scheming race-baiting, Robert Jefferson and Pedro Jiminez (Trini Lopez). Aside: reportedly, Lopez’ agent asked for more money midway through filming, necessitating Aldrich writing the actor out of the story earlier than originally intended. 

Worden has orders for Reisman; to launch a full-scale assault on a château near Rennes in Brittany as it plays host to a group of high-ranking Nazi officers. Travelling to military prison, Reisman swiftly recruits from the hardest of the hardcore criminal element.  Under Reisman’s guidance, along with Capt. Kinder and MP Sgt. Bowren, the reprogramming begins. Hard times, tough measures and hellish living conditions all contribute to the men steadily learning how to operate as one cohesive – if wholly diabolical – unit. Due to Franko’s act of insubordination, shaving kits are withheld for a time as punishment, leading to their nickname ‘The Dirty Dozen.’ For parachute training, the men are placed under the command of Colonel Breed, who is chagrined after Pinkley – under Reisman's orders – poses as a general to inspect Breed's troops. Enraged, Breed tries to uncover Reisman’s secret mission by having Wladislaw attacked in the latrine. Mercifully, this plan is foiled by Posey and Jefferson. Incorrectly assuming Reisman was behind the ambush, Breed reveals his hand after invading the men’s camp, forcing him to step aside. Meanwhile, Reisman is carpet-hauled by Worden and Brigadier General Denton. The latter sides with Breed and urges Worden to retire ‘Operation Amnesty’. Reisman’s impassioned defense of his men leads to a challenge in maneuvers in which Reisman’s motley crew illustrates the various unorthodox tactics by which they intend to fulfill the mission.  Worden is convinced. These men are loyal to the plan. The operation stands.

On the eve of the raid, the dozen is flown into France: their first casualty – Jiminez, who breaks his neck in the jump. There is little time to grieve. The others forge on. Wladislaw and Reisman infiltrate the meeting disguised as Nazi officers. Meanwhile, Jefferson and Maggott sneak onto the top floor while the rest set up in various locations around the chateau. The plan begins to crumble after Maggott encounters a woman who had accompanied the officers. To silence her, he commits murder, but then begins to shoot wildly at friend and foe alike. In the ensuing panic, Jefferson murders Maggott. The officers and their female companions retreat down to the chateau’s underground bomb shelter. Now, a firefight breaks out between the remaining ‘dozen’ and the chateau's armed guards.  Wladislaw and Reisman lock the Germans in the bomb shelter, dropping un-primed grenades down its ventilation shafts and pouring gasoline inside. Jefferson spikes a live grenade down each shaft and sprints for the half-track already hijacked for their getaway. Alas, he is gunned down by the opposing side moments before the grenades detonate. From their relatively safe distance, Reisman, Bowren and Wladislaw observe in shock and awe their handiwork before escaping back to England. We hear Armbruster’s voiceover confirm that Worden remained true to his word, exonerating Wladislaw while notifying the other’s next of kin of their ‘honorable service’ in the line of duty.

In the 50-plus years since its debut, The Dirty Dozen has lost none of its toxic vim and vigor as a one-of-a-kind war story. Virtually all of the characters depicted here are severely flawed at best, and perversely bankrupt of any morality at their worst.  What is unique and compelling about the film when viewed today is not the mission; although the finale remains an impressive sequence of grotesque mass devastation.  There are many war movies that treat their protagonists as little more than stick men, veering either extreme ‘right’ or ‘left’ of that traditional G.I. Joe center. The Dirty Dozen takes no such back roads into faux valor, or even the inference that this mission has nobler consequences. The picture is, instead, something of an intense character study in which none of central parts are without sin. Lee Marvin’s Reisman is one of the dirtiest bastards to ever wear the uniform, and his deliciously diabolical band of raving psychotics are positively riveting to watch from start to finish.  Nunnally Johnson’s impeccable screenplay is bleak and uncompromising.  We get to know these men intimately. However, it is not an alliance in friendship we would care to continue after the houselights have come up. And yet, these characters stick with us – villainous without ever leaning into irredeemable villainy. Yes, they are abhorrent at a glance, but perhaps, not all that worthy of their untimely ends, as all but one never proliferates in the end. A fallen hero is tragedy personified. But a fallen reprobate is a lost cause, never to achieve his rehabilitation. This too has its tragic trappings - on an entirely different level of empathy to be sure, but it works spectacularly well, and, to our ever-lasting satisfaction. The Dirty Dozen is a powder keg of an entertainment; gritty, genuine and terrifying.  

Given the movie’s significance, Warner Home Video’s Blu-ray is a palpable disappointment; at least from a visual standpoint. The Dirty Dozen falls into a problematic epoch in photochemical color film stocks that began with the introduction of Eastman-Kodak monopacks and AnscoColor in the mid-fifties. Despite being cheaper than Technicolor, possessing an obvious advantage and allure during Metro’s cost-cutting decline, both Eastman and Ansco stocks continued to be used throughout the mid-60's. Regrettably, the dyes were highly unstable and showed significant signs of fading barely 3 to 5 years after these movies were produced. All the more reason then, to have undertaken a complete restoration and new image harvest for this Blu-ray release – one of Warner’s earliest. Too bad, what is here is derived from the same flawed digital files that were used to master the DVD. Image quality is a marginal improvement at best, Blu-ray’s technical advantages over DVD revealing minute improvements in overall image crispness.  Color variances and density issues are all over the place, not just from scene to scene, but shot to shot. Flesh tones toggle between piggy pink and a ruddy orange mess. There is a brown/beige lean to the overall color palette. Whites adopt a yellowish caste.  Black levels teeter more in the espresso brown range. Many long and medium shots appear to be slightly out of focus. Grain levels toggle from distractingly heavy to suspiciously light. Age-related artifacts, while greatly tempered, nevertheless persist. As The Dirty Dozen was an early Blu-ray for Warner Home Video, we get a 5.1 Dolby Digital remix of the original mono – no DTS. Just how much DTS might have improved its source remains debatable. Both dialogue and effects sound quite strident here.  Extras are all ported over from the DVD release and include a definitive ‘making of’, a retrospective with stars and other crew contributing their afterthoughts to the picture’s longevity; plus, stills, an audio commentary and original theatrical trailer. Bottom line: The Dirty Dozen is a seminal work from the 1960’s. It has been given short shrift here and that is a pity. New transfer – pretty please.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

4.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

4.5