Samuel Fuller's Merrill's Marauders (1961)

I'd been in the infantry,  I knew combat was chaos and pandemonium.
-- Samuel Fuller, A Third Face (Knopf, 2002)

For Fuller organization and loyalty are the only means for survival in war/life.
-- Phil Hardy, Samuel Fuller (Praeger, 1970).

It's fascinating to compare Fuller's Merrill's Marauders with Raoul Walsh's Objective Burma (1945).  In both members of the infantry are loyal to their general in the hell of the Burmese jungle, trying to cut off the Japanese from making it to India to join with the Germans.  Both films capture the horrors of war and the dedication of the troops.  Because the Walsh film was made during the war it goes out of its way to emphasize the barbarity of the Japanese, while for Fuller the battle is more a simple problem of logistics and psychology.  Some scenes are quite similar, especially the dropping of the food supplies that the troops can't touch because the parachutes have attracted the enemy.

Fuller was somewhat reluctant to make Merrill's Marauders because it was from a book he didn't write, but thought it might enable him to make his most cherished project, The Big Red One, about his own role in WW II (he finally made it on a shoestring in 1980).  He had one star, Jeff Chandler, and otherwise had to use Warner Brothers TV actors. This did at least have the effect of a young and energetic group of soldiers, loyal to Merrill, who was able time after time to motivate them to get up and put one foot in front of the other. Fuller, like many directors, had gotten more pessimistic as he had gotten older (he was 49 when he made Merrill's Marauders) and I don't think it's a coincidence that War in Vietnam was marginally under way when the film was made; Fuller always had an interest in Asia (he made two films about the Korean War, The Steel Helmet in 1950 and Fixed Bayonets in 1951) and felt that Americans had made little attempt to understand that continent.

Fuller's war films are non-sentimental -- no references to sweethearts or family at home -- and all about getting the job done.  His battle scenes are beautifully composed geometric images of violence and confusion, in this case within a widescreen and technicolor image.