The film shows the very worst aspects of war: the reckless cruelty, the sacrifice of innocent civilians, the nightmare of blind command turned fanatic by war craze, blasting cities to ruins, the 100% destruction with nothing good to come out of it at all, and so forth.
Richard Burton is good as usual and carries the film on his shoulders, although he makes a rather melancholy part, as a bullied German officer who gets dispatched around to be out of the way with his disciplinary second thoughts and objections, and finally ends up in France after D-day to encounter the American invasion, headed here by Robert Mitchum and Rod Steiger. Burton's character is a disillusioned veteran who has seen the worst and is forced to constantly see even worse things. Ultimately he manages to save some civilians in a bombed out French town and avert some massive German cruelty, but he was old here, already 54 with only 5 years left to live, and his character reminds you somewhat of Nicholas Ray's old general in "Hair", the same kind of withered decaying shadow of what he used to be. It's not a very good film, although it has some inteersting points, and ends up in the mediocre B-faculty.
Richard Burton is good as usual and carries the film on his shoulders, although he makes a rather melancholy part, as a bullied German officer who gets dispatched around to be out of the way with his disciplinary second thoughts and objections, and finally ends up in France after D-day to encounter the American invasion, headed here by Robert Mitchum and Rod Steiger. Burton's character is a disillusioned veteran who has seen the worst and is forced to constantly see even worse things. Ultimately he manages to save some civilians in a bombed out French town and avert some massive German cruelty, but he was old here, already 54 with only 5 years left to live, and his character reminds you somewhat of Nicholas Ray's old general in "Hair", the same kind of withered decaying shadow of what he used to be. It's not a very good film, although it has some inteersting points, and ends up in the mediocre B-faculty.