Attack!
With Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin.
US, 1956, 35mm, black & white, 107 min.
Print source: Park Circus
“I’ll shove this grenade down your throat and pull the pin.” Such are the pressurized stakes of Attack!, a WWII chamber drama that tracks the venomous hatred passed between an indignant lieutenant played with seething intensity by Jack Palance and his inept captain embodied by Eddie Albert, once again recruited by Aldrich as corruption incarnate. Originating from a stage play by Norman Brooks, the material is dense with verbal combat, its most hazardous battlegrounds in fact the sinister bunkers where ethical entanglements play out within a beleaguered American infantry company. Yet despite the often lengthy and jargon-filled speechifying and on-the-nose psychology of the script, Attack! accrues a certain elemental power as its narrative backstabbings and administrative oversights pile up, thanks largely to the almost Bergmanesque potency of Aldrich’s close-ups. A veritable gallery of pained macho mugs, the film locates the ambivalence of the entire military project in the sweaty fury of Jack Palance’s face.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Four Star Playhouse: The Squeeze, The Witness and The Hard Way
The Southerner
