Battleground

"The First Great Picture Of The Second World War!"

1949 1h 58m EN

👍

6.7

SOLID

★6.7TMDB · 108

ActionDramaWar

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division are fighting for their country amidst the rugged terrain of Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944. Holley and his American compatriots have already seen one of their own, Roderigues, perish under enemy fire. The men try to rebuff another series of Nazi attacks, but what they really need is a change in the weather. Without clear skies, they'll never get the air support they need.

“The First Great Picture Of The Second World War!”

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Cast

Van Johnson
Holley
John Hodiak
Jarvess
Ricardo Montalban
Roderigues
George Murphy
'Pop' Stazak
Marshall Thompson
Jim Layton
Jerome Courtland
Abner Spudler
Don Taylor
Standiferd
Bruce Cowling
Wolowicz

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: William A. Wellman
Writers: Robert Pirosh, Robert Pirosh
Languages: German, French, English, Czech
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

ERA

Did you know

77 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 4 languages: German, French, English, Czech.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by William A. Wellman, shot by Paul Vogel. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Lennie Hayton. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor John D. Dunning shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Van Johnson and John Hodiak and Ricardo Montalban carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "The First Great Picture Of The Second World War!".

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt0041163 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

William A. Wellman directs. Paul Vogel behind the camera. Lennie Hayton scores. John D. Dunning cuts. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in German, French, English, Czech.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

177 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
2Dialogue crosses 4 languages: German, French, English, Czech.
3Directed by William A. Wellman, shot by Paul Vogel. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Lennie Hayton. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor John D. Dunning shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Van Johnson and John Hodiak and Ricardo Montalban carry the top of the cast.
7Marketing tagline: "The First Great Picture Of The Second World War!".
8IMDB entry: tt0041163 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

The technical file

Cinematography: Paul Vogel
Original score: Lennie Hayton
Editing: John D. Dunning
Makeup / hair: Jack Dawn
Runtime: 118 min · 1h 58m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Original language: EN
IMDB: Battleground (1949)

Awards

Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

William A. Wellman

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

John Chard2019-06-04
★ 8/10
The Battered Bastards Of Bastogne. Dedicated to the battered bastards of Bastogne, this major player in the war film genre is directed by William Wellman & tells the story of a U.S. Army division involved in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The terrific cast features George Murphy, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban, Van Johnson and James Whitmore. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and won two - one for Robert Pirosh's bold and fluctuating screenplay and one for Paul Vogel's realism inducing black-and-white cinematography. Battleground is an important war film in many ways. Coming as it did at the tail end of the 40s, it was not required to be a flag waving morale booster for a country at war. Free of this burden, Wellman & Pirosh (an actual veteran of the Bastogne engagement), crafted a grunts eye view of the war. Forcing us the viewers to spend the whole of the movie with one army squad (the 101st Airborne Division), we get to know them, their fears & peccadilloes etc. Pirosh cleverly telling it as it was, scared men doing their duty. It's that we have been with them as their persona's have been laid bare, that makes the battle sequences even more potent. The jokes have stopped, the camaraderie and harmless rivalries replaced by men crying for their mothers or in some mud hole fighting for their lives. This snow covered and fog shrouded part of Belgium a bleak canvas for the harshness of war (amazingly shot on the lot). It's a stunningly structured film, one that doesn't resort to type, it subverts the many war film plot developments that are rife in genre pieces that both preceded and came post its release. The cast are uniformly strong, and all get get ample time to impact on the narrative. Something that isn't always the case with ensemble pieces. Somebody else was strong too, Producer Dore Schary, who had to fight an unconvinced Louis B. Mayer (MGM head man) to get the film made. Schary's faith in the piece was rewarded as the film became a critical darling and a box office winner. It's not hard to see why for this is a realistic and gritty look at the hardships of war and those that fought in it. Influencing many that followed it by entertaining without gusto histrionics, Battleground is still very much a template war film. 8.5/10
CinemaSerf2025-06-04
★ 7/10
Based on the true life activities of an American division shortly after the D-Day landings in the winter of 1944, this offers one of the most authentic interpretations of the wartime experiences of a dozen or so ordinary soldiers far from home, cold, hungry and fearful. They are led by “Holley” (Van Johnson) but rank means precious little really as the squad try to navigate the foggy countryside around Bastogne with little ammunition or food. Meantime, the Nazis are plotting their own major counter-offensive and with a constant barrage of sniper fire, leaflet dropping and radio broadcasts spelling doom and gloom for them, these squaddies find themselves living on their nerves more and more. What stands out with this drama is that it avoids the more rabble-rousing and jingoistic aspects of warfare cinema and concentrates more on just how tough their situation proved on even the most robust of these men. Men, it should be said, who were not professional soldiers nor were they remotely prepared - physically or psychologically - for the attritional aspects of this evolving, taut, scenario. Each man has their own way of dealing with this, and in many cases these ways are neither reliable nor consistent. They can vacillate between despair and hysteria, terror and optimism and a really effective cast deliver with authenticity. George Murphy’s “Slazak” probably does best for me, but there are plenty of others treading on these eggshells including one of his more natural contributions from Ricardo Montalban, as well as John Hodiak - but it’s really the ensemble approach to the storytelling that demonstrates just how vital teamwork and inter-reliance were for survival, for sanity and for motivation. William Wellman keeps that tension going potently with only a modicum of pyrotechnics and gunfire, but with plenty of conversation - rational, irrational and downright bizarre, as we head to no particular conclusion for these men but a piece of a jigsaw puzzle about which they didn’t really know their own part much less the bigger picture. It’s a film about the ordinary folk who fought in WWII and for two hours presents us with quite a compelling and emotional character study.