Beach Red
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Beach Red

Beach Red is a 1967 American war film directed, co-written, produced by, and starring Cornel Wilde. An adaptation of the novella of the same title by Peter Bowman, the film depicts a landing by the United States Marine Corps on an unnamed Japanese-held Pacific island. The film and Bowman's novel were based on the author's own experiences in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Pacific Campaign. It co-stars Rip Torn, Burr DeBenning, Jean Wallace, and Jaime Sánchez.

The film was released by United Artists on August 3, 1967. At the 40th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Film Editing (Frank P. Keller).

The 30-minute opening sequence of the film depicts an opposed beach landing. In one scene during the landing, a Marine is shown with his arm blown off, similar to Thomas C. Lea III's 1944 painting The Price.

As Americans are shown consolidating their gains, flashbacks illustrate the lives of American and Japanese combatants. Shifting first-person voice-over in a stream-of-consciousness style is also used to portray numerous characters' thoughts.

The film contains large sections of voice-over narration, often juxtaposed with still photographs of wives, etc. (who are anachronistically dressed in 1967 attire). Many soldiers in the film shed tears, and the narrative displays an unusual amount of sympathy for the enemy.[citation needed]

In one scene, an injured Cliff is lying close to an injured Japanese soldier in a scene paralleling the one from All Quiet on the Western Front with Paul Bäumer and Gérard Duval. Just after the two soldiers bond, other Marines appear and kill the Japanese soldier, distressing Cliff.

During the Allied amphibious operations in World War II, designated invasion beaches were given a codename by color, such as "Beach Red," "Beach White," "Beach Blue", etc. There was a "Beach Red" on virtually every assaulted island, in accordance with the standard beach designation hierarchy.

Beach Red was filmed on location in the Philippines using troops of the Philippine Armed Forces. The sequence of the Japanese dressed in Marine uniforms was inspired by Bowman's book, which mentions Japanese wearing American helmets to infiltrate American lines. There were no known incidents in the Pacific where large numbers of Japanese donned American uniforms and attempted to infiltrate a beachhead. The action, though, is similar in some ways to a large-scale Japanese counterattack and banzai charge conducted on July 7, 1944, on Saipan, which was defeated by U.S. Army troops with heavy losses.

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