The Americanization of Emily

I come to the end of the "Controversial Classics" with 1964's The Americanization of Emily, directed by Arthur Hiller and written by Paddy Chayefsky. It's a strange hybrid of genres--romantic comedy and a black war comedy. It's as if Catch-22 were combined with Brief Encounter.

Set in London immediately before D-Day, the film stars James Garner as a "dog-robber," an aide to an admiral who is responsible for getting him everything he needs, whether it is liquor, chocolate, or women. Garner is good at his job, but most importantly he is out of combat situations, for he is an unapologetic coward. Julie Andrews is a war widow who works as a driver, and after initially being shocked by Garner's roguish manner, eventually falls in love with him.

Things get complicated when the admiral (Melvyn Douglas) gets squirrelly and tells one of his other aides (James Coburn) that they are to make a movie about the demolition engineers that will land on Omaha Beach. This means the filmmakers will be the first men on the beach. When Coburn can't find cameraman, he tells Garner that they will do it themselves, which is not what Garner wants to hear.

What makes this film worthwhile is Chayefsky's dialogue. It's full of long speeches about the attitude taken about war. Should bravery and valor be exalted, or should it be discouraged, so war won't be venerated. There are a lot of similarities to novels like Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five, which detail the inanity and insanity of military regulations.

What drags the film down is the rather conventional romance between Garner and Andrews. I didn't feel they had much chemistry (for as talented as Andrews is, she's never struck me as sexy) and it was difficult to understand her about-face on Garner's character. Garner is quite good though, especially in his scenes with Coburn, who is a fascinating character--he sees Garner's side of things, and agrees with them most of the time, but is also an Annapolis graduate who can't resist feelings of Navy pride that make him behave in strange ways.

It's hard to know exactly what was controversial about this film. I suppose that it was only 20 years after D-Day and those involved were shown honestly (cowardice and drunkenness and all) wouldn't have made this film a big hit in VFW halls. Today, after the way the U.S. has viewed war after the last forty-five years, it seems rather tame.