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I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Very disappointing...

the audience applauded

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

John Garfield plays Al Schmid, a single friend of married couple Jim & Ella Merchant (Jim Ridgely and Ann Doran) and their teenage daughter Loretta (Ann Todd). Like happily married people are wont to do, they set Al up on a blind date, against his will, with Ruth Hartley (Eleanor Parker). But, after resisting getting involved with her, they begin dating.One day at Al's workplace, where he is a welder, he learns of a friend's enlistment into the Marines and decides to sign up himself. Ruth and Al have a last date, with Al insisting that she forget about him, given his unknown future. However, when she goes to meet his departure train, he is overjoyed and gives her an engagement ring.In the Battle of the Pacific, Al and his squadron find themselves in a foxhole assigned to prevent the Japanese from breaching their line at night. We briefly get to know several of the soldiers, including Lee Diamond (Dane Clark), before the attack. During the attack, many of them are killed but Al ends up single-handedly saving the day. However, he is wounded by a suicide bomber in the final scene of the battle.Later in a hospital, Al learns that he can't see, a condition that doesn't change even after he has surgery. Feeling sorry for himself, he dictates a letter through a nurse to tell Ruth that he is relieving her of any obligation to marry him. Though his friend Lee, the nurse, the doctors, and others try, he will not be convinced or persuaded to try to return to a "normal" life, given his condition. Instead, he stays in the hospital until they no longer allow him to remain there.He returns home on a train, with Lee in tow. However, he does not want to see Ruth and, when he does anyway, will not accept her undying love regardless of her encouraging words. He does not feel that he is a real man anymore, and his pride will not allow her to take care of him. But when he is awarded the Navy Cross for his service in the Pacific, and his vision allows him to "see" a fuzzy red-topped taxicab as Ruth escorts him afterwards, we get our happy ending.This film's Screenplay was nominated for a Best Writing Academy Award.

I have always liked john Garfield and his films. It is a shame he is not better known except for film buffs. He was an excellent actor who always gave a spot on performance. This film is no different. Before he is blinded he is easy going. Once he is blinded you can see a complete change in him. You can see and feel how bad war really is. I found this film to be fairly accurate. My dad was in the pacific in ww2 and told me how it was. I also found that Garfield could transition easily from role to role. I saw the despair in him when he had to figure how to deal with a new way of living with his handicap. I remember Mr. Russell in the other great war film. This film and the other one on par with each other.

John Garfield plays a Marine who is blinded by a grenade while fighting on Guadalcanal and who has to learn to live with his disability. He has all the stereotypical notions about blindness, and is sure he'll be a burden to everyone. The hospital staff and his fellow wounded Marines can't get through to him. Neither can his girl back home played by Eleanor Parker. He's stubborn and blinded by his own fears, self pity, and prejudices. It's a complex role that Garfield carries off memorably in a great performance that keeps one watching in spite of the ever present syrupy melodrama. The best scenes are on Guadalcanal, where he's in a machine gun nest trying to fend off the advancing Japanese soldiers in a hellish looking night time battle, and later a dream sequence in the hospital where he sees himself walking down a train platform with a white cane, dark glasses, and holding out a tin cup, all the while his girlfriend walks backward away from the camera.

In the immediate aftermath following World War II, sound minds in Hollywood tried to distance themselves from the mindless flag-waving that is a natural ingredient in a war effort. "Best Years of Our Lives' and even 'Gentleman's Agreement' investigated the way Americans looked at themselves in the wake of the war, but Delmer Daves' "Pride of the Marines" beat them to it.The film is about Philadelphia smart alec John Garfield who goes to war as a marine and after a nightmarish evening in a foxhole, with Japanese soldiers eerily crying out at him and his buddies "Mariiines, tonight you die!", he is blinded by a hand-grenade, and dumps his girlfriend back home rather than have to depend on her after coming home.Delmer Daves is uncompromising in his depiction on these men who are brave, as it were, almost by coincidence. They are there, in the foxhole, and when shot at, they react. So much for heroism, but they get the job done. And then comes the self-pity, the dark, gloomy sense of humor. Garfield is in angry denial of his blindness and the film makes no excuses, "There's no free candy for anyone in this world", as his buddy tells him. The same guy, a Jew, played by Dane Clark, reminds him, "In a war somebody gets it, and you're it. Everybody's got problems! When I get back, some guys won't hire me, because my name is Diamond".Great movies are made with guts like these, and if the first half hour of 'Pride of the Marines' fails to rise to the occasion completely, from then on it evolves into a true work of art. You weep, and you ponder, you ache and you hope against hope. Well, simply: art.