Homecoming (1948)

Dreadfully Boring

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

I am surprised this film has not gotten more play over the years. The acting of Clark Gable, Lana Turner, and Anne Baxter here is great. John Hodiak as Dr. Sunday is very good. Ray Collins (Lt. Tragg on Perry Mason) is Lt. Col. Avery Silver and he is so good in his support role that the movie has to recover a bit when he is killed.Strange, Paul Osborn (East Of Eden), the writer here gets more credit for other films but his writing of Sidney Kingsley's (East of Eden's) story is just fine. Being an MGM film, there is a huge studio cast that is un-credited including Alan Hale Jr. (Gilligan's Island) and Arthur O'Connell who would go on into many bigger roles than this film. The story is a bit more strict than the actual reality of war. I mean Baxter is super human as the wife waiting at home sacrificing every thing waiting for her man to return. Meanwhile, Turner and Gable develop an amazing chemistry here. They seem to keep avoiding the inevitable until quite late in the film.Even later is the ending which really does some moralizing, but yet is so appropriate. The film starts in the present, then flashes back to before the war, then takes us through 3 1/2 years of war and then comes back to the present, only to flash back again for 1 month after the war. The script is strong enough to support the talented cast.The most memorable idea is "Will they be able to adjust to us when we come home?" While the ending does address the problem of someone returning from the war well, it is a notch below the message in an earlier more powerful film - "The Best Years of Our Lives". Still, this film does deliver that message and several others quite successfully.

Ulysses ,what a name for a major whose odyssey took place in WW2,who learned after his "voyage" that success is no success at all,that selfishness leads to nowhere and that a doctor's work is to help his fellow men;we are not far from Stahl's "magnificent obsession" in which a reckless playboy was told that a man (Jesus ) had given his life so man was saved .It's strange that the world Ulysse lives in is full of altruistic persons ,from "Snapshot" the nurse who never has a rest till all the wounded soldiers are operated to the Chester doctor (Hodiak) whose war has begun long before WW2,and from "Monk" the unfortunate soldier to the good doctor Sunday (again,what a name!).The US army looks more like Salvation Army! The title is partly a misnomer because it's essentially a long flashback (actually several flashbacks) dealing with the hard life of a military medical team in the war.Thus Gable is torn between his faithful wife (Anne Baxter) and his courageous nurse (their relationship is much too predictable).Best scene is perhaps the "Roman " bath :we feel that Gable is very human when she takes her bath and he 's got to force himself to stay calm and not to have a little look !

Movies like this one are discoveries. Mervyn LeRoy was a director that always knew where to go for a good story and get amazing performances out of his actors. In this film he demonstrates how to create a movie that holds the viewer's attention. It is based on a story by Sidney Kingsley and was adapted by Jan Lustig. The movie shows the American cinema at its best as it combines a look to WWII and a forbidden love, something that probably had a hard time passing the censor's scissors. Mr. LeRoy makes the picture highly engrossing because of the way he presents the story. Men and women, for the first time were in the front lines; the men as combatants, or in this case, a doctor and the women as nurses, or filling in for the jobs the men couldn't do because they did the fighting.Clark Gable was an actor that made this picture the joy it is to watch by making us believe he is this surgeon, Dr. Lee Johnson, a man that awakes to reality when he has to deal first hand with treating the wounded soldiers. Mr. Gable casts such a virile shadow in his best work that we know where he stood all the time. His Dr. Johnson shows the strain of the stress of war, the loyalty to his wife at home and the sudden love he finds for "Snapshot" McCall. He remains throughout the film focused in helping the soldiers, until the passion he feels for his nurse, gets the best of him.Lana Turner is the real surprise of the movie. She is playing a role that probably would not have been offered to her because of the heat and glamour she projected. Her nurse McCall is a woman that life has made a cynic because of the tragedy in her own life and the fact that she is separated from her young son. The magnetism between Ms. Turner and Mr. Gable is what keeps us interested in the movie. Lana Turner shows she had the potential for playing dramatic parts that were not offered to her; she was type-casted as the siren, or the sophisticate in most of her work, but she had the range and the potential that probably only Mr. LeRoy, who discovered Ms. Turner, saw she had. Only a director like Mr. LeRoy could elicit this performance from Ms. Turner.Anne Baxter is the wife that stays home hoping her man will come back alive. Her Penny Johnson makes her appear as insecure because she perceives her husband's affection might lie with the nurse that he complains to her at the beginning of his correspondence. John Hodiak plays the friend, Dr. Sunday, a man who has his feet on the ground and believes he should help the poor people of his area, instead of the society types that Dr. Johnson attracts.The movie is satisfying because is tells a good story with characters one is easily identified with. Mr. LeRoy was the one that got all the elements together and gave us this classic film that is timeless.

I found the film quite engaging, but as a M*A*S*H fan, I couldn't help but notice how many times plot lines from this movie showed up in the series.1) Hawkeye and Hotlips caught under fire trying to get back to their unit, and winding up in the clinches? Gable and Turner did it first. 2) Henry Blake dying suddenly on his return home? No return home, but an unexpected attack on a hospital unit leaves the commander dead. 3) BJ's first time in the unit, and how it made him sick? Gable's first day in the unit, and the wear and tear on him. 4) Hotlips? Snapshot. 5) BJ wanting to tell his wife about "straying", but talked out of it by Hawkeye? Gable DID tell his wife. 6) Hawkeye's buddy the writer, dying on the table in front of Hawkeye? Monk, Gable's delivery man from home, dying in front of him.It's a good movie, and well written. And I think Gable and Turner were great. You can probably find more links to M*A*S*H than I did!