I fully expected to love this movie, by one of my favorite directors, with an Oscar-winning performance by Gary Cooper, and about one of the great American heroes of WWI. I didn't, though, finding it to be only a so-so film. Gary Cooper, at age 40 and already with deep lines on his face and bags under his eyes, is too old to play Alvin York when he was just in his 20s, and Cooper also doesn't come off well as a country bumpkin, as York is depicted early on. The other actors are fine, including Walter Brennan (getting his fourth Oscar nomination; he won three), Ward Bond as York's hell-raising friend, Margaret Wycherly (also an Oscar nod) as York's mother, a very young June Lockhart, in one of her very first roles, as his sister, and Joan Leslie, at age 16 actually the right age to play York's girlfriend (Joan Leslie went on to a fine career).
It takes more than half of the movie's running time before York is drafted, and still more time before he joins the war effort in France. The training scenes at Camp Gordon, GA are fine, as York surprises everyone with his backwoods marksmanship skills. Character actor George Tobias--who eventually gained fame as the husband of Gladys Kravitz, the nosy next-door neighbor on "Bewitched"--is fun as another trainee. (Tobias also gives a fine performance in another Howard Hawks film, 1943's "Air Force.")
The movie finally hits its stride with the battle scene showing the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the largest in U. S. military history. While director Howard Hawks is able to show us how the men on both sides of the conflict were often "cannon fodder," charging with their rifles toward nests of machine guns, he is unable to depict the massive scope of the battle. The ending of the film is rousing and patriotic but, truth be told, it just takes too long to get there. I suppose Cooper won the Oscar because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was really honoring his character, the great war hero Alvin York, when the United States was right on the verge of entering the Second World War.
It takes more than half of the movie's running time before York is drafted, and still more time before he joins the war effort in France. The training scenes at Camp Gordon, GA are fine, as York surprises everyone with his backwoods marksmanship skills. Character actor George Tobias--who eventually gained fame as the husband of Gladys Kravitz, the nosy next-door neighbor on "Bewitched"--is fun as another trainee. (Tobias also gives a fine performance in another Howard Hawks film, 1943's "Air Force.")
The movie finally hits its stride with the battle scene showing the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the largest in U. S. military history. While director Howard Hawks is able to show us how the men on both sides of the conflict were often "cannon fodder," charging with their rifles toward nests of machine guns, he is unable to depict the massive scope of the battle. The ending of the film is rousing and patriotic but, truth be told, it just takes too long to get there. I suppose Cooper won the Oscar because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was really honoring his character, the great war hero Alvin York, when the United States was right on the verge of entering the Second World War.