The American public was riding a collective high in the spring of 1945, with the Third Reich having officially surrendered to the Allies in early May of that year.
With the fighting in Europe now wrapping up, the United States military turned its full attention to the Pacific theatre of World War II, with the hope of bringing this destructive conflict to a swift end.
Several weeks after Germany’s surrender, American cinemas were able to capitalize off this massive change in fortune through the release of Edward Dmytryk’s Back to Bataan, a film that chronicles the US’ attempt to liberate the Philippines from Japanese control.
Now, I’ve sampled a decent number of WWII-era propaganda for this blog, including another war film starring John Wayne called Operation Pacific (1951).
While that movie was a lot more easy-going in its tone, Back to Bataan features a much more palpable sense of urgency, probably due to the fact that it was shot and released while the Philippines campaign was still underway.
In fact, Dmytryk’s film could be seen as a form of cinematic retribution on behalf of the US military, who had been handed a monumental defeat when Japan successfully invaded and conquered the Philippine islands several years earlier.
Even though the war would eventually come to an end in summer of 1945, Back to Bataan was probably viewed as a way to keep American morale high in the interim, with a fictionalized recount of the hardship US soldiers and local resistance fighters endured to take back the commonwealth territory.
Admittedly, this “ripped-from-the-headlines” kind of story doesn’t hold nearly the same weight as it did 78 years ago, especially with world-shaking conflicts in Europe and the Middle East holding everyone’s attention in the final months of 2023.
So while Back to Bataan is pretty dated, it at least serves as a time capsule of a lesser known chapter of WWII, with some well-produced action sequences that hammer home the desperation and brutality that characterized the Pacific theatre of that war.
Instead of sailing the high seas like he did in Operation Pacific, John Wayne mostly sticks to dry land this time around as Joseph Madden, an army colonel who is tasked with mobilizing Filipino guerilla fighters to drive Japanese troops out of their homeland.
After making contact with some eager recruits, Madden and his men find themselves in a hopeless situation after US forces are decimated following the Battle of Bataan in early 1942.
Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, this small resistance group is determined to liberate the islands from this invading force, especially with the grandson of Filipino revolutionary Andrés Bonifacio (played by Anthony Quinn) on their side.
Some may bristle at my use of the word “propaganda” to describe Back to Bataan, but I think it’s pretty apt.
Not only does the film begin with a title card thanking the US armed forces for their aid in the production of this film, but it’s followed up by a parade of supposedly real-life American POWs rescued from Japanese prison camps in the Philippines.
While you could brush this off as just patriotic window dressing, Dmytryk and his screenwriters actively bake these themes and images into key points of the film, usually to its detriment.
For example, the film opens with a puzzling flash forward, where US Army Rangers raid a Japanese prisoner camp near Cabanatuan City in 1945.
This scene is only included because the real-life Raid at Cabanatuan (also known as “The Great Raid”) took place in January of that year and the filmmakers wanted to include it even if they couldn’t organically work it into their story that’s set three years earlier.
By introducing the movie with such a momentous military victory, Dmytryk and his team immediately deflate the ongoing tension in favour presenting the audience with a comforting narrative right off the bat.
American movie-goers are presented with further nationalistic navel gazing once the actual plot gets underway.
This includes a moment when some Filipino school children take turns listing all the great things the US has done during its occupation of their country (like importing soda pop, baseball, and Hollywood movies).
The school’s principal then adds his two cents by proclaiming that America taught the Filipino people that “men are free or they are nothing,” underplaying the fact that the US took control of these islands through shedding lots of blood in the Philippine–American War (1899-1902).
However, the principal’s martyr status is solidified once he is executed by the Japanese several minutes later, firmly establishing the Americans as the benevolent colonizers in this scenario.
Revisionist history aside, the scenes are pretty blunt and heavy-handed in their presentation, focusing on political talking points rather than the humanity of the people caught up in this conflict.
Thankfully, all this patriotic cheerleading is largely balanced out by the filmmakers’ sound technical expertise, particularly when it comes time to blow shit up.
Rather than pushing the complicated action off screen, or hiding it behind convenient edits, Dmytryk’s team relies on long takes that keep a lot of the explosions in-camera.
Special credit should be also given to the stunt team on this project, who were willing to stand uncomfortably close to these pyrotechnics to create a tangible sense of danger.
This praise must be extended to Wayne himself, who noticeably performed a lot of his own stunts for this project, including a scene where he was tied to a leather harness to simulate being blown away by a mortar shell.
For the time, Back to Bataan also features some particularly grizzly kills that highlight the nasty jungle fighting that the Pacific front of WWII was known for.
Midway through the film a Filipino resistance fighter takes out a Japanese soldier with a throwing knife and the director is not shy about showing the bloody blade visibly sticking out of both sides of the sentry’s neck.
And despite not being shot in the Philippines, for obvious reasons, the filmmakers do a decent job of replicating the look and feel of a south-pacific battlefield with some interior sets and scenic exterior locations in southern California.
I understand that this visceral action aesthetic is meant to reinforce the movie’s propagandistic aims, but the caveman part of my brain can’t help but admire the high level of craftsmanship on display.
And while Wayne puts in the kind of stilted, stoic performance you would expect from this kind of film, the rest of the cast is filled out by some decent supporting performances that give the dry military proceedings some life.
Outside of veteran character actors like Beulah Bondi and Paul Fix, Anthony Quinn puts in some good work as the film’s co-lead, whose Aragorn-like reluctance to accept his destiny as a leader injects the story with some much-needed humanity.
Still, your enjoyment of this project is entirely dependent on whether or not you can disassociate it from the politics of the time.
While the US’ entry into WWII was undoubtedly a just course of action, some of the government’s domestic policies during this period were decidedly not, like the internment of Japanese citizens from 1942 to 1946.
Despite not being explicitly stated in the film itself, I can’t shake the feeling that movies like Back to Bataan were made to reassure American audiences that their xenophobic paranoia towards certain groups is justified during wartime.
But with all those caveats out of the way, I still think Dmytryk and his team put together a slickly produced piece of entertainment that works as an action movie and an interesting window into the past.
And if you’re still concerned about the film’s propagandistic aims, just know that the negative impact of one war movie from 1945 pales in comparison to all the social media misinformation currently being spread about conflicts in Israel and Ukraine.
That may seem like cold comfort, but in today’s incendiary political landscape old movies like Back to Bataan seem quaint and harmless by comparison.
That’s not a ringing endorsement, by any stretch, but these days I’ll take some dumb escapism where I can find it.
Verdict:
6/10
Corner store companion:
Werther’s Original Caramel Hard Candies (because it’s something your grandpa would enjoy)
Fun facts:
-Release date: May 31, 1945
-Box office: $2,490,000
-Despite the strong nationalistic themes present in Back to Bataan, director Edward Dmytryk was actually a member of the Communist Party in 1945 and was later called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Alongside nine other directors, screenwriters, and producers —collectively known as the “Hollywood 10” — Dmytryk refused to testify before the committee and was blacklisted from the American film business as a result. However, Dmytryk managed to worm his way back into Hollywood after telling the committee about his former communist associations in 1951. He would go on to work steadily throughout the next three decades, including high-profile gigs like The Caine Mutiny in 1954 (which earned him seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture).
-The Axis occupation of the Philippines officially ended on Aug. 15, 1945 following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki earlier that month. Japanese forces in the Philippines were ordered to surrender by the mainland government, who officially capitulated on Sept. 2 aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
-The Philippines finally received its independence on July 4, 1946 through the Treaty of Manila, which relinquished US sovereignty over the land.
Corner Store Cinema 