In America,this film is underrated.In my native France,it's praised by intellectuals,and it's part of what we call "ciné-club movies".In high school,this very year,my son studied passages from the book as well as scenes from the movie. Trumbo's movie might be the strongest condemnation of war that had ever been filmed.Using two colors -and even three-,toying with present and past (could we speak seriously of future?),he makes the dream of such great predecessors as Jean Renoir (la grande illusion) come true:War is impossible,because how can a wise race could tolerate such an horror? Three colors indeed: -the bleak black and white in the hospital,where asceticism rivals the best of Robert Bresson. -the luminous,radiant scenes of Johnny's past,old forties and fifties color are constantly in evidence in those memories that recall Wyler's or Ford's heyday. -the dark and threatening color that envelops the nightmares in the ruins where Johnny tries to catch up with his only love. Johnny is helpless, his loneliness is more frightening than you'll ever experiment.God can't hear you call.The merciful Jesus of Sunday school whom Johnny's mother taught him to fear and to trust has disappeared with Donald Sutherland on a runaway train.Now it's a deaf and dumb Greek divinity -check the shots of the surrealistic nightmare-,who repeats in your suffering body,in your tormented soul ,in your mind on fire,that you cannot escape your inhumane fate. The nurse provides solace for a while.She tries to communicate with him .She believes in the dignity of man,be he a peace of flesh.It encompasses masturbation as well as simply saying "merry Xmas!"But for all the others,particularly for the officer,he's someone (something?)you must hide ,you must gag,because his world has gotten no place for a human being who represents such a slur on his pride and his glory. Johnny got a raw deal....

If you are at all squeamish than please avoid seeing Johnny Got His Gun. Not there is anything to see that is particularly, but Timothy Bottoms character in and of himself is one frightening example of what can come out of war and should it.

The unkindest cut of all is minutes before the armistice was declared in operation and the guns ceased, Timothy Bottoms receives a blast from a mortar shell. Everything that makes one relate to what's around is now gone from him, four limbs, the windows to the senses all gone. But more of his brain is intact than the doctors realize and the film is narrated by Bottoms trying to communicate and also his memories of much better times before the Great War.

Dalton Trumbo of the Hollywood Ten had been back working for over a decade now from the blacklist, but here he was not writing a script but also was the director filming his own novel. No doubt certain people were looking for a hidden subversive message. But the only message that Johnny Got His Gun delivers is war is very bad thing and does terrible things to some human bodies.

Of course the title is a past tense of that opening verse of George M. Cohan's period flag waver Over There. So many young men from so many countries marched to war with those songs thinking war was some kind of honor thing. Honor if there ever was any in war was lost in that conflict where automatic weapons, poison gas, and the tank came to the fore. Kids with 19th century ideals like Bottoms as we see his reminiscences came up against something that flag waving nostrums didn't take into account.

Bottoms is brilliant in the film that first gave him stardom and the rest of the cast performs well. Credit goes to Dalton Trumbo for a necessary, but harrowing piece of cinema.

This film is almost hard to talk about. The Dalton Trumbo novel involves a man who has been dismantled in war. He is just a trunk and a head, with his body hanging on. He still has his sexual organs. He is immobile, of course, and dependent for everything on his caretakers. One young woman, a nurse, take pity on him and gives him a sexual experience. LIke any of us, he has dreams, but he is unable to express them to anyone. He needs stimulation but is kept in a dark room and approached on rare occasions. If there is a true nightmare, this would be it. The most devastating thing is that he is really young and will probably live a long time. We are kept involved with his thoughts through a kind of personal narration. It may be the saddest film I've ever seen.