Back to Bataan
| Back to Bataan | |
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Theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Edward Dmytryk |
| Produced by | Robert Fellows (exec.) |
| Screenplay by |
Ben Barzman Richard H. Landau |
| Story by |
Aeneas MacKenzie William Gordon |
| Starring |
John Wayne Anthony Quinn |
| Music by | Roy Webb |
| Cinematography | Nicholas Musuraca |
| Edited by | Marston Fay |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures (US) |
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Release date
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Running time
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95 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $2,490,000 |
Back to Bataan is a 1945 World War II war film directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring John Wayne and Anthony Quinn. It depicts events (some fictionalized and some actual) that took place after the Battle of Bataan (1941–42) on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. The working title of the film was The Invisible Army.
The film begins with the then-recent US Army Ranger raid at Cabanatuan prisoner-of-war camp. The film then flashes back to March 1942.
As the U.S. Army under General MacArthur struggles to hold on at Bataan against the Japanese, Colonel Joseph Madden (John Wayne) orders one of his officers, Captain Andrés Bonifácio (Anthony Quinn), to shape up. Bonifácio has been under a strain because his sweetheart Dalisay Delgado (Fely Franquelli) is apparently collaborating with the Japanese, broadcasting propaganda over the radio.
Later, Madden is picked to slip through the lines to organize Filipinos to fight as guerrillas against the occupying Japanese forces. His commanding officer lets him know that Delgado is actually using the propaganda broadcasts to secretly transmit valuable information to them, but he is ordered to reveal that fact to no one, not even Bonifácio.
Madden makes contact with one group of Filipino resistance fighters, but as they set out to on their first mission, they encounter middle-aged American school teacher Bertha Barnes (Beulah Bondi). She and her students join the guerrillas after the Japanese hang Buenaventura Bello (Vladimir Sokoloff), the principal of her school and a dear friend, for refusing to take down the American flag.
Setting out on their first mission to destroy a Japanese gasoline dump, Madden and his men stumble upon the Bataan Death March and realize that Bataan has fallen. Many of the Filipinos lose heart, so to fan their will to fight, Madden finds and engineers the rescue of Captain Bonifácio from the Death March. Bonifácio happens to be the grandson of Andrés Bonifacio, a national hero. It works; for the group's first mission the guerrillas come to the Flilipino village and hang the Japanese officer who ordered the killing of Bello; and over the next year, Madden and his guerrillas attack Japanese outposts, supply depots, military airfields and other installations.
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