Home of the Brave | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Mark Robson |
Produced by |
Stanley Kramer Robert Stillman |
Written by |
Carl Foreman Arthur Laurents (play) |
Starring |
Douglas Dick Frank Lovejoy James Edwards Steve Brodie Jeff Corey Lloyd Bridges |
Music by | Dimitri Tiomkin |
Cinematography | Robert De Grasse |
Edited by | Harry W. Gerstad |
Production
company |
Stanley Kramer Productions
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Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date
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Running time
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88 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $370,000 or $235,000 |
Box office | $2.5 million |
Home of the Brave is a 1949 war film based on a 1946 play by Arthur Laurents. It was directed by Mark Robson and stars Douglas Dick, Jeff Corey, Lloyd Bridges, Frank Lovejoy, James Edwards, and Steve Brodie. The original play featured the protagonist being Jewish rather than black.
The National Board of Review named the film the eighth best of 1949.
Home of the Brave utilizes the recurrent theme of a diverse group of men being subjected to the horror of war and their individual reactions, in this case, the hell of jungle combat against the Japanese in World War II.
Undergoing psychoanalysis by an Army psychiatrist (Corey), paralyzed Black war veteran Private Peter Moss (Edwards) begins to walk again only when he confronts his fear of forever being an "outsider."
The film uses flashback techniques to show Moss, an Engineer topography specialist assigned to a reconnaissance patrol who are clandestinely landed from a PT boat on a Japanese-held island in the South Pacific to prepare the island for a major amphibious landing. The patrol is led by a young major (Dick) and includes Moss's lifelong white friend Finch (Bridges), whose death leaves him racked with guilt; redneck-bigot corporal T.J. (Brodie); and sturdy but troubled Sergeant Mingo (Lovejoy).