Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Gary Cooper plays one Sergeant Alvin York, in this 1941 biographical outing. York was a dirt poor farmer hailing from a village in rural Tennessee that’s just to the south of the middle of nowhere, struggling to provide for his family on the poor farm land, hoping to one day earn enough to buy some rather less stone-based farmland. He’s a rambunctious soul, if by rambunctious you mean violent alcoholic, but a sudden conversion to religion sees him stow away his jackass tendencies and become an upright citizen, steered by Walter Brennan’s Pastor Rosier Pile.
However, Pastor Pile’s radical interpretation of Christianity, that being that “maybe we shouldn’t kill each other”, will cause a problem when the US of A starts conscription into the Army for World War 1. York attempts to register as a conscientious objector, but is countered by arguments that killing for your country is a good and righteous thing, actually, and something you should all be ready to do, particularly any men in the audience of its initial release.
During the war York is the main part of a heroic action that beggars belief, but nonetheless appears to be true, overrunning a machine gun nest that has his platoon pinned near single handedly and capturing around 130 enemies. Hailed and decorated as a hero, he does not want to personally profit from his actions and instead devotes the rest of his life to improving the lot of his native rural Tennessee.
I did not know a great deal, by which I mean anything, about either Sergeant York the film or the person, so this more that held my attention throughout. For a contemporary reference, think Hacksaw Ridge except told in an era where fragmentation grenades make people go “ooft” and fall to their knees, rather than Ridge‘s method of making people fall to their knees by reducing their shins to splinters.
Cooper plays everything stoically enough, although on a personal level York’s character gets less interesting as the film goes on. He’s certainly more interesting as a young thug than a military man, but there’s a medium amount of schrift given to discussion about conscientious objector status that brings up interesting points. I’m not convinced it answers any of them, but it’s at the very least a far more considered look at them than I’d expect from Hollywood given the timing of the film.
This was well regarded at the time, although it’s not the best film in any aspect from 1941 by a long chalk, given the likes of The Maltese Falcon, Suspicion, and some little indy flick called Citizen Kane, but at the very least I’m not outraged by putting in the the same sentence as the other films. A solid story solidly told, so a solid recommendation from the so solid crew.