Cinema: The New Pictures, Nov. 14, 1949

Battleground (MGM) is a story about the Battle of the Bulge. Filmed with a sentimental, Mauldin-type humor and some standard war movie heroics, it concentrates on one squad of the 101st Airborne Division, which was enveloped near Bastogne by the surprise Nazi breakthrough of December 1944. The eight-day defense of Bastogne is gallantly manned by several of MGM's regulars (Van Johnson, John Hodiak, George Murphy, Ricardo Montalban), who were toughened up before the filming by two weeks' basic training, but who still look too full-faced for their battle-weary roles.

Though Scripter Robert Pirosh...

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