Cinema: S.O.P.

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? Daddy, it says here, invaded Sicily. It also says here that the invasion of Sicily, as veterans of the 1943 operation may or may not recall, was really just a million laughs. Like, haha, the pointy-headed captain (Dick Shawn) who went by the regulation book right down to the last typographical error. Or the takeover lieutenant (James Coburn) who possessed a unique gift for bringing disorder out of chaos. And remember the no-neck sergeant (Aldo Ray) who hollered so loud he scared the roaches out of the popcorn? Not to mention all those dogfaces from Flatbush who seldom shot anything more dangerous than dice, and when anybody said “tanks” respectfully replied “yuh welcome.”

The plot is also S.O.P. When Company C charges into a town called Valerno, the Italian commander bellows: “Do you surrender?” The U.S. captain snarls: “Hell, no. Do you surrender?” The Italian answers amiably: “Of course.” Director Blake Edwards, having attained the humoristic high point of his picture, should have surrendered too. Instead, he stages the usual Bacchic brawl that looks like the crowd scene from the Palermo production of La Bohème. After the Germans recapture the village, he contrives to involve the captain, giggling and wriggling under ribbons and rouge, in some transvestite titillations that are altogether too sweaty for comfort. And in the last reel he runs through one of those big silly battle sequences in which six Yanks take on 600 Germans, slice them up like liverwurst, recapture the village without a casualty. Daddy, in a word, found war hellarious.