Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 158: Sour Krauts

It's interesting to watch some of these films from the late 1940s and early 1950s as the subject of the Second World War starts to produce more interesting ideas. A case in point is Decision Before Dawn a film which focuses on the closing year of the conflict when the majority of Germans had resigned to the fact that they had lost the war. It follows a group of American soldiers who recruit German prisoners of war to spy on their former allies in order to escape their camps. One of the latest recruits is a young soldier simply known as 'Happy' whose friend was killed by other prisoners of wars for spouting his ideas about the war. Happy is chosen to go on a mission with the team along with 'Tiger' a cynical man who the Americans distrust because he came back without his partner while the American chosen to go with them is Rennick one of the allies who doesn't agree with teaming up with Germans. We then see most of the mission through the eyes of Happy as he sees the differing attitudes of his countrymen at the tail end of the war with some surrendering to their ultimate fate and some still feeling patriotic. Happy then is able to infiltrate himself safely into the fold by making friends with a commander but also sees what could possibly happen to him when another deserter is executed. With Happy meeting up with Rennick and Tiger they still face adversity going back to the camp as the Germans start to cotton on to their plan.

Decision Before Dawn is a film that I struggled with but one that had its merits which was mainly creating an amount of peril throughout Happy's mission. The initial set-up of introducing the idea of what the Germans and the Americans are trying to accomplish was a little bit slapdash and I didn't understand it right off the bat but then things got interesting once the three set off. I liked the fact that there was dissension in the ranks between Tiger and Rennick and also the fact that this wasn't the main story instead it was the morally torn Happy who got the bulk of the work. To his credit Oskar Werner was able to carry the film and did a good job in an interesting role with his facial expressions speaking bundles about what Happy was going through. The only other cast member who really had an impact on me was O.E. Hasse as the brutal commander Oberst Von Ecker who was a great German villain. The other thing that impressed me were the effects and at times I really did feel that these three men were in genuine peril with bombs going off all around them and the final tense scenes were real edge-of-your-seat stuff. The main problem I had was that most of it was fairly forgettable and in terms of its place on the Oscar nominations list it almost scenes like a last minute pick as it doesn't seem to have nearly as many nods as its competitors. So Decision Before Dawn is a solid Second World War movie but there isn't a lot to mark it out from a lot of the other films based around this conflict.