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11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 Superb package of famous war time Americana Dec 30, 2008
By Douglas M
"This is the Army" is the film version of the famous war time stage musical, a model of propaganda using a cast from the armed forces, the music of Irving Berlin, that tower of American music, and raising over $9 million for Army Emergency Relief. This was the highest grossing box office film of 1942. The film lovingly creates the full stage play couched in a serviceable story about 2 generations of an American family and their efforts to entertain the masses while serving their country. George Murphy, an underrated song and dance man, stars and the film is directed by Michael Curtiz with the same skill he brought to "Yankee Doodle Dandy". The film is crammed with a wide variety of entertaining acts, possibly highlighted by Kate Smith singing "God Bless America". The print here is the full road show version with lengthy overture and exit music.
This is a Warner's DVD production so there are a lot of good extras to enjoy. First of all, the print is restored although the technicolour shows "bleeding" in some spots and lacks the sparkle of the equivalent 20th Century Fox musicals of the period. Drew Casper provides a detailed fascinating commentary and has shelved his breathless, repetitive delivery for a more sober approach. It is a big improvement. Casper is joined by the film's female lead, charming Joan Leslie who has vivid memories to share. A very good documentary is included. "Warners at War" provides excellent detail about how Warner Brothers, in typical fashion, led the studios in the war effort. Best of all, the documentary is narrated by Stephen Spielberg with a proper script. This is a vast improvement over similar documentaries which have interspersed film clips with a familiar and generally dull club of historians who often repeat themselves. Hooray!
Warner's Night at the Movies is included with newsreel, cartoon etc. The best bit here is a short film of the United States Army Band with a particularly moving version of "Over There" playing over film clips of departing soldiers. This is powerful and emotional propaganda. The original trailer is included as well as the trailer for "Edge of Darkness", Warner's effort to provide a show of support to the Norwegian resistance.
This DVD can be purchased as part of the Warner's Homefront Collection, of which it is the highlight. Don't miss it.
10 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 "This Is The Army" Homefront Edition - watch with this in mind Feb 14, 2009
By Eric Huffstutler
There has been complaints that the newly restored "Irving Berlin's: This Is The Army" currently only available in the Warner Homefront Collection, isn't up to their usual quality. First, a little background is in order...
This is Warner's very first use of the 3-strip Technicolor process for a musical. Color stock was hard to get and discouraged during WWII. The film was made solely for the purpose of raising funds for the war effort and in 1950, the studio gave the film over to Army Emergency Relief then it fell into public domain in the 1970s. Original negative elements are most likely lost forever.
In 1991 the cable movie network AMC along with UCLA Film and Television Archive did a restoration of the film but the results ended up not so well with flickering and color shifts. All other copies available were so faded that they had a sepia tone color to them and it was one of these that Warner obviously worked from. The "saturation" of colors upon close inspection on a 1080p television shows that the film was "colorized" and there are times with details where you have glow and odd color edge enhancements due to register shifts giving a 3-D effect (without the glasses) on some background objects and people. Take a look at the mass of soldiers in one skit.. all of the faces are exactly identical in color and look like they cut and pasted 300 copies onto the frame. The only skit that looked fairly natural was the Harlem number where the African Americans skin tones were varied because they didn't have to colorize the sepia for their faces and uniforms like with the pinkish white actor faces. Grass, shrubs, clothing, even eye colors and hair all look "solid" and pop out unnaturally at times from the overlay of color and of course metal tones were off.
All said, this is the best this film will look unless they find the original 3 strip negative elements and being such a specialized movie doubt it will be revisited. Warner should have made this known up front of the movie but the only disclaimers were the P.C. ones but did give us more extras on this disc than the others as an apology of sorts. Watch this movie with an open mind that it looks colorized and then enjoy.
Eric S. Huffstutler
Richmond, VA
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
A good copy Jan 19, 2011
By Gerry
I had a VHS version of this movie. My wife wanted to replace it with a DVD since she said the tape was deteriorating. As mentioned in other reviews this film is public property and the quality of the reproductions is not consistent. This Warner Brothers version meets her expectations. Comments by Amazon sellers indicate it is in limited supply so if you want a copy I suggest you buy one soon. I have no connection with any seller.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
In the mood of the time. Nov 07, 2011
By acoustronics
To appreciate this movie you have to have been alive and aware at the time it was released. The feeling of cohesion in the country was palpable. The country, unlike today, was undivided. There was a common goal which was to defeat the Axis powers and this film was one of the best at building up the patriotic feeling that was extant at that time. As one who lived, vicariously, in the war (I was 13 when it ended, but read everything in every newspaper and magazine and saw every war film) it still gives me a good feeling when I see it. I wish that that common goal feeling still existed in the US, but since the 1960's it is forever lost.
2 of 6 found the following review helpful:
If You Love Dada... Apr 23, 2009
By Kevin Killian
George Murphy puts on a show in Yaphank to cheer up troops about to leave for France in World War I. We see him come back without a leg, hobbling around on the primitive prosthesis of the 1918 period. Ronald Reagan plays his son, rather a chip off the old block. Murphy's story is rather tragic though, since he had been a talented dancer and now has to sit on the sidelines while other less talented soldiers get to strut their stuff. Suddenly it's World War II and Murphy gets the idea to re-boot his old show for a new generation of soldiers. This movie does bring it home how weird it must have been to have another giant war with Germany just 20 years after the "War to End All Wars." In the new musical, "This is the Army," Reagan is a stage manager whose offstage plots are two, attempting to cheer up his dad, and also to evade having to propose to the girl he loves, Joan Leslie, since it just wouldn't be fair since he is going off to war.
This is the Army is probably the strangest musical I've seen in many years, and I recommend it to anyone interested in floating gender zones. From what I understand, the Warner Bros producers who brought the longrunning show to the screen tried to get rid of the drag numbers (at least a dozen in the original show), but Berlin out his foot down and so a lot of them remain. This movie definitely rivals Paris is Burning for extravagance of drag invention and for a wild queer spirit running all the way through it from beginning to end. You can see Berlin's mind churning out numbers for every conceivable racial or ethnic group, and Sgt. Joe Louis, the heavyweight champion of the world, performs in a specialty act in one of the best--okay, he's not very graceful perhaps, but he seems like he's trying. LeRoy Prinz' choreography is stunning--not only the individual, specialty numbers, but the massive formations of hundreds of GIs gathered on stage in synchronized movements. Shows back then employed jugglers, midgets, gymnasts, opera singers, every sort of showbiz performer was drafted by Uncle Sam, then apparently released to Warner Bros. to get this movie made. And Kate Smith sings "God Bless America."
The comedy bits aren't funny as they used to be, but that's fine, they can now better be appreciated as bizarre performances of anxiety being played out on an international screen. Strong powerful men portray Lynn Fontanne and Akfred Lunt, then the king and queen of the serious Boradway stage, as self-absorbed and superannuated hams--what could the real life couple have thought about their portrayals? (The guy who plays "Lynn" is exactly like Dolores Gray!) They claimed to have been honored, but these impersonators were going for the jugular. In any case, when I heard about the Amazon dustup or glitch in which hundreds of gay and lesbian titles were de-ranked earlier this month, this was the first item I checked up on because it is definitely the gayest thing on sale in all of Amazon. I was glad to see it remained available right through the whole fracas, vibrating with the lavender vibrations of a genuinely revolutionary object.
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