This is one of the most serious and mature film that I’ve seen from the 1950’s, and it’s about the effects of PTSD on soldiers from the second world war that wrapped up about a decade previously, and how they were dealing with the fact that the country had developed a national amnesia to the fact that a large part of their population was plucked from obscurity from normal small lives and thrown into a meat grinder, aimed by the government to kill the enemy at any cost. It’s adapted from a book of the same title that was mentioned in a separate book that I’m reading named “California Tiki” which is about the origins of Pop Tiki culture in middle America during the same time period that this movie is set.
There’s a lot to be said about the film, but I’ll leave you with this: If we had had more movies like this than maybe we wouldn’t be in the jam that the country is in right now. The fundamental message here is that you have to be honest with your self, with your family, and with the world around you. Identify your problems and deal with them head on, not ignoring them and letting them fester to become larger issues down the road.
