highlighting the confusion, uncertainty, sudden death, and numbing fatigue characteristic of combat experience. From the opening sequence, which leads the viewer to anticipate Short Round will be Zack’s killer rather than his savior, Zack and his fellow soldiers are presented as existing in a world where little is as it seems. Every Korean must be mistrusted; nothing can be taken for granted. Lost in a fog-wrapped jungle, the soldiers even fire on each other, mistaking fellow Americans for the enemy. The group’s mission takes them into unfamiliar territory: a temple, dominated by a giant Buddha that ends up functioning in ways never intended by its builders—supporting IV bottles and protecting the men from artillery. When the soldiers have a moment to spare, they engage only in activities necessary to staying alive: eating and sleeping. No romantic subplots. No talk of Mom and God. Most of the time, they simply march and watch and wait. With only twelve minutes of battle footage in two scenes, The Steel Helmet presents actual warfare as a sudden break in the monotony, an intermittent obstacle to the soldiers’ primary goal—survival—rather than as the centerpiece of a narrative concerned with victory or defeat, such as in Air Force (1943), Guadalcanal Diary (1943), or Back to Bataan (1945).
Even the final postscript of The Steel Helmet, “There is no end to this story,” differs significantly from the sentiments expressed at the end of previous combat films. Superimposed over a shot of the bedraggled remains of the platoon, the declaration lacks any triumphant or redeeming element; instead, it suggests weary resignation, in marked contrast to the emotional note hit at the end of most WWII combat pictures in which most of the unit is killed, such as Wake Island (1942) (“This is not the end. There are other leathernecks who will exact a just and terrible vengeance.”) or The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) (“I hope we can rejoice with victory … that all together we will try to reassemble our broken world.”). In The Steel Helmet, the survivors march toward a mission that will repeat the patterns of the last; their replacements will fight the same battle they just fought; whoever is alive at the end will return for the next war. Fuller suggests that from battle to battle and war to war, the burdens of the footsoldiers remain unchanged.
Perhaps the most striking examples of Fuller’s reworking of genre conventions are the two scenes dedicated to the question of why we fight. Rather than presenting soldiers sitting around the campfire discussing the benefits of democracy, the defense of family, or service to God and country, Fuller gets to the heart of the question: why put your life on the line for a country that has never lived up to its ideals? As the Communist North Korean POW attempts to “turn” first the African-American medic and then the Japanese-American sergeant by asking why each fights for a country that treats him as a second-class citizen, the visual presentation of each point of view remains neutral, encouraging the viewer to favor neither one side nor the other. The logical reasoning of the POW creates ambiguity concerning who is actually the more rational thinker. Although the POW has just killed the likable mule tender Joe, his perspective is not demonized; rather, his character brings to light how far America has to go in fulfilling its promise.
Both the pointed conversation and two singularly distinct visual styles differentiate these scenes from the rest of the film, setting them apart to encourage the contemplation of contemporary race relations. In his conversation with Thompson, the POW references the Jim Crow laws of the South, asking the African-American to confirm that he cannot eat with white men and has to sit at the back of the public bus. Thompson agrees, but says, “A hundred years ago I couldn’t even ride in a bus. At least now I can sit in the back. Maybe in fifty years I’ll sit in the middle, and some day up front. There’s some things you just can’t rush, buster.” As Thompson is one of the most sympathetic characters in the film up to this point, you might expect his perspective on race relations to carry more visual weight than that of the POW. Yet the scene stylistically favors neither soldier. In a sequence shot, the camera tracks 180 degrees from one man to the other, unmotivated by character movement. First one soldier, then the other is favored with frontality as he states his position. With no stylistic tools emphasizing either character’s speech, the viewer is encouraged to consider each in turn, perhaps to the point of acknowledging that the POW makes a certain amount of sense. Here Fuller is exposing the contradictions of America, a country still failing to live up to its credo that all are created equal. Such an explicit examination of a contemporary social problem is new to Fuller’s directorial palette. While the occasion for the discussion is causally motivated by the medic attending to the POW’s injury, the direction of their conversation and the singularly evenhanded yet unmotivated camera movement distance the scene from the rest of the film and mark it as a self-consciously ambiguous moment.
The POW’s discussion with Tanaka, a second-generation Japanese-American, features a different visual presentation but functions similarly, again highlighting the irony of fighting for a country that denies your basic rights. Almost immediately following the scene with Thompson, the camera tilts down to frame Tanaka and the POW sitting next to each other in a two-shot. The POW notes, “You’ve got the same kind of eyes I have…. They hate us because of our eyes.” Tanaka replies with a sleepy brush-off, but the POW gets his attention when he asks if Tanaka’s family was among the Japanese-Americans who were interned in camps during WWII—a shameful event in American history rarely mentioned in movies of this period. The POW’s question is punctuated by a cut in to an unusually tight close-up of his face, beginning a pattern of cuts between extreme close-ups of each man as he speaks. While the scene contains more conventional analytical editing than the sequence with the African-American medic, its visual construction again emphasizes both men’s comments equally. Tanaka admits that his family was detained, but that he nevertheless fought in the war for the United States. When the POW questions why Tanaka fought overseas after being called a “dirty Jap rat” at home, the veteran replies, “I’m an American. When we get pushed around at home, that’s our business.” The scene’s proximity to the POW’s conversation with the medic and its evenhanded visual presentation again draw attention to the POW’s argument, but Tanaka’s casual dismissal of him (“Don’t you guys know when you’re licked?”) betrays no particular concern. As before, Fuller brings front and center questions regarding what it means to be an American and to fight for one’s country.
The pointed discussion of race in these scenes, their unusual visual presentation, and their singularity in the film—the POW does not question any other members of the platoon—all contribute to their self-consciousness. Set apart from the rest of the narrative, these scenes encourage viewers to think. While the POW’s words are, on one level, true, we have seen the bravery and intelligence of Thompson and Tanaka and how they are respected by the rest of the men. Within the platoon, they are fully integrated, measured by their talent and experience, not by the color of their skin. In The Steel Helmet, it is the platoon—not the home front—that demonstrates why we fight, that illustrates the possibility of a just and equal America.
In order to provide viewers with a sense of what a footsoldier experiences during war, Fuller had to do more than rework genre conventions: he had to reconstruct how we watch a war film.
You can’t make a real war picture, because the audience can get up and go buy their popcorn at any time. They’re never hurt. And war means casualties. The best way would be to occasionally fire at them from behind the screen during a battle scene! No, really, I’m not joking about this.… If someone, once in a while, was hit, that would give the audience a feeling for the tension of war.32
The tension of war—the numbing anxiety evoked by unexpected outbreaks of violence, of fatigue interrupted by death—is what Fuller attempts to suggest in The Steel Helmet, structuring the episodic narrative so as create abrupt shifts in tone and alternating sequences of suspense and surprise. The opening scene telegraphs these strategies. As the film’s credits come to an end, superimposed over a steel helmet with a bullet hole in it, the helmet unexpectedly tilts up, and two suspicious eyes peer out to survey the landscape. The movement takes us by surprise, as the bullet hole and the helmet’s immobility previously led us to assume that the helmet’s owner was dead. Our curiosity regarding the soldier’s survival quickly turns to suspense, however, as shots of the soldier crawling forward with
