Critics reviews

When Irwin Shaw's 1948 novel because a best seller, Hemingway dismissed its author as "the Brooklyn Tolstoy." But in Edward Dmytryk's truncated, sanitized 1958 movie of this Nazi-era War and Peace, Shaw's story about three soldiers—a somber American Jew, a cynical Broad way pro, and a decent German—provides a fascinating showcase for Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, and Marlon Brando, respectively.

People should talk more about Brando's performance here - not just a question of playing a 'sympathetic Nazi' but unusually grave and diffident, with an elegantly guarded quality that recalls James Mason (who himself played a sympathetic Nazi, in THE DESERT FOX); when he argues for the Nazis in his first, pre-war scene - opining that they stand for something hopeful in Germany - against a properly indignant American girl, it's the American girl who comes off looking shrill.