Robert Mitchum's extraordinary, Oscar?-nominated performance as the stoic, exhausted and quietly beleaguered Lieutenant Walker in this adaptation of correspondent Ernie Pyle's dispatches from the war in Europe made him a star. Director William Wellman, himself a WWI vet, and producer Lester Cowan closely collaborated with Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith, who was serving in the Air Force at the time) to make a film that was true to the life of the WWII soldier - the absolute exhaustion, the endurance of terror and shock and loss, the spells of boredom and the camaraderie. The result is a film built like a ballad, unlike any other of its era. (Note courtesy of Film Society of Lincoln Center.) DIR William A. Wellman; SCR Leopold Atlas, Guy Endore, Philip Stevenson, from the dispatches by Ernie Pyle; PROD Lester Cowan. U.S., 1945, b&w, 108 min. NOT RATED