The Men

A film set in a veterans' hospital after the war. Ken is a lieutenant. He is shot through the spine in an engagement and loses the use of his legs. He is put on a ward. There are other veterans in the same room; all of them young, all in wheelchairs, and all waiting for something. Ken talks to nobody. He refuses to see his fiancée and turns visitors away. The doctor speaks plainly. There will be no recovery; what has happened is permanent, and the question is what to do now. From there the film is a story of adjustment. Physiotherapy, parallel bars, wheelchair basketball, drink and fights on the ward. Ellen insists. They marry in the end, and the wedding night is the hardest section in the narrative. What the narrative is interested in is not heroism but the body: the film discusses care, the bladder, sores and sex with an openness unusual for its time. There are real patients in the ward scenes. The production was prepared at a veterans' hospital and many men under treatment appeared in the film. It was Marlon Brando's first film. He stayed at the hospital for weeks and lived on that ward to prepare; the method was new at the time and drew attention. The screenplay is by Carl Foreman and was nominated for an Academy Award for original screenplay. Marlon Brando, Teresa Wright, Everett Sloane and Jack Webb are in the cast. Fred Zinnemann directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the hard social drama of the 1950s and wants to see Brando's beginning. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hope; the film offers no solution and even the last scene is cautious.