Plot
The plot centers on misfit Jerry Plunkett, played by James Cagney, and his inability to fit into the unit due to a mixture of bravado and cowardice. Pat O'Brien plays Father Francis P. Duffy, a military chaplain who attempts to reform Plunkett. "Wild Bill" Donovan, played by George Brent, is the first battalion commander, who ultimately orders Plunkett to be court-martialed. One of the characters portrayed in this film is Sgt Joyce Kilmer, the poet. Alan Hale, Sr. plays Sgt. Wynn, who loses both his brothers due to Cagney's blunders.
While Jerry Plunkett was a fictional character, Father Duffy, Major Donovan, Lt. Ames, and Sgt. Joyce Kilmer were all real people who served in the regiment and many of the activities depicted (Camp Mills, the Mud March, dugout collapse at Rouge Bouquet, crossing the Ourcq River, Victory Parade, etc.) actually happened.
Jerry Plunkett redeems himself and sacrifices his life at the end of the movie by throwing his body on a grenade.
Read more about this topic: The Fighting 69th
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)