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:
“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)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)