\u201cSergeant York\u201d stars Gary Cooper as the eponymous WWI hero.\u00a0 The story relates his pre-war life and shows how he overcame a wild youth to \u201cfind religion.\u201d\u00a0 He lives in a log cabin with his mother and younger brother and sister.\u00a0 Being hillbillies, the soil of his family land is very poor.\u00a0 When he finds a girl, he wants to marry he sets his mind to buying some \u201cbottom land.\u201d\u00a0 But a rival in love frustrates this ambition and it was when he was set to settle this feud with his rifle that divine intervention steps in.\u00a0 Lightning knocks him off his horse and damages his rifle and Alvin ends up at the church where Pastor Rosier Pile played by Walter Brennan, welcomes Alvin back to the Lord\u2019s flock.<\/p>\n
But when America enters World War I Alvin York has to somehow square his biblical aversion to killing with his duties as an American citizen.\u00a0 This conflict and how the reality of the modern battlefield affects him is the climax of the film.\u00a0 As was stated in his Congressional Medal of Honor citation Alvin single-handedly killed 28 German soldiers with his rifle and pistol and in doing so forced the surrender of 132 Germans and 35 machine guns.\u00a0 In the movie York explains to the investigators of his actions that he killed the Germans to stop the guns.\u00a0 As he explains it his actions were meant to save lives.<\/p>\n
After the war Alvin returns home and to his great surprise a grateful nation hails him as a hero with a ticker tape parade down Wall Street in New York City.\u00a0 But even more importantly his home state of Tennessee presents him with a beautiful house on fertile land in his hometown.<\/p>\n
Sergeant York was made on the eve of America\u2019s entry into WW II.\u00a0 In fact, Pearl Harbor was attacked while the movie was still in the theaters.\u00a0 It is claimed that thousands of young men went directly from the movie theater to the enlistment station.\u00a0 It could be defensibly claimed that it is a propaganda film for the war effort.\u00a0 Nevertheless, York\u2019s war time actions were not exaggerated in any way.\u00a0 Obviously, the supernatural basis of his religious conversion is pure Hollywood but doubtless the portrayal of Alvin York as a simple backwoods man was quite accurate.\u00a0 The reality of poverty in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee was real and the importance of family and religion was true.<\/p>\n
Gary Cooper\u2019s portrayal of York is somewhat broad and even comical at times but I find that is one of the charms of the film.\u00a0 The other actors in the Tennessee scenes equally play up the hillbilly stereotypical behaviors.\u00a0 But recognizing those characteristics I still recommend this movie as a fascinating personal story that shows the collision of an older world with the 20th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 Sergeant York was an American original.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cSergeant York\u201d stars Gary Cooper as the eponymous WWI hero.\u00a0 The story relates his pre-war life and shows how he overcame a wild youth to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[3219,1238,43,38,1355,3434],"class_list":["post-16915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-gary-cooper","tag-hollywood-golden-era","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-walter-brennan"],"yoast_head":"\n