Why do you think they added the additional twist that he falls out of the truck while escaping the stockade, thus incurring the injury that likely (although not clearly) killed him, instead of simply him having died at the hands of Fatso? Anyone familiar with the book?
shareI read the book. Maggio doesn't die. He fakes insanity so well he gets out on a Section 8. It was a friend in the stockade (Blues Berry) who Fatso killed. Reading the book is so different than the movie it's like another story.
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One of the things that was most praised about the film was how well it was adapted from James Jones's book. The book was huge, rambling, went off on tangents. The screen editor was a genius to turn it into the fabulous movie it became.
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Right you are morningsidemary.
Zinnemann did an amazing job and got in every significant point.
I am well familiar with the book, which is a sprawling mess, although terrific overall.
I wouldn't have thought it possible to make it into a two hour movie.
I'm sure Fred Zinnemann had a lot of input into the script, good directors generally do. That said, I think it would be useful for us to note the name of the screenwriter. Daniel Taradash (1913-2003).
shareI thought it was a terrible death scene. I don't even catch how he did die. Was he shot? Stabbed? It seemed to me he was just beat up.
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I did sixty in five minutes once...
I just logged on wondering about this too. What was it that killed him? It's not at all clear.
shareFatso broke his bones, his organs. Maybe he even fell off the truck he tried to escape on. In total, he suffered mortal injuries.
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There's no "maybe" about it. Maggio explains to Prewitt that the tail gate fell open and he fell out of the truck. He says he thinks he broke something. It's all completely clear.
shareThe explanation about it being the fall from the truck irritates me too. Why did they add it? It's not necessary, it lets Fatso slide from the responsibility too much. FHTE is a mostly flawless film except for that.
Note: you shouldn't put a spoiler in a topic line.
Perhaps it would have been too controversial in 1953 to have shown without ambiguity one soldier directly responsible for the torture and murder of another. Other parts of the story were toned down in order to tone down the books criticism of the armed forces and to comply with the ultra-strict production code.
However there may be another explanation-according to one Sinatra biography, his death scene was a nightmare to film because Montgomery Clift was so drunk he found it virtually impossible to play the scene and, eventually, the director had to admit defeat and cut some dialogue. The alternate theory in the same biography is the scene was completed but then botched in the editing room.
For those wondering how Blues Berry dies in the book, it's Fatso that kills him and it's very graphic. Fatso beats him to death with a hoe. As he's hitting him, I remember it being very graphic. Blues Berry keeps telling him, "You better kill me, Fatso." But the way Prewitt confronts Fatso for payback is exactly the same in the book. Only before he goes after him, he's having a conversation with someone and they're telling him that Fatso thinks he's right and even if he confronts him, he's still not going to think there's anything wrong with what he did.
sharePlease put spoiler warnings in your title.
~ I've been very lonely in my isolated tower of indecipherable speech.
Though Fatso repeatedly attacked him, Maggio's injuries were apparently never severe enough to require hospitalization or lead to death. However, the day prior to his escape, Fatso's attack was especially brutal. That attack would have caused more severe injuries.
Bleeding internally, Maggio would have been in a lot of pain but it wouldn't prevent him from getting around. That's how he was able to pull off the escape. During the escape, he fell from the truck and, as he said, probably broke something.
Unless a bone punctures a vein, organ, or skin, most breaks aren’t fatal. Whether or not that part happened, the fall would definitely have aggravated his existing injuries, opening up wounds that hadn't yet healed. That would lead to increased blood flow which, of course, would cause greater blood loss which, naturally, would precipitate his death.
In the end, whether Maggio died from the injuries Fatso inflicted on him or he died from injuries sustained from the fall, Fatso is to blame. Maggio may have talked about escaping but Fatso drove him to it for fear of what would happen if he stayed in the blockade.
One of the differences between the film and the novel is that in the film, Fatso (Sgt. Judson) is portrayed as a rogue sadist. In the novel, he's merely part of the system. In the novel, the commanding officer of the stockade (Judson's boss) explains clearly that his policy is to make life in the stockade very unpleasant, in order to motivate the prisoners to become obedient soldiers. If a prisoner commits a minor infraction, a guard hits him with a stick. For a more serious infraction, several guards take him to the basement, beat him up, and then put him in solitary confinement for three days on a bread and water diet.
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You got your mind right, Luke?
I found the answer to your question on Wikipedia.
"The Army required that the abuse of Maggio not be shown and that Judson's behavior towards Maggio be portrayed as "a sadistic anomaly and not as the result of Army policy as depicted in Jones' book". Maggio, who survives and is discharged in the novel, dies in the film, having been combined with two other prisoner characters from the novel (one of whom is killed by Judson in the novel) to add drama and make Maggio a stronger, more tragic figure. The Army was further pacified by the filmmakers' inclusion of a line suggesting that Maggio's death was partially caused by his falling off a truck during a prison break, rather than solely by Judson's beatings."
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They had to get Army cooperation to get the picture made on location. In 1952 the willful brutality of the 1941 stockade as described in the book would have been a sensitive subject. Not so much when the 70's mini-series was made.
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