A Bell for Adano

I think I've mentioned in passing a couple of times over the years about how I'd seen Fox's World War II movie A Bell for Adano, but it was long enough ago and didn't seem to be showing up anywhere to do a post on it. With the refreshing of the FXM rotation at the start of Octber, the movie is not back in the schedule, so I made a point of putting it on the DVR so that I could watch in anticipation of the next FXM showing. That next showing is finally here, tomorrow (October 27) at 9:35 AM.

The movie starts with a US Army jeep pulling up in what looks like a fairly deserted town that has a lot of rubble. That town is Adano, on the Italian island of Sicily, which was the starting point of the Allied invasion of Italy. In the jeep are Maj. Joppolo (John Hodiak), an Italian-American whose parents came from the northern part of Italy, along with Joppolo's two subordinates, Sgt. Borth (William Bendix) and Captain Purvis (Harry Morgan, in the early part of his career when he was still being credited as Henry). Maj. Joppolo is to be the temporary military governor of Adano, at least until the situation stabilizes and civilian rule can be brought back to places like Adano after 20 years of Fascist rule.

Joppolo is looking for somebody he can liaise with, but has a difficult time of it because all he gets is toadying and the same kind of guff John Wayne's character gets at the beginning of The Quiet Man. However, after quite a bit of discussion, he finds a couple of things. One is the sort of usual concerns about the people running low on food in part because the bakery is only open intermittently and in part because the fishermen can't go out to fish what with the war on and Mussolini having extorted them up to now. But a lot of the people also complain about the lack of a bell in the bell tower of the municipal hall. Everyone in town ran their day by that bell, at least until Mussolini ordered it removed and melted down to make more munitions for the war effort. Getting it back would be a sign of faith from the new authorities, as well as a signal that the rebuild is truly on.

Joppolo tries to do what he can, although getting a new bell seems like a bit of a fool's errand. After all, who has a spare bell lying around. And there are more practical concerns, like trying to get those fishermen back out to sea so that the town can eat better. Through the head of the fishermen Tommasino, Joppolo meets Tommasino's daughter Rosa (Gene Tierney with a horrendous and out-of-place blonde hairdo). They begin to develop feelings for each other, even though Joppolo has a wife back in the States and Rosa has a boyfriend who went off to fight.

Joppolo does the best he can for the locals, in part because it's a better way to gain their loyalty than trying to force them into submission. People higher up the chain of command, however, are unable to see (and in some ways need not to be focused on) the situation in a small town like this and how a general order might affect them. So when the distant General Marvin orders the Adano locals off the main road and to use side roads, there's a problem. The locals have no side roads, and need to use the main road to get to the water and fuel sources as well as the lands they farm. Joppolo wants to let them use the road, but countermanding a general's order is serious business.

On the bright side, when some naval officers stop in Adano, they inform Joppolo that they know a ship that carried off a bell that would be just the thing for Adano. They can probably even get it to Adano and installed, but will they be able to do that before Gen. Marvin figures out what's going on?

A Bell for Adano is one of those movies where you can see why audiences of 1945 would like it. It's mostly a feel-good story that the US needed even with the war winding down. It's also loosely based on a real story. On the minus side, nowadays you look at the depiction of the locals and somebody would be complaining about stereotypes. Overall, howeer, A Bell for Adano is a solid war movie effort and a movie that definitely deserves a watch. Definitely better than something like The Secret of Santa Vittoria.