After writing The Bridge on the River Kwai and writing/producing The Guns of Navarone, Carl Foreman was ready to make his big statement as a director. The result is this, one of the most ambitious war movies ever made, designed to show how war degrades people on all sides. A shot of victors and vanquished - both exhausted and looking like vagrants - rams home the point. Subtlety was never on Foreman's agenda and three hours of episodic hectoring and ironic twists of fate do get a bit wearisome. However, there are some stunning sequences such as a firing squad in the snow with Frank Sinatra's Have Yourself a Merry Christmas on the soundtrack.

Intercutting dramatic vignettes with newsreel footage, the story follows the characters from an infantry squad as they make their way from Sicily to Germany during the end of World War II.