Cinema Sunday: No Time for Sergeants

For last week's Cinema Sunday, I wrote about A Streetcar Named Desire which was directed by Elian Kazan.  

Back on February 23, 2020, I wrote about another film directed by Elian Kazan called A Face In the Crowd starring Andy Griffith as a mentally unhinged sociopath who parlays his career as a entertainer into a quest for political power.

Last year, I decided to share that movie with my wife Andrea.

She was traumatized by it, not just for Griffith's scenes of raging insanity but for it's echoes of the real life we're living in right now.

Andrea said I owed her an Andy Griffith film that was funny and didn't scare her. 

So this week's Cinema Sunday post is about No Time For Sergeants, a 1958 satire on military life starring a completely affable and relatable Andy Griffith with absolutely nothing to be traumatized by at all.

...

Except perhaps for that nuclear bomb explosion near the end.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  

Will Stockdale (Griffith) is a backwoods yokel from Georgia who is drafted into the United States Air Force. Stockdale is a friendly person with a positive spirit who is willing to make the best of any situation. Lacking a formal education, he may come off as dim witted and he's a bit naive about how the world works. But he has his own peculiar wisdom that serves him well and a devoted loyalty to those he deems to be his friends.

Such as Ben Whitledge, a short, scrawny bespectacled man who has a dream of living up to his family's history of military service by serving in the infantry. 

No cushy support post in the Air Force for this little guy He wants to where the actual shooting happens. And Stockdale is happy to follow him there to keep an eye on his new buddy who can be the target of bullying. When that happens is when Stockdale's friendly smile fades and he gets serious. 

Will Stockdale is willing to be made fun of but when people mess with folks like Ben Whitledge, well he has something to say about that. 

Most of the hi-jinks in this movie spin around Stockdale's relationship with his boot camp commander,  Sergeant King. King is a career hack who forged a long military career by staying quiet and out of trouble.

With Stockdale in his barracks, King will find staying quiet and out of trouble no longer possible.  

Stockdale's constant appeals on behalf of Whitledge to get moved to the infantry irritate the sergeant so he assigns Stockdale to permanent latrine duty. 

Most people regard latrine duty as punishment.

Stockdale thinks it's a promotion and the absolute pristine condition of the barracks' latrine impresses both King and his base commander.  

What does NOT impress the base commander is because Stockdale was put on permanent latrine duty, it kept him from completing the required military exams for all draftees. King only has a few days to get Stockdale through those exams or he will be demoted back to private.  

King doesn't think this undereducated buffoon is going to get through those exams and plots to see to it that Stockdale fails his inspection. 

King does pass his exams even if he drove all the examiners crazy.  For example, there's a manual dexterity test involving separating two interlocked metal rings. Stockdale does separate the two rings but not the way the examining officer (in a hilarious cameo by Don Knotts) wanted him to do it.  

Stockdale passed his eye exam even if he did read the letters on the eye chart as words instead of as individual letters. 

 "Teezo"

"Peetock"

"Zilpped"  

The scheme to get Stockdale to fail his inspection is to get him drunk.  Stockdale is used to strong homemade moonshine so he stays sober while King gets drunk and involved in a barroom brawl.  

The upshot is  Stockdale shows up all clean and ready for inspection whole Sgt King show up, tattered and  filthy.

King is not only reduced to private but he's still stuck with Stockdale and Whitledge as all three are sent to gunnery school. 

After gunnery school, Stockdale and Whitledge are assigned to an obsolete B-25 bomber that's flying to Denver. Or it's supposed to.

The plane flies off course into an atomic bomb test site in Nevada. The plane turns around but still gets caught in the edge of the blast, setting fire to tail of the plane where Stockdale and Whitledge were located. 

They are incinerated into ash and wow, what a bummer of an ending. I wasn't expecting that from a broad comedic satire about the military and...

No! I'm kidding. 

Stockdale grabs Whitledge and jumps out of the plane. 

Stockdale may not be all that bright but yeah,he's wearing a parachute.  

By the time Stockdale and Whitledge have walked their way back to their base, they find a ceremony is underway celebrating the brave sacrifice of Stockdale and Whitledge who were tragically incinerated into ash by the atomic bomb. 

No! I was just making that up! They got out of the tail of the plane just in time and see, here they are. 

Well...  that's a problem.  There are generals and senators and what all out there waiting to award posthumous medals to two soldiers who are not dead?!?! 

Long story made short, there's a cover up and Stockdale and Whitledge get shipped off to the infantry and guess what? King gets to join them. 

All in all, No Time for Sergeants is light on it's feet, a showcase for Andy Griffith's comedic talents. Yeah, he leans are on the good ol' Southern boy with more heart than sense but he avoids being a caricature for the most part. 

And that is that for this week's Cinema Sunday. 

What's coming up next week? I have no idea but I've seen a lot of movies and I'll pick on to write about.