Johnny got his gun

Johnny Got His Gun is one of A movie comes along that‘s almost perfect .From Dalton Trumbo’s 1939 novel and screenplay, and directed by Dalton Trumbo, this anti-war movie is a work of beauty.

“Johnny Got His Gun” presents the story of 18-year-old Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms), who brushes off the urgings of his girl-friend Kareen (Kathy Fields) to “just run away” rather than ship out (WW1). Once in the French trenches, he quickly loses his own company and throws in with some British troops. One fearsomely rainy night, he’s sent out to bury a German soldier who had died caught in the barbed wire above their trench and whose rotting body had begun to stink. A direct shell hit on the way back from this errand injures Bonham horribly and irreparably. A military doctor, Col. Tillery (Eduard Franz) declares Bonham “completely de-cerebrated” by his injuries but worth keeping alive, secretly, for research purposes. But Bonham’s in there, walled up in the remnants of his body. Tillery later reappears - white-haired now and a general - the only mark of how much time has passed before Bonham’s breakthrough Morse Code communication with the “fourth nurse” (Diane Varsi), who first inscribes a message on his chest with her finger as he frantically nods his head.

There are plenty of Trumbo films out there to sample - critical and box office successes alike - including a couple Oscar-winners (ironically both of those scripts credited to “fronts” during the 13 years Trumbo spent black-listed and couldn’t work openly in Hollywood films). But “Johnny Got His Gun” was part of Trumbo for a long time. Based on a news clip he’d seen about a British soldier with devastating injuries from the trenches of World War I, Trumbo’s 1939 novel kept the time frame but shifted young recruit Joe Bonham’s story to the US military. And after he’d published the novel, Trumbo saw combat intimately in the South Pacific as a war correspondent. Trumbo’s son Christopher says that making the film was “the best response he could manage to the carnage of the war in Vietnam.”

Trumbo was a young man when he wrote “Johnny Got His Gun,” just 33. It’s nice to have this film back at a time we still need it, along with the knowledge that he didn’t come to think better of his youthful excess.

The movie is based on the memories and delusions in Joes mind. This is what makes the movie beautiful. There are three points of view; reality, memories, and delusions, and each has a different look. Reality is shot in stark black and white, reality filmed in color, and his dreams are also in color but obviously staged and there’s more whimsy and symbolism.

The reality parts are centered on Joes “life” in the hospital, and you can hear his thoughts as he narrates about his existence, and the memories and delusions. He is treated much like a coma patient, tubes in, tubes out, and an occasional sponge bath. No one realizes at first that he is conscious much less able to communicate with them. At one point he is put in a storage closet because he won’t know the difference. Here’s one instance where the memories play an integral part in the story. Joe is thinking that he just needs a way to communicate that he is aware and in need of attention, so memories start in which he remembers a time in his youth where he learns Morse code and viola, communication.

His delusions take many forms including a couple of conversations with Jesus Christ (Donald Sutherland), and the meeting with a young girl he feels he knows for some reason, but you’ll know who she is because of the scene with his girlfriend. Some delusions are products of his impending insanity, like the circus sideshow he imagines he will become, and others are fanciful, musical remembering such as his last day of work.

Special Features

Dalton Trumbo: Rebel in Hollywood Documentary (2006)
New Interview with Timothy Bottoms
Metallica Music Video “One“
Rare behind the scenes footage with commentary by Timothy Bottoms and Director of Photography Jules Brenner
1940 radio adaptation of Johnny Got His Gun starring James Cagney
Johnny Got His Gun article from American Cinematographer (1971)
Original Theatrical Trailer