Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1951

The Contenders:
An American in Paris (winner)
Decision Before Dawn
A Place in the Sun
Quo Vadis
A Streetcar Named Desire

Decision before Dawn

Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I think I’ve mentioned before that when I was a kid, war films were my favorite genre of film. I watched other films, but war films were what I loved the best. Decision before Dawn is one that I missed until recently. This is another film where I enjoyed it while I was watching, but when it comes to the end and it’s time to write about it, I don’t know what to say.

On the surface, this is a pretty standard World War II picture pitting the Allied forces against the remnants of Germany toward the end of the fighting in Europe. Allied troops marching across the continent are still encountering resistance, of course, and are naturally doing everything they can to capture enemy troops and end the war as quickly as possible. One of those things they are doing is recruiting captured German soldiers to operate as spies behind enemy lines. It’s obvious that Germany will lose at this point, so ending the war as quickly as possible has become a priority.