Yanks (1987) from Tuna

Set in WW II England, Yanks is a John Schlesinger character piece which focuses on the cultural displacement caused by being a long way from home in a stressful situation, and how people often turn to love out of loneliness. The story follows three "Yanks."

• Richard Gere plays a sergeant who falls for a conservative shopkeeper's daughter (Lisa Eichhorn). She is engaged to her childhood sweetheart, who is at the front, and her parents do not approve of Yanks at all.

• William Devane plays a captain whose own marriage is crumbling back home. He becomes close to a Red Cross volunteer (Vanessa Redgrave), the upper class wife of a British officer

• Chick Venneral plays a horny private who meets and falls in love with a fun-loving bus conductor (Annie Ross).

Also, in one of the film's stranger episodes, a black soldier is beaten for asking a white girl to dance.

For those who might find the plot summary story a little melodramatic and thus improbable, I can relate the following true story. One of my father's friends was an Army Air Corps officer stationed in England. He ducked into a pub to get out of the fog one night, and ended up falling in love with and marrying the pub owner's daughter. After the war, he brought her back to the states, where they had to explain themselves to his childhood sweetheart and betrothed. In other words, the film is completely true to life.

Much of the film concerns cultural attitudes, and the script points out very clearly that, while Americans and Brits share a common language, they have very different cultures and traditions. It also shows that, when people get to know each other one on one, the differences are not that important in the long run.


It is decidedly my kind of film. Like my favorite Goldie Hawn film, Swing Shift, it deals with the cultural upheaval caused by WW II. As one who found myself alone and a long ways from home in the military, I can very much relate to the themes. I also enjoy music from the 40s. While I very much enjoyed the film, I was left with the feeling that it was a good movie, but missed its chance to be great. It received many awards and nominations, but nothing for lead performances, and therein lies the problem. There was nothing wrong with the script. The material was more than enough to carry the 139 minutes of running time. The problem was in the performances, especially by Gere and Redgrave, who are clearly capable of much better. Eichhorn's character was conservative, reserved, innocent and shy. Gere needed to be far more dynamic and flamboyant than he was to counterbalance that. He simply did not demonstrate enough dramatic range. I felt like Redgrave phoned in her performance -- I never believed her character. Annie Ross, on the other hand, was brilliant, and I wish the script could have spent more time with her character.