Battle Hymn (1957)

Battle Hymn aka I Fly By Faith tells the true (though Hollywoodized) story of Dean Hess, a protestant minister and air corps flyer who accidently drops a bomb on a German orphanage during the second world war. This event haunts Hess and later while serving as a flight instructor for Korean troops during that peninsula's war in the early 1950's, he helps to found an orphanage and evacuate hundreds of Korean children to safety from incoming communist forces. Based on Hess's own memoire, the films stars Rock Hudson in the lead role, doing his tortured conscience shtick which he had done for director Douglas Sirk before. This is a nice enough story, its about truly admirable things being done, but as cinema it comes off rather flat, and usually Sirk is able to get more out his material then is really there, here he isn't. One standout however is African American actor James Edwards, who played a lot of serviceman in his career, as Lt. Maples, this is one of the most respectful well rounded roles for a black man I've seen in a mainstream 1950's film. Anna Kashfi, Marlon Brando's first wife, plays the mixed race woman who runs the orphanage, who in real life was fully Korean, but this is a Hollywood movie from the 50's. **1/2