That guy didn’t see it happen, though, did he? I thought it was just Upham, Mellish, and the SS soldier in the house when Upham froze, but I could be misremembering.
The point I took away from it was that the crucible of war reveals your true character. For some, like Tom Hanks’s character, it reveals strength. For others, like Upham, it reveals weakness. Upham was a coward who committed cold-blooded murder. He shot Steamboat Willy because it was the only situation in which he could muster up the courage to kill a man: when the person was unarmed and helpless.
I figure after the war, Upham most likely drank himself to death before the end of the fifties.
The guy Upham shoots recognizes Upham and even calls him by name. So, he must be the one that Miller eventually set free (otherwise how would he know Upham), i.e. he is ‘Steamboat Willie’.
But why else would Upham shoot Willie if it weren’t to avenge Mellish. If Upham has had no contact with Willie since the latter was set free, then any reason Upham might have had for killing him must have occurred before Willie was released. But that’s just it - before he was released he gave no reason for Upham to kill him. Indeed, that’s why Upham defended him; he was just a German soldier.
He took his anger out on a defenceless target, and one that had personal meaning to him, to Upham at that point he wasn’t ‘just another soldier’, it was someone he knew, however slightly.
Oh, and on first viewing I thought Steamboat Willie and the SS soldier in the house were the same person as well…they really should have used more distinct actors for those two roles.
Remember, Upham is behind the German line of soldiers that is shooting on the bridge, where Upham should be (and where Miller is when he’s killed). Willie is among those shooting upon the Allies on the bridge.
Upham is a coward, and he knows it. He would previously argue that he had a liberal sensibility about violence, but he’s actually just yellow, and in a fit of self-loathing, keen to demonstrate how tough he is.
When Willie recognizes Upham, he gets the brunt of Upham’s wrath–especially since Upham probably remembers what all his (now dead) fellow soldiers said about Willie: that if they let him go, he’d just find another German unit and rejoin the conflict. In this case, it’s a conflict that killed all but one who was in Upham’s squad.
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He’s ashamed of freezing on the stairs, but he also knows killing Willie is wrong, which is why he lets all the other German witnesses go. He’s a failure not only to the soldiers who relied on him, but also now to general human decency.
That’s the point: Willie didn’t do anything to deserve being shot. Upham murdered him in cold blood.
When Upham watches Mellish get stabbed, the German who killed him gets up, and walks past Upham. Upham is a coward, and no threat to him, so there’s no point in killing him. Upham is rightfully humiliated and ashamed of this.
When Upham is placed in charge of the German POWs at the end, the Germans are initially worried. When Willie recognizes Upham, he’s relieved, because Upham earlier argued against killing prisoners. They are safe, thinks Willie, because Upham is a good man.
Upham, on the other hand, sees Willie as yet another German who isn’t threatened by him. The German who killed Mellish wasn’t afraid of Upham, and Willie isn’t afraid of Upham. Upham is unable to demonstrate to the other German that he’s someone to be feared - so he demonstrates it to Willie, instead. And now Upham has a whole passel of Germans who are utterly terrified of him.
I think, also, that one of the reasons Upham let Willie go in the first place was because he identified with him. When Willie shows up again at the end, that identification is still in place, except now Upham has a toxic level of self-loathing. He kills Willie, in part, because he doesn’t have the courage to kill himself.
Doesn’t the film show that Steamboat Willie was the one who fired the shot that killed Capt Miller?
I seem to remember the camera cuts behind the germans firing across the bridge, behind steamboat willies shoulder, we see him shoot and across the river Tom Hanks gets hit?
I always assumed that because Upham was hiding behind the Germans, he saw exactly that, and knew that if he hadn’t fought to let Willie go earlier, then Hanks might not have been shot now.
Yeah, Upham witnesses Willie killing Miller, which is why Willie reaching out to Upham blows up in his face. Upham considers Willie to have betrayed Miller’s act of humanity in releasing Willie at the radar station.
Still, Upham is there in the movie not to be a coward but to indicate the inherent juxtaposition between acts in civilized times and acts during war time. Recall that when there were going to hell at one point between the soldiers, Upham’s commentary was a muttered, “What is happening to us?” He includes himself, as well as the rest of Miller’s squad and by extension the world, in his question. Upham is indicating that during the war, notions of civilization and respect for others breaks down and whether that’s a good thing or not is a damn good question.
By including the Upham character in the script, we get a soi-disant ‘civilized’ man to offset the more casually violent nature of the rest of the GIs in the squad. The only other one who questions the nature of their acts at all in Captain Miller and he’s resigned to violence and death as stated in his speech about ‘that’s how I justify everything’.
IIRC, Willie was also instructed to surrender himself to the next group of American soldiers he comes upon. But he didn’t - he broke his word and rejoined his own army, culminating in shooting Miller.
Well, in fairness, if the next group of soldiers he came across was German, it’s not likely or expected for him to say “Sorry, chaps, have to keep going until I find some Yanks. I gave my word, after all. Ta!”
Although we the audience see that Willie delivers Miller’s fatal shot (because we see it as a Willie POV), I think it would’ve been impossible for Upham to discern who killed whom from his vantage point and from the mayhem around him. We never see him observing the battle, just cowering in a pseudo-foxhole as the Germans pass his position. It seems reasonable that he wouldn’t come out from cover until it was firmly established that his side had the significant upperhand.
So I think it’s a stretch to say that Willie’s murder was a specific act of vengeance by Upham, but more a general act of retribution and projection of his own guilt and shame.
Indeed. That character would have had no choice what he did if he comes across some other Germans.
I must admit I have always found it odd they did not realise while in production that the character that kills Mellish and Steam boat Willie needed to be better differentiated. I always thought they were the same character and I have seen many people make the same mistake.
On a related note Upham has to be one of my least favourite characters ever. The idea that he grows some balls at the end by murdering Steam boat Willie is I think massively off base. He is a horrible character with no redeeming features. I was never quite sure what they intended the audience to get from the killing of Willie. I always got the impression we were meant to see it as a good thing as it avenges Millers death.
Guys, the question was not “did you like this movie” or “should I watch this movie,” but is Character X the same as Character Y. Jumping in with your opinion about the movie as a whole is skirting dangerously close to threadshitting.
Upham wasn’t “placed in charge” of German POWs. They weren’t POWs at all - they were retreating from the bridge after the Allied planes & reinforcements showed up. Upham jumped up and yelled at them in German - presumably to drop their weapons or something. That’s when Steamboat Willie started talking to him and Upham shot him, then told the others to take off. So it’s still very much in the heat of battle, and not part of a cleanup or anything. Not that shooting Willie after he dropped his weapon was justifiable, but had Upham instead shot them all as they were retreating he would have been perfectly correct and justified in doing so - they were still enemies under arms at that point.
Presumably the Steamboat Willie scenes and the SS/Mellish/Upham scenes were filmed weeks apart, and it wasn’t until editing until someone may have noticed that the SS guy and Willie looked slightly similar.
The thing I take away from Upham is that unless you’ve been in combat yourself, and have watched friends and comrades die, you have little right judging those who have, or assuming you know how you yourself would behave under those circumstances.
I agree, except for the part about not judging him. Upham is meant to show the moral hazard of war - how the violence and terror can turn the most mild mannered of us into monsters. I don’t think someone can say, “If I were in a war, I wouldn’t lose my moral values,” anymore than one can say, “If I were in a war, I wouldn’t get shot,” but I think the audience is absolutely meant to judge Upham negatively by the end of the movie.
I don’t know how I would have behaved under those circumstances, but if I was there, and I lay crying on the stairs while my squadmate was killed because I didn’t help him, then afterwards I am pretty sure I would hate myself and think I was a coward, just as we think of Upham.