Marj Dusay

As the film opens in 1962, General Douglas MacArthur (Gregory Peck) is at West Point, his alma mater. MacArthur, ramrod straight, reviews the ranks of marching cadets before delivering his poignant, bittersweet, farewell address to the Corps. The action abruptly shifts back to the tunnels of Corregidor in early 1942, where MacArthur's besieged American and Filipino troops are desperately holding out against the victorious forces of Japan. The end is near. In Washington, General George Marshall and Admiral Ernest J. King are simultaneously delivering the grim news to President Roosevelt (Dan O'Herlihy). They discuss global priorities and admit that they can't hold the Philippines. Roosevelt reluctantly decides to order MacArthur off Corregidor, knowing that he will be furious. MacArthur is ordered to board a submarine and slip away to Australia, where he can organize ongoing resistance. But MacArthur refuses to sneak away from his beloved command traveling furtively beneath the waves. He insists on boarding a PT boat, and his family insists on accompanying him on the dangerous voyage. The Japanese navy has thrown a blockade around the islands, and the heavily armed PT boats would be no match for destroyers. The pair of PT boats manage to evade the Japanese pickets and floating mines, proving that the blockade can be circumvented. Eventually arriving in Melbourne, MacArthur discovers that there is no Philippine relief expedition being organized. He addresses the adoring Australian crowds, explaining that his first priority will be the recapture of the Philippines. But he soon learns that Bataan and Corregidor have fallen, leaving 70,000 of his starving men imprisoned under unimaginable conditions. MacArthur decides to mount the defense of Australia among the jungles of New Guinea, where the battle is fought under brutal circumstances. As a result, MacArthur develops his famous island hopping strategy, bypassing Japanese strongholds through the use of Allied naval and air superiority, cutting critical supply lines and starving the isolated Japanese strong points into submission. MacArthur also develops a well-earned reputation for dramatics, self-promotion and vanity. The Allies advance steadily up the Southwest Pacific island chain over the next two years, but not without tremendous bloodshed. Ordered to Honolulu in July 1944 to meet with President Roosevelt and Admirals Leahy and Nimitz, MacArthur upstages his naval rivals with a grandiose, belated arrival. His jealous, distrustful relationship with Roosevelt is apparent. The US Navy wants to bypass the Philippines and take Taiwan first. MacArthur makes an impassioned argument that to do so would be an indelible stain on American honor. He reminds them that numerous promises have been made to the loyal people of the Philippines, including by Roosevelt himself. In the end, MacArthur's view prevails. US forces come ashore at Leyte Gulf in October 1944. In an iconic scene, MacArthur insists on going ashore right behind the second wave of troops. He steps off the landing craft into knee-deep water, wading ashore as the cameras roll. On the beach, MacArthur addresses the Filipinos by radio, exhorting them to drive the Japanese occupiers out. As the battle rages, the General receives his fifth star. He is soon taken to a prison camp where many of the brutalized, emaciated survivors of Bataan and Corregidor have been held for more than two years. Many emotional reunions follow. Back home, President Roosevelt dies in the spring of 1945. Harry Truman succeeds him and authorizes the use of two atomic weapons to bring Japan to her knees. A furious MacArthur rails against this new, impersonal brand of warfare, realizing that an era has passed. Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, MacArthur presides over the solemn surrender ceremonies in September 1945. As Allied military governor of Japan, MacArthur institutes liberal social reforms and oversees the complete rebuilding and modernization of Japan. When the Russian military representative in Japan curtly informs MacArthur that Russia will soon commence an illegal occupation of Hokkaido Island, MacArthur just as curtly informs the Russian that the entire Soviet delegation will be thrown in jail. The occupation never occurs. MacArthur is given one last chance at military glory in June 1950 when Communist North Korean forces invade South Korea, moving swiftly and nearly pushing American and South Korean forces off the peninsula. MacArthur is appointed Supreme Commander of UN forces in Korea. He buys time until he can devise a brilliant but risk-laden amphibious landing behind North Korean lines at Inchon. The successful operation proves to be a stroke of genius. North Korean forces are virtually cut off from supplies and reinforcements and have to retreat northward in disarray. MacArthur then carries the fight into North Korea itself. Despite MacArthur's reassurances to the contrary, the Communist Chinese suddenly enter the war in huge numbers in order to bolster their sagging North Korean ally. UN forces are again pushed southward, incurring heavy casualties. MacArthur grows increasingly frustrated, chafing at political interference from Washington. Tensions between Truman and MacArthur boil over when MacArthur's insubordination in the face of direct orders threatens to undermine Truman's authority. After a stellar military career spanning more than a half-century, MacArthur is relieved of command. He returns to a hero's welcome in April 1951 while Truman's popularity plummets. MacArthur delivers a moving retirement address to a joint session of Congress. The movie then moves forward to 1962, and an increasingly frail Douglas MacArthur is bidding farewell to West Point. One last time he utters the famous words that were the hallmark of his career: Duty. Honor. Country.

A young girl runs away from home and meets a grouchy older man who reluctantly takes her in. Eventually they develop a romantic and affectionate relationship. Breezy (Kay Lenz) is a teenage hippie with a big heart. After taking a ride with a man who only wants her for sex, Breezy manages to escape. She runs to hide on a secluded property where stands the home of a middle-aged divorced man, Frank Harmon (William Holden). Frank reluctantly takes Breezy in only to fall, unexpectedly, in love with her. —Kelly In this Counterculture vs. Establishment romance, Frank Harmon (William Holden) is a middle-aged businessman, recently divorced and bitter about his life and the world in general. One morning he discovers a pretty, hippie-esque girl who calls herself Breezy (Kay Lenz) asleep on his front porch. Frank asks her to leave and she politely obeys. She forgets her guitar, however, and returns the next day to retrieve it. Breezy also asks Frank if he would let her take a bath. He agrees, and even lets her sleep at his house that night. A few days later, Breezy turns up at again at Frank's doorstep with a cop; after being arrested for vagrancy, she told the police that she lived with her uncle Frank. Frank plays along and, against his better judgment, agrees to let her stay with him. After spending time together, Frank and Breezy open up to each other, discussing their feelings on a variety of issues. A friendship grows between them that, in time, becomes a love affair, but Frank's friends find fault in his new romance, and he breaks it off, a decision he comes to regret. This was the first movie Clint Eastwood directed in which he did not star, something he would not do again until Bird (1988). —Jack Herer A free-spirited young woman, Breezy, hitches a ride with an aging real estate salesman, Frank. Sensing that she just wants to use him he tries to have nothing to do with her. She's not that easy to shake, however, and over time a bond forms between them. —grantss Wanting to experience life in the world away from her small Pennsylvania hometown of Intercourse a year following high school graduation, free spirit Edith Alice Breezerman, who prefers to be called Breezy, has been in Los Angeles for three months living primarily with her drug-addict friend Marcy and Marcy's boyfriend David. With no real desire for a long term job and thus with no money - she only having the clothes on her back and a cheap guitar - Breezy will find a bed or couch elsewhere whenever Marcy is too drugged-out for her liking. Breezy is sincere in her feelings, she, in whatever she may offer others, not expecting anything in return beyond human decency. When she meets fifty-something real estate agent Frank Harmon, all Frank sees in her is another unkempt hippie who wants to sponge off society. Frank, a loner who lives a comfortable life in a house in the Hollywood hills, steers away from any committed relationship in the disaster that was his first and only marriage. As such, he is once again by himself when his "no-strings" girlfriend Betty Tobin, who could admit to him and herself that she is in love with him, announces that she is getting married to someone else in knowing there is no future for her and Frank. As such, Frank, with who Breezy quickly admits that she has also fallen in love, eventually opens himself up to her. In Frank falling in love with Breezy in return, the question becomes whether Frank can overcome his own pre-Breezy biases and what he perceives as those in his social circle about a relationship of their nature. —Huggo

A woman lures emotionally crippled men into affairs, then helps them repair their lives. Sara Deever, a kooky Brooklyn Heights girl, sublets apartments and paints in her spare time. Each month, Sara selects from her lodgers a new lover - but only on the condition that he will let their affair end when the month expires. When Charlie Blake, a box manufacturer and her lover-of-the-month, falls in love with her, he is unwilling to give her up. Sara insists, even though it is obvious that she too has fallen in love. As the month runs out, Charlie searches desperately for the key to Sara's persistence. What he discovers provides the haunting climax to this love story. —alfiehitchie It's late October in New York City. Despite their inauspicious initial meeting (she made him have to rewrite his driver's examination) and the fact that he doesn't seem really to understand anything about which she is talking, Englishman Charlie Blake is attracted to seemingly eccentric twenty-two year old Sara Deever. After they get to know a little about each other, Sara suggests to him that he become her "November". She takes a different man - someone who she perceives has a problem that needs fixing - every calendar month to rehabilitate him. The man lives with her in her Brooklyn Heights apartment for that month and they do almost everything together, albeit with the understanding that at the stroke of midnight on the last day he is to leave without question. She feels that Charlie's business (he owns a box making company), the fact that he only wears three-piece suits and that he seems fixated on time are a manifestation of an unknown problem. Beyond subletting apartments for a profit, these rehabilitation sessions are Sara's main job. Despite not thinking he himself has a problem, Charlie agrees to be "November" if only to get to know her. As November proceeds, the two get to know each other - for him which includes meeting a few of his predecessors, learning about Sara's potential "December", and meeting her older vegetarian friend Alonzo who seems to be her protector - and truly fall for each other. But will Sara break her rule with Charlie of one month only, especially in light of the reason that she has taken on these rehabilitation tasks in the first place? —Huggo