Posted on 09/23/2023 4:29:36 PM PDT by Twotone
You can't win a war without propaganda, and in any case we don't know if you can since it's never been tried. Winston Churchill's famous quote about truth in war being "so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies" has become conventional wisdom. Less known is that he was probably paraphrasing an old Russian proverb when he reportedly said this to Joseph Stalin at the Teheran Conference, hoping to flatter the old murderer's sensibilities.
But as Pontius Pilate said: "What is truth?" (You have to wonder just what Pilate did while governor of Judea that moved the authors of the Gospels to give him the best lines.)
We assume that every movie made during World War Two was propaganda in the service of the country who made it and their allies, and that the winners were the ones that made the best propaganda. (The knowingly crude quality of Axis propaganda is generally assumed – one foundation of the Mitchell & Webb skit where two SS officers wonder if they're "the baddies".)
And there are so many films made by Hollywood during the war that we can still enjoy despite knowing that they're official or unofficial propaganda – movies like Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, The Mortal Storm, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, The Great Dictator and To Be or Not To Be. But the British turned out to be the masters of popular propaganda that's stood the test of time, with feature films and documentaries like Pimpernel Smith, The Silver Fleet, Night Train to Munich, Went the Day Well?, Millions Like Us and Fires Were Started.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger had delivered a bona fide hit to the British Office of War Information with The 49th Parallel...
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING opening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw9iv7MIJd8
Chyna
The only good Axis WWII war film that was really first class that I know of was Japanese. “Colonel Kato’s Falcon Squadron”. The special effects director was Eiji Tsuburaya of postwar Godzilla movies fame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sneZm8jQ2Dw
KI-27s, KI-43 Oscars and loads of Japanese transports, bombers, etc. Follows the true story of a Japanese fighter leader who ultimately got shot down attacking a Bristol Blenheim.
They used P-40s and Brewster Buffaloes captured in the Philippines. Lots of actual combat involving P-40s attacking bomber formations.
Rangoon and Vietnam are in the film.
A couple of treats are a Japanese paratrooper drop exercise somewhere. And the bomber raids on Rangoon. Our movies got one thing ridiculously wrong, aerial bombs. In our movies 500 pond bombs go off about like a small mortar shell. In this Jap film, a row of 500 pounders goes off along a dock and they blast a swath through the warehouses that is remarkable. And they are dirty actual looking explosions, not gasoline fireballs.
As a propaganda film, it was very good. Hell, it almost makes you sad when he’s killed in the end.
Not even the slightest hint of the brutal Japanese military discipline.
One of the best on our side was 49th Parallel, a Canadian film about a German Submarine getting sunk and the survivors on the run.
And one of the cool scenes was an Oscar in a turning dogfight with a Brewster Buffalo. Its filmed from an Oscar cockpit camera point of view. I had only heard it was a complete dog and unworthy of combat. But that thing was pulling some serious moves and was damn speedy!
It wasn’t that it was a dog, it was that the Japanese planes and pilots were that extra measure better.
Powell and Pressburger scripted what I think is the finest expression of what it means to be American in any film. In A Matter of Life and Death the words are spoken by a then Canadian actor, scripted by British writers to an audience of heavenly judges and spirits of WW2 Allied war dead. Raymond Massey is the speaker as the spirit of a Revolutionary War casualty prosecuting bomber pilot David Niven for overstating his alloted time on Earth. Roger Livesay, a recently deceased doctor who befriended Niven before his death is Niven’s defender. You can find the scene on YouTube. In thirty seconds it says what it means to be American
“Wake Island” is one of our best films. It was made when we didn’t know how the battle ended. But turned out to be very close to accurate.
And the right 5 inch guns in action, PBYs, China Clippers, Wildcats, and the Marine mentality... etc.
Don’t look for filming locations until after you’ve watched it. Prepare to be amazed at the magic Hollywood pulled off on that.
“In A Matter of Life and Death”
Unique concept of a film. But VERY good one!
That is a GREAT movie opening and credits!
Movies bookmark
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