Posted on 03/11/2023 1:13:52 PM PST by Eleutheria5
Note: This article may contain commentary reflecting the author's opinion. Sir Michael Caine, the 89-year-old internationally renowned actor, has, according to reports, soundly denounced the characterization of his 1964 break-out film ‘Zulu’ as a “key text” for “white nationalists” and “supremacists,” by the UK government, according to The Daily Mail.
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(Excerpt) Read more at dcenquirer.com ...
Bothelezi played the king in both Zulu and Zulu Dawn, and was excellent in both.
Who is Moore? Do you mean Michael Caine?
“Blame it on Rio” - a great movie.
Yeah, that’s who I meant. My bad.
Micklewhite (Michael Caine) was sent to the front along the Samichon River Valley, where he fought the Chinese and North Koreans in raids and patrols, often at night. In 1953, he contracted malaria and was sent home.
(snip)
In 1951, he was called up to serve in the British Army.
(snip)
Nothing, he says, could have prepared him for what happened during his first watch on guard duty during the absolute darkness of the Korean night.
From his trench, the night was split open by enemy flares lighting up the battlefield and by the hordes of the enemy charging toward him. The first time he heard a Chinese trumpet break the stillness, he barely had time to ask his buddy what that was before hundreds of trumpets joined in.
“There in front of us, a terrifying tableau was illuminated,” he recalls. “Thousands of Chinese advancing toward our positions, led by troops of demonic trumpet players. The artillery opened up but they still came on, marching toward our machine guns and certain death.”
Caine describes the minefield they’d constructed to defend themselves from such a human wave as “suddenly irrelevant.” Wave after wave of Chinese infantry committed suicide, throwing themselves onto barbed wire so their bodies could be used as a bridge.
“They were eventually beaten off,” the actor says of the Chinese soldiers. “But they were insanely brave.”
After getting sent to war so early in his life, Caine came to believe that war ages kids well beyond their years. He and his mates were approaching 20 years old when they went to the front lines of Korea. On the way back, they encountered the units who would be replacing them.
“They were 19-year-olds, as we had been when we went in,” Caine says. “I looked at them and I looked at us, and we looked 10 years older than they did.”
The actor recalls the closest he came to death during the war, on a nighttime patrol in no man’s land. It was a moment that he says still haunts him to this day.
Three British troops covered themselves in mud and mosquito repellant in order to make their way deeper into the valley, an area they had been fighting to take for weeks. They were headed for the Chinese lines to try to gather information. On their way back to their own lines, they suddenly smelled garlic in the air.
“The Chinese ate garlic like chewing gum,” Caine says. “We realized we were being followed.”
The fusiliers threw themselves on the ground as a unit of Chinese pursuers began searching the brush for them. Rather than die in the weeds, the trio charged the enemy, guns blazing.
This incident comes back to the actor when others try to attack him or bring him down. He thinks about what happened on that hill in Korea, and realizes that no one could ever make him feel hopeless again.
“I just think, as I did on that Korean hillside, ‘You cannot frighten me or do anything to me, and if you try, I’ll take as much or as many of you with me as I can.’”
Listen to Actor Michael Caine Talk About Fighting in Korea
https://www.military.com/history/listen-actor-michael-caine-talk-about-fighting-korea.html
In a sense we forgot we were in this country at the time. Whites and blacks could mingle without any fuss. You might say it was a very small thing but for this country, which was so racist at the time, it was something of great significance for us. The film helped restore to pride about where we come from - about how our people resisted the mightiest army in the world at the time, even though we were poorly equipped with cow-hide shields and spears. [commenting in 2014 on the filming of Zulu during apartheid]And modern woke idiots want to call the filming racist! But another actor played the role in Zulu Dawn.
Not a lot of people know that.
And my fave...”Song of the South”. I loved that movie as a child.
I never thought anything racist about it. I just adored “Uncle Remus” and his great stories from my mind as a child.
OUTSTANDING MOVIE!!!!
Wokesters can just go where they belong, HELL.
It’s on Prime if you have that.
Here are snippets of bios from some of the other actors in ZULU, it seems that many actors used to be men before they were actors.
Hawkins joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1940, was commissioned and served with the Second British Division in India. In 1944 he was seconded to GHQ India and soon afterwards succeeded to the command, as a colonel, of ENSA administration in India and South East Asia. He was demobilized in 1946.
Booth served as a captain in the British army before becoming an actor.
Turned down Michael Caine’s role in Alfie (1966).
During the time Nigel Green served in the Korean conflict, he sustained a head injury which required the insertion of a metal plate at the front of his skull. Unfortunately throughout his life, the actor suffered from chronic bouts of depression as a result of this war wound. In addition, the plate induced severe headaches and these grew worse over time.
Ivor Emmanuel was just 14 his father and mother, sister and grandfather, were killed by a stray German bomb that hit his home village. Virile Welsh singer who worked as a coal miner as a teen before singing.
Paul Daneman from 1943-47, he served in RAF Bomber Command, where he performed in amateur dramatics which led him to further pursue acting interests.
Richard Burton and Warren Mitchell were Royal Air Force cadets together at Oxford in 1944. In the years 1944-1947, when both were demobilized
Richard Davies worked in the mines at the age of fourteen, then served as a military policeman during World War Two before joining the Old Vic.
“Banning even a blatantly racist play or movie, such as Birth of a Nation, is a crime against history.”
I agree, even to the history of cinema. Birth of a Nation was a reflection of thought and values of the Post-Victorian era, and a not very fictionalized rendition of Reconstruction South. In its time this movie was hailed as a masterpiece of cinematic art and technique, and not considered racist at all.
Another movie that was banned in most places is Green Pastures. Also, any books, scripts, or anything to do with minstrels and Minstrelsy are especially taboo.
Like it or not, all these things are part of our history, part of the rich field of live theater and early cinema. They have value, and should not be destroyed and forgotten.
NNTP.
Thanks for the Caine biographical info. Excellent actor. I watch Zulu at least once a year. Tells well the tale of courageous men in battle who perform in an extraordinary manner on both sides of the battle, thanks to wise and determined leadership.
Second Hand Lion is also an outstanding film, featuring Caine with Robert Duvall. Well worth watching.
I think Zulu was Caine’s first film, and Second Hand Lion his last, though I could be incorrect.
He was on Carson quite a few times...and plenty of great stories of life with actors in his league.
Wave after wave of Chinese infantry committed suicide, throwing themselves onto barbed wire so their bodies could be used as a bridge.
“They were eventually beaten off,” the actor says of the Chinese soldiers. “But they were insanely brave.”
Giving up their humanity and acting exactly like ants, there may be another explanation: they considered life in China under Mao and his communists and opted for suicide.
Compare all that to the effete weeds we have as male leads today!
The Left can’t stand seeing whites “win” against blacks.
Or was it that blacks were so “stereotypically” backward in this movie?
Either way, that’s the main issue.
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