How Can You Not Be Romantic About Baseball (Movies)? (Series #9) America's two greatest cultural contributions: baseball and movies

 

How Can You Not Be Romantic About Baseball (Movies)? (Series #9)

America's two greatest cultural contributions: baseball and movies

Movies (Television) in History: Dawson's Creek.

Over this past weekend I was horrible sick with what was probably the "stomach flu".  My wife is now.  I'll write more on that latter.

Anyhow,  I woke up in a bad state (I'll spare the details) and spent most of the weekend on the sofa, falling asleep.  

A lost weekend.

Anyhow, my wife had Dawson's Creek on, which was on as one of the major actors, James Van Der Beek  recently tragically died of colon cancer, something I relatively recently dodged the bullet on myself.  FWIW, quite a few actors who were on the series have passed away, although he's the youngest (although barely so) to do so.  It was a tragic death.

Dawson's Creek, 1998-2003, sucks.

The question would be why I put it up here at all, and I don't have that much of a good reason, but it reminds me of how television shows featuring teenagers of recent years fit a pattern.  The other one is One Tree Hill.  

Their nighttime soap operas, but they're bad, and at worst, perverted.

All the characters, even the supposedly poor ones, are fantastically wealthy living in really good conditions.  They have nearly unlimited access to wealth that most middle class families in the real world struggle for and their lives are more or less unhindered by their parents, who are portrayed as a sort of older siblings, even in their appearance.  Nobody in this world has been worn down by age and responsibilities.  They're all beautiful. There's now an ugly duckling girls or awkward boy amongst them. Their entire lives involve endless love triangles, and at least in Dawson's Creek's case, statutory rape.  They're maudlin in the extreme.

All in all, they're a really weird look at the teenage years of Americans, and its weirder than people want to look back at teenagers that way.  It says something about our society, and not in a good way. That millions of adults would follow a series that deals, at least in part, with sexual encounters of minors, is weird.  Dramas, and comedies, focusing on youth have always been a thing, but not ones that focus on youth as well funded adults lusting or longing for each other.

As a complaint about television scripts, I suppose, it's interesting that television likes to keep a couple that should obviously be a couple nearly being a couple for years, and then conclude with them not being a couple.  This can be a legitimate dramatic element, as in the Western drama Wil Penny, but if its going to be done it ought to serve some purpose.  In television dramas, it simply tends not to.  The Wonder Years, well worth watching, provides another example.

On material details, this is set on the Eastern Seaboard which I don't know much about, but nearly 100% of the people depicted are white, which I don't think realistic.  Maybe my view of the Eastern Seaboard is off, however.  Made when it was, an obligatory sympathetically portrayed homosexual couple is included.

One thing I'll add to all of this is that this entire series' view seems summed up by its horrible theme song, which wasn't written for it, I Don't Want To Wait by Paula Cole.  Sung in such a muttering style that it hard to understand, the song is a lament that the singer's grandparents had to endure World War Two and her grandfather came back physically and mentally scarred by the war, and then seemingly implied that they had not lived their lives for the moment.  The lyrics are, in part:

o open up your morning light
And say a little prayer for I
You know that if we are to stay alive
Then see the peace in every eye

She had two babies, one was six months, one was three
In the war of '44
Every telephone ring, every heartbeat stinging
When she thought it was God calling her
Oh, would her son grow to know his father?

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now what will it be
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
Will it be yes or will it be sorry?

He showed up all wet on the rainy front step
Wearing shrapnel in his skin
And the war he saw lives inside him still
It's so hard to be gentle and warm
The years pass by, and now, he has granddaughters

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now what will it be
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
Will it be yes or will it be...

The I deserve happiness right now and can obtain it without repercussion sort of view was a common one with younger people at the time, memoirs of Gen X.  Indeed, the show is sort of Gen X Romeo and Juliet and the ballad fits that.  That sort of vapid view has really passed into the the rear view mirror and younger generations don't have it, been afflicted, as they are, by the real world.  The shallowness of the views expressed in Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, and Beverly Hills 90210 help explain the big turn towards inward conservatism in the generations that have followed. 

Anyhow, just skip this and watch 5-25-77 instead.  

Movies In History: The Siege of Firebase Gloria.

This movie is flat out bad.

Everyone once in awhile I think I've seen every Vietnam War movie there is, but then I remember there's always at least one more out there.  This was one of them.

This movie features a Marine long range patrol that runs into some early horrors just as the Tet Offensive commences. At that point, they ride a helicopter, stricken by gunfire, into  Firebase Gloria.  

Firebase Gloria is way out in the middle of nowhere and virtually forgotten. It's commander is a drug addled pornography addict whom the Marines frag right off.  The Marine Sergeant Major, played by R. Lee Ermey, in charge of the patrol (no SMG would be in charge of a patrol) takes command of the Army base, somewhat assisted by an improbably old Army 1st Sergeant, and they resist wave after wave of Viet Cong attack.

There's more to it than that, but this film is just really bad.

In material details, it's basically correct, although both of the principal marines wear a jungle fatigue pattern uniform in the French Lizard pattern.  That's not impossible, it's just odd.

Movies In History: Der Tiger

I watched this 2025 German movie a couple of months ago and hadn't gotten around to posting a review of it.  With the launching of a Donald Trump war against Iran, it feels a bit odd to do so now.

This review contains spoilers.

Der Tiger, released in the US as The Tank, is about, on the surface, an improbable mission given to the crew of a German Tiger tank that has just seemingly survived the detonation of a bridge to go deep into Soviet territory and rescue a behind the lines German commander who was apparently on some secret mission commanding a body of men likewise behind the lines.  Their former CO, they learn that he did not die, as claimed, at Stalingrad.  Because of the nature of the film, it's been compared, unfairly as in my view, with Apocalypse Now or Heart of Darkness, upon which its based, but the theme is completely different.

Going into it, on the surface the premise is absurd.  A tank would make a very poor means of rescuing anyone, let along a Tiger I was was very prone to mechanical breakdown. They're far from stealthy. And the Eastern Front, like the Western Front, was a dense combat environment.  It wouldn't work.

And that's not actually what the film is about.

In reviews of this film, a lot of reviewers are simply baffled by it. The excellent Fighting On Film podcast was one.  But, from a certain prospective, the film makes perfect sense.

That sense is a Catholic one.

I don't know if the director is Catholic, but if he isn't, he's heavily invested in Catholic views.  The clues are there throughout the entire film, from beginning to end.  The tank and its crewmen (with one exception) aren't on a mission to rescue their former commander, whom they do meet at a bunker, but rather they're on a trip, literally, to Hell.

During the trip we learn of the reason why.

Everything is there.  Odd grim reminders.  One wounded tank crewman is is taken out of the stricken tank to go into "the light".  A Mass, in Latin, is on the radio, which the Nazi era German radio would never have broadcast.  The entry into the bunker is guarded by metaphorical angels, although they superficially do not seem to be so.  The fires of Hell are at the end.

All in all, frankly, this film, which is nearly 100% metaphorical, is very well done, but a person needs to be aware of the imagery and background, which I suspect a German audience, where the two significant Christian religions are Catholicism and Lutheranism, which is based on it, may be more than most American ones, in order to grasp it.

In material details, this movie is pretty good, although it seems odd to even discuss the topic in this film. The depictions of German and Soviet armor are excellent, and the uniform details well done.  The tank crew, as mentioned, is of the SS, and they wear SS tank crew uniforms.

A House of Dynamite

I suppose this film should not technically be in this category, as it takes place in contemporary times.  However, it fits into the Doomsday Thriller category of movie, and its in good company with some others we should touch on. Such filmes would include Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove, On The Beach, The Bedford Incident, and War Games.

This movie, quite frankly, maybe the very best of them, although Dr. Strangelove would certainly give it a run for that.

Using a technique used in the recent movie Dunkirk, this film has a series of timelines all of which center around the same thing.  An inbound intercontinental missile, launched somewhere in the Pacific, has been detected and there's a mere 20 minutes to address the situation.  The launch was undetected, so its unclear who sent the single missile on its way.  At first it's assumed that its probably a North Korean test and will drop in the Pacific, but soon its clear that it is not.

The timeline involves an anti ballistic missile unit attempting to shoot the missle down, the senior leaders of the military attempting to figure out what is going on and how to deal with it, and the President of the United States, at a public relations event, struggling to determine how, if at all, the country should react to a missle that seems likely to hit U.S. soil.

It's very well done and frankly probably a lot more realistic than people may wish to admit.  Cell phone discipline breaks down nearly immediately, which on the cusp of a nuclear disaster, it likely would.  The individual reactions, from stoic to distraught, are likely fairly accurate too.  All in all, I can't find anything to criticize about this film, although government officials have, most particularly the U.S. Military which insists that in this scenario it'd likely have a 100% chance of shooting the inbound missile down.

Uh huh.

Which leaves this film a very disturbing one.

What's Wrong with Private Jackson's Sniper Rifle? (Saving Private Ryan)

I didn't catch all of these, but did some, particularly the change out of the scopes, which would have been completely impossible.  

Sniper rifles in movies in general tend to be inaccurately portrayed, so this is no surprise, I suppose, but for the fact that overall this movie's material details are so well done.

The Vietnam War in film

 

 Infantry in Vietnam.

Having recently created the page on Movies In History, listing all the films reviewed on this site, I found that I hadn't reviewed any Vietnam War movies.  I think that is, in part, as I intended to set them all out in one big list, as I have done for movies about incursions into Mexico and about the Battle of Stalingrad.

Each of the movies listed here deserve their own thread, but they'll all be treated together for one single reason.  There really isn't an accurate, Saving Private Ryan, type film about Vietnam.  Something about the war has just kept there from being one. Every movie about the war is politicized in some ways, so the war, which is our most politicized war since the Civil War, continues on to be colored by debate, even in film, and even after the many  years since the war ended.  So here we treat the films all together.

Chances are, I'd note, that some are missing.

The Big Screen

Apocalypse Now.

This film was really the first big budget movie about the Vietnam War if it's about the Vietnam War, and for that reason it got a lot of attention at the time it was released in 1979  I saw the film at that time, while I was in high school, and liked it.

I can't make it through the film now.

Based on the novel Heart of Darkness, which is actually set in Africa in an earlier era, this film adopts the river trip theme of that novel and follows a Special Forces captain on a secret mission up a river, and into Cambodia, to assassinate another Special Forces officer who has gone rogue.

The plot is absurd and anyone familiar with the war itself would find most of the details absurd.  Why must the officer be inserted by boat?  If a B-52 mission is standing by, and it is, why not just bomb the target rather than do this?  The whole thing is really silly.  Dark and moody, but also very silly.

There are a couple of redeeming features to the film but only a couple.  One is the portrayal of a somewhat unhinged 1st Cavalry officer by Robert Duvall.  Portrayed as a satire on professional military men, the character actually holds up well and seems saner over time than he did at the time the movie was made. 

Helicopter scene are really well done, in part because the helicopters are real Philippine Army helicopters that actually had to roar off on real missions while the movie was made. So, they look authentic because they are.  And the Navy riverine boat is well portrayed. 

The rest of the movie doesn't hold up and it isn't close to being an accurate representation of any real war we've ever fought.

On material details, I will say that they are nicely done.

postscript

In retrospect, I was too harsh on this film as its really nearly completely allegorical.  Many of the military characters in the film represent an arrogant American military and an arrogant prideful United States that's having its head handed to it by a much more primitive native army.  Brando's character stands for the realization that, while Sheen's Special Forces captain is coming to realize it.  The sailors on the boat are the American nation in general of the time, mostly blue collar, mixed race, and only there because they have no choice.

Updated on September 6, 2025.

Platoon.

Nearly a decade after Apocalypse Now was filmed, Platoon was released. 

A moody introspective 1986 film about a moody infantryman and the two rival sergeants in his platoon, this film also appealed to me when it was released but it doesn't hold up well in some ways.

The film attempts to portray the somewhat broken Army of the late Vietnam War, but it goes a bit overboard in depicting that. Still, the depiction isn't without some merit.  Where it fails is that the NCOs are shown as way more powerful in context than they really would have been, and the officers way more anemic, even for this strained period.

In terms of event depictions, the concluding enormous battle is also, quite frankly, incorrect.  Big huge assaults by large North Vietnamese Army units happened, but not very often and the depiction of the NVA in the latter part of this film shows a much more conventional and aggressive army than the NVA really was. The experience shown just doesn't depict an experience a real American soldier would have been likely to have endured.

In terms of material details, there are some weird errors in this film, particularly given that the director, Oliver Stone, was a Vietnam veteran.  For example, NCOs are shown carrying CAR-15s rather than M16A1s.  CAR-15s did make an appearance in the Vietnam War in the hands of Special Forces troops, but not regular soldiers, and the inclusion here is really odd.  The film omits any depiction of designated automatic weapon infantrymen, but that detail isn't surprising as its a military detail that only those with service would note. The film goes overboard in the end (in a lot of ways) in showing the recapture of ground by an armored force that's adopted a Nazi German battle flag and is lead by a really fat soldier.  Not very likely.

So, the movie is only so so.

postscript.

I was likely too harsh on this film as well, as it also is heavily allegorical.  The two sergeant figures at war with each other for the private's soul really represent competing forces of good and evil at work in the American culture of the time.  It seems that Sgt. Barnes, the evil character, has triumphed until "Chris", the private, kills him in the climatic final scene.  Basically, the United States is redeemed in the film from below.

Updated on September 6, 2025.

Hamburger Hill.

Of the big budget well known Vietnam films, this one is both the best and the least well known.

Released in 1987, the year after Platoon, this movie is a fictionalized account of the real battle for Hill 937 in 1969. The battle was a Vietnam War anomaly as it featured almost Korean War like conditions in which the U.S. Army assaulted a fortified NVA held hill, taking it.  While North Vietnamese casualties were nearly ten times higher than American ones, the battle itself became infamous in part because it was easy to focus on.  This movie does a good job of following a single squad in that battle.  Completely enlisted man focused, the film is sort of the Battleground of Vietnam War films.  Material details, additionally, are well done.

Oddly, this film received very little attention when it came out.  Platoon, which was a commercial success, but which is not as good of film, came out only a year prior, so that's a bit hard to explain. This film, which sort of recalls the Korean War film Pork Chop Hill, may just have been a bit too conventional in a time at which the Vietnam War was still recalled in the early 1970s fashion.

The Boys In Company C

This 1978 film  predated Apocalypse Now by a year and is almost unknown today.

This film follows a Marine Corps Company through basic training and on to Vietnam. It's really well done, although it certainly shows its 1970s release in terms of its mood.  A much better film than many of the later Vietnam War films, it's a bit marred by its odd ending.

postscript

Something I should have noted in my earlier review is that the plot of this film is nearly identical to that of Full Metal Jacket, as described below.  In my view, however, this is the better film.

Updated on September 6, 2025.

Full Metal Jacket

Full Metal Jacket, which came out in 1987, is one of the more famous Vietnam War films and it did well at the box office.  It has to be mentioned, however, together with The Boys from Company C.

If a person watching The Boys from Company C finds it oddly similar to Full Metal Jacket, that's because it definitely is.  Stanly Kubrick was sued for that very reason and settled the suit.  The film is remarkably similar in following Marines through basic training, with the drill sergeant being played in both films by R. Lee Emery, although he's only of the correct age for that role in the first film.  Indeed, in the first film the portrayal of the DI is more realistic and human and less over the top.  The films depart paths after basic training, however.  The basic training portion of the film, while very profane and with a highly exaggerated DI character, is the best part of the film. The later combat portion of the film really fails.

I don't like this film.  It's weird in the Kubrick fashion and too gritty and unseemly for reality.  Skip it and see The Boys In Company C instead.

We Were Soldiers

Mel Gibson's 2002 We Were Soldiers should be the best Vietnam War film as its based on the book, a straight history, and its the most recently done. Still, it isn't.

The film isn't bad, but it seems to almost attempt to make up for the anti army mood of other Vietnam War movies.  Focused on the 1965 introduction of air cavalry into the Vietnam War, the movie does a good job with material details but it is also the most rah rah Vietnam War movie to have been made since The Green Berets.  It's simply too heroic and too one sided.  The American Army depicted in this film is invincible.

The film was a nice effort, but it's simply too much. Sort of the The Patriot goes to Vietnam.

The Green Berets

The Green Berets was released in 1968, when the war was still on.

It's awful.

Based upon a book written by a journalist, which was a series of short stories based on fact, this film is really bad.  Filmed in South Carolina, it looks it.  The characters are all of the super heroic variety found in some World War Two era films.  John Wayne, who was responsible for the film, starred in it, and he's obviously way too old to be serving in a Special Forces unit.

Horrible movie.  In my view, the worst of the Vietnam War movies, and one of John Wayne's worst.

The Deer Hunter

I hate this movie and have never been able to get through it.

I can hardly describe this film other than to note that it is supposed to follow the service of some close friends in the Special Forces, from their pre war life in Pennsylvania through the post war.  It's just bad.

Included in this film, I'd note, for no known reason is a really long Russian Orthodox wedding scene.  It's endless.

I'd skip this one.

postscript.

Well, as like a couple of movies mentioned above, I hate this movie a lot less than I used to.

It's still far from my favorite Vietnam War movie, but the final scene is absolutely gut wrenching.  It may be worth watching just for the final scene alone.

Updated on September 6, 2025.

Operation Dumbo Drop

It may seem odd to list this small Disney film to the list, but it's about a real event in the Vietnam War.  Its a highly fictionalized account, but the movie is well done.

One of the odder things about this film is that its one of the few that gets the small unit nature of much of the war right.  The war was a guerrilla war, and in this film its shown that way.  Showing a small Special Forces unit, and small NVA and VC units, the film is quite well done.  It's one of the better Vietnam War films.

In terms of material details, this film also, oddly enough, does a good job for the most part.  Uniforms are actually correct, something that tends to be difficult for movies showing Special Forces units.  The film includes a depiction of a C123 Provider, a Vietnam War era transport aircraft that's hardly ever shown in film.  An odd era is the depiction of one soldier carrying a Browning High Power in a shoulder holster, but given the character's role, perhaps that actually makes sense.

84CharlieMoPic

A small budget Vietnam War era film, this film is also a surprisingly good one.

This film shows the patrol of a Special Forces squad through the eyes of an Army cameraman assigned to accompany the patrol.  His MOS is 84CMoPic, hence the name of the film.  The cameraman is only scene twice in the entire movie.

This movie is good one in showing the small scale nature of much of the war, which it does well.  It's only so so in material details and makes a few errors, but that doesn't detract from the film overall.  One of the better Vietnam War era movies.

Causalities of War

This gut wrenching film is one of the few Vietnam War movies based on actual events, and horrific ones at that.

This movie is based on a real event in which a squad of infantrymen took a Vietnamese girl from a village, assaulted her, and then murdered her. One of the squad refuses to participate and then attempts to report the event, leading to endless frustration of his efforts and his near murder.

Very well done, this film shows the small scale nature of he war and the late war breakdown in the Army.  It's also another film that's remarkably correct in material details.  It stars Michael J. Fox as the infantryman, and Shawn Penn as his sergeant, which is a nice touch in that they're about the right age for their roles and they portray them well.  If the diminutive Fox doesn't seem well cast as an infantryman, perhaps that's the point as after all this was a conscript army in which most of the soldiers were average men.

Tribes

This 1970 movie is one that I haven't seen in many years, but I recall it as being a fairly good film.  It depicts the late Vietnam War incorporation of draftees into the Marine Crops and involves a Drill Instructor's efforts to train one.  Its a clash of culture type of film and was well done.

Bat 21

This is an unusual movie, and one of two of which I'm aware involving pilots.  This one follows the efforts of  an Air Force pilot to extract a shot down Navy pilot.  It's really well done and an engaging story.

The other aircraft movie, by the way, is Flight of the Intruder, which I have not seen.

The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields isn't about the Vietnam War, it's about Cambodia, but generally these wars are regarded as part and parcel of each other.

This is a truly gut wrenching true story and this movie may be the absolute best drama about events in Southeast Asia of that period. More of a drama that a war picture, it's justifiably well regarded.

Good Morning Vietnam

This movie involves a fictionalized version of Adrian Cronauer's service as a USAF disk jockey on Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam. Set fairly early in the war, it's well done and showed the late Robin William's dramatic range.

The film suffers in a few material details, but not many, and of course it's not a combat movie.

The Odd Angry Shot.

We're so used to thinking of the Vietnam War from an American prospective that we tend to forget that it wasn't an exclusively American war by any means.  Indeed, the ARVN contributed the biggest combat force in defense of South Vietnam.

A major contributor can be found in Australia.  Indeed, it's often forgotten, including by the Australians themselves, that the Australians urged the US to get into South Vietnam well before the Americans had any intention of doing so and they threatened to enter the fight themselves if the US did not.  

Now, the war tends to be remembered by Australians as something we got them into, which isn't at all correct.  But no matter, the fact that it was a significant Australian war means that it should not surprise us that Australia has produced its own move about the war, The Odd Angry Shot.

I haven't seen this film in years, but I do recall liking it, except for its overly cynical view about American soldiers. The film follows a group of Australian SAS troops on a tour of duty in South Vietnam.  It's a small action film, unlike any major move that the US has produced.  And not a bad one.

Forrest Gump

This may seem like an odd film to add, but the Vietnam War figures prominently, both by having the Gump character serve as an infantryman in the war, and by having the war impact the lives of the character at home.

Frankly, the portrayal of the war may be one of the best ever done.  The US soldiers are never shown in a pitched battle, but rather in a series of patrols and on the losing side of a tremendous ambush.  The nature of the actual war is quite well portrayed, therefore.  Also well portrayed are the period protests against the war and the general turbulent nature of the time.

In terms of material details, this film is also very well done. The soldiers are properly equipped and outfitted for the period.

This film, of course, also covers a lot of additional history.  It starts sometime in the 1940s and it concludes around 1994, when the film was made.  The nature of childhood in the early 1950s is covered well, as are the times.  It also covers the rural south through the period well.  The entire 1960s is covered, as are the 1970s.  All eras addressed by the film are handled very well.

Date added:  September 6, 2025.

Go Tell The Spartans

This film is a 1978 Vietnam War film set very early in the American involvement in the war.  The plot surrounds a single American outpost well before the big war that came just shortly after which is in an advisory capacity.  Indeed, an act of barbarity by a South Vietnamese soldier is excused on the basis that "it's their war".

This is good film with a small plot.  It's not terribly accurate, but its not wholly inaccurate either.  The material details are not bad, although there's some odd elements to it that are never explained.  These troops, for instance, ought to be Special Forces, but they are not, or if they are, it's not clearly explained.  One soldier is a draftee in a role that would be unlikely for one at the time.  Burt Lancaster carries a M3 submachinegun which, while not impossible, is unlikely.  Arms and uniforms are correct for the early war (not one M16 in the bunch) which gives it a much different look compared to most Vietnam War films as the soldiers look like they're from the late 50s.

This film is recommended.

Date added:  September 6, 2025.

Tigerland

Tigerland was a film I had not scene when I first made this list, but have since.

Tigerland is a Vietnam War movie in that the film portrays a group of conscripts who are destined to fight in the late war era.  The name of the movie comes from a facility at Ft. Polk Louisiana which has been created to train them for jungle warfare, something that actually was done as the war progressed.  As their training advances, none of them want to go to Vietnam, or even be in the Army, and the central character, Roland Bozz, proves adept at getting everyone discharged other than himself.

This movie seems to be highly regarded by many, but I didn't think it great by any means.  It's not horrific either.  The discipline portrayed in the film is absurdly loose and not accurate of the U.S. Army at any point, even late in the war when the Army was more or less coming apart.  Bozz constantly sports stubble which is something the Army has never done in the modern era in stateside deployments.

Date added:  September 6, 2025.

The Small Screen.

Perhaps not too surprising, the Vietnam War has made its appearance on the small screen as well as the large.  Some television series set in the war were done, with one being well remembered.

China Beach

Moody in the extreme, China Beach concerned the lives of Army nurses and doctors a the real location of  China Beach, in Vietnam.

I liked this series at the time, but it became moodier and moodier and less realistic as it went on.  Running from 1988 through 1991, the series oddly attempted to incorporate infantrymen into the story line on an individual basis, something that would not have occurred in the same way in real life.  Efforts to explore the lives of the characters post war were well intentioned but bleak.

Tour of Duty

Tour of Duty followed a single infantry platoon in the war during a three year run.

I haven't seen an episode of this since probably 1988 or so, and I didn't seen how the series ended as I was in law school and lacked a television.  But the series was well done to the extent I remember it. 

No television series involving a single combat unit had been done for a long time, and all the prior ones I can recall concerned World War Two, so this series is somewhat unique.  Nothing like it has been done since.  Of interest, it's more of a small action film, rather than a big battle film, which more accurately predicts the experiences of most US troops than the movies tend to in that regards.

Gomer Pyle, USMC

What!!???

Gomer Pyle isn't about the Vietnam War!  I can hear the exclamations now.

That's right, it isn't, and that's my point.

This series was a spinoff of the Andy Griffith Show and it took Mayberry mechanic Gomer Pyle into the USMC as he followed JFK's injunction to "Ask now what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country".  Pyle heeds the President's words and joins the Marines.

Intended to be a charming comedy, it tends to be forgotten that the series ran from 1964 to 1969.  So, the series commences one year prior to the Marines landing at Da Nang and it ended after the Tet Offensive.  None the less, the war just doesn't show up in the series.  Bizarre.  About the only concession to a war actually going on is late in the series when Jim Neighbors, who played Pyle, and who was an accomplished musician, is seen singing "Blowing In The Wind" with some hippies. By that point, I suspect, the producers of the show knew that it was badly out of sink with the views then held by the American public.

The point of including this here is to issue a caveat about looking at contemporary films as accurately reflecting the events of their time.  In some decades they do, in others they very much do not.  Films of the 1940s never ignore the ongoing overriding event of the day, World War Two.  Films made during the Depression tend to reflect its ongoing existence. But films of the 1960s generally do not tend to reflect the era.  Hollywood was making beach films with the stars of the 1950s well into the late 1960s, for example. And on television, Gomer Pyle was serving in a Marine Corps that looked like the World War Two era Marine Corps, was equipped like it, and it wasn't at war. 

What's not listed here?

I admit, as many Vietnam War films as I've seen, I haven't seen them all. The ones that I know I've missed are The Flight of the Intruder and Tigerland.

Postscript.  I've now seen Tigerland.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Related Pages:

Movies In History:  The List

Movies In History: 5-25-77 and Licorice Pizza.

Okay, these are unusual entries for this website, and he second one is downright weird for this site.  In fact I only watched the second one because of the first one, and I'm not entirely sure that I don't regret watching it, frankly.

5-25-77

5-25-77 is a coming of age film released in 2022 that I think I've actually watched twice.  Indeed, I started a review a long time ago, and like some other lingering posts, I thought I'd already posted it.  Set in 1977 its a movie about and by somebody actually in the movie industry about his youth in the Midwest and his early obsession with movies, most specifically the movie Star Wars.  The title of the movie is taken from the release date for the film.  The conclusion of the film actually depicts the actual people the film portrays, at the time in which the film is set.

Apparently the director and producer of the film was simply obsessed with Star Wars when it was released.  Much of the movie revolves around his efforts to see the film upon its initial release, but it also deals with a trip to California brought about through the efforts of his mother to try to introduce him to industry figures, and through persistence he does get to meet Steven Spielberg.  The movie also involves a frustrating romance with a girl in his high school and (spoiler alert) her pushing him away as she wants him to pursue  his dream of being a movie maker, while she wishes to stay in their small town in Illinois.

The film is well done, funny, and bittersweet.  It does a really good job with material details and depicting the look and feel of the late 1970s, as well as the hype regarding Star Wars when it first came out, and before it was spoiled, in a way, by the numerous sequels.  A small film, its still worth watching, and not just because May 25 is my birthday (and I saw Star Wars in the theater during its initial run).  It catches the obsessiveness about films that had theater runs when they could be watched in no other fashion really well.  It also catches the fascination that existed with space films of the time pretty well, with 2001 A Space Odyssey showing up as a reference.

It also does a pretty good job of showing teenage culture, at least in the middle of the country, at the time.  A female character gets mixed in as one of the guys, basically, in a way that's really realistic in that she's a pal, and not overly a love interest focus, although the major female character is the main male protagonist's love interest and of course, there's the obligatory sex reference in the film.  It's material details are well done.

This one isn't bad and is worth viewing.

Licorice Pizza

This one isn't.  It varies from weird, to boring, to creepy.

Probably because I watched 5-25-77, this film came up on my feed recommendations and as it vaguely looked remotely similar, I watched it.  The film is really hard to describe in more ways than one.  It seems to have drawn critical favoritism and I'm not sure why.

This film deals with a high school student who may or may not be going to a school for young actors (it's hard to tell).  On the first day of school when he's 15 (maybe his freshman year?) he meets a young woman whose working at the school who is an adult.  Later in the film she gives her age as 25, at which time the male protagonist might still be 15, or maybe 16.  It's hard to tell.

It's hard to tell what the plot of the story even is.  On day one he asks the older girl, Alana, to dinner that night and he inexplicably is able to leave his house, where he seems to be in charge of his younger brother, to go to the restaurant to find that the 20 something girl is in fact there.  From there, there's an endless serious of highly improbable developments that center around the teenage boy's business talents (he seem to have access to money at a rate that few teenagers so).  He goes into the waterbed business (seriously) and later in the movie opens an arcade (seriously?).  He introduces the girl to his acting agent (his acting career seems to have died with commercials as a child) at her requests, which leads later on to an argument (she feels she should have said she'd appear in films topless) which leads to her exposing herself (we only see her back) to her 15 year old male friend.

After a tour through vandalism, which makes no sense in the film whatsoever, a scene involving Sean Penn as an older actor, and lots of running, she declares her love for the male protagonist and they kiss.

If it had a male older actor and a teenage girl, it would be something like Lolita except in Lolita, I think, the creepy male predator comes across as a creepy male predator.  Here, Alana is never condemned for what really is predatory behavior.

I'm not sure why people like this movie, but it's really creepy.

The film is set in the very early 1970s.  1973 is mentioned at one point.  The clothing and hair styles are basically correct, although with the actresses the director or design person clearly took a braless trend that existed at the time and grossly over emphasized it, unless it had more of a following in Encino where this movie is set.  As noted, the movie is creepy.

In watching it, I thought the film probably riffed off of 5-25-77 in that it has all young actors and is mostly retrospective in a weird sort of way.  But this film is actually from 2021.

If the film has one virtue, which is doubtful, it's the seen with Sean Penn.  The movie casts Penn as an older actor and there are sufficient references such that its clear he's supposed to be a combination Jack Holden and Steve McQueen.  The movie The Bridges at Toko Ri are referenced with a barely disguised title. McQueen's ability with a motorcycle is used.   A bar scene features a director who is fairly clearly supposed to be John Ford, who in fact died in 1973.  The short portion of the film with both of them in it is the only part watching, if anything is worth watching, which it really isn't.

Don't bother.

Movies in History. SAS: Rogue Heroes

SAS patrol in North Africa.

This is another movie, or rather series, that I thought I"d reviewed, but alas, I had not.

SAS: Rogue Heroes is a dramatization of the history of the British Special Air Service, which is pretty dramatic in its own right, so its not all that much liberty is taken with their story.

The first season deals with the formation of the unit and the war in North Africa.  It's excellently done, portraying the conditions that they were created in, and the highly eccentric characters of the men who formed and joined it very well.  Material details are excellent, and the history is well portrayed.  Season one incorporates, interestingly a fair amount of modern heavy metal music, which actually works quite well.

Season two isn't quite as good, but in retrospect, that's because the story is harder to tell after the war in North Africa had concluded.  It takes place in Sicily and Italy, and while I found it a bit frustrating at first, all in all, it stuck to the history well and that explains the story being somewhat less interesting.  It is, to some degree, a filler between North African and the invasion of Normandy, and has that feel to it.

This is a British production, and very much has that feel to it.

Hopefully there will be a third season that will cover the balance of the war.

Movies In History, The Six Triple Eight.

This will be the third time I've tried to publish this review. The prior two times it outright disappeared.

Uff.

The 6888 on parade in honor of Joan d'Arc.

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion is a unique U.S. Army unit that served in Europe during World War Two.  Deployed in February, 1945, the unit was tasked with straightening out a massive mail backlog in the ETO, and by all accounts did yeoman's work doing it.  The unit was all female, and all black, including its officers the only such unit to be deployed to Europe during the war.  The unit not too surprisingly encountered racist opposition, which is a large part of the theme of the film.

The film is quite well done, featuring dramatizations of real characters for the most part.  The story, as noted, is dramatized, but with one exception, it does not depart massively from the actual events. The sole exception is a romance between a  rich white Jewish young man and one of the black female characters, before they join the service, which seems to take place in the American South, and which features a desegregated high school.  Desegregated high schools would not have existed in the South, making this an odd error, and while such a romance could have occurred, it would not have taken place more or less openly as depicted.

Material details are very well done, including the depiction of M1943 Field Jacket Liners in use as jackets, which did occur but which is rarely depicted in film.  Indeed, I can't recall it ever being depicted in another film.

Well worth seeing.

Movies in History Masters of the Air

Emblem of the "Bloody 100th"

I watched this when it first came out, started my review over a year ago, and failed to post and complete it.

Masters of the Air is the epic portrayal of "The Bloody 100th", the United States Army Air Force's 100th Bomb Group, during World War Two.  Produced by Tom Hanks, it joins Band of Brothers and The Pacific as a multi part mini series with ambitious aspirations.  If we add Hank's Saving Private Ryan and Greyhound, for which a sequel is now being filmed, it's part of an impressive body of work which has actually covered a large portion of American participation in World War Two to some degree. 

It doesn't disappoint.

Perhaps simply because Band of Brothers is so well done, and because The Pacific disappoints a bit, early reviews of this film are careful to praise it but to say it isn't as good as Band Of Brothers.  It is.  The topic is just different.

Taking the 100th from deployment to Europe and following individual airmen through the war, some into POW camps, others to their deaths, and others through to the end, it's a masterful portrayal of the air war over Europe.  An added element, although some what minor (understandably) is the inclusion of pilots from the 332nd Fighter Group, who were African American pilots.  While the inclusion of their story could have been awkward, it works in well and is tied together through POW sequences.

Relying extremely heavily on CGI, the film portrays massive air actions wonderfully, and more effectively than any movie since Twelve O'clock High (which has a prop reference in the final episode).  I would not say that its impossible to tell the flight scenes are CGI, but they are excellently done.

The film spares none of the horrors of the war.  Airmen are introduced and violently killed, just as occurred in the war.  Red Army soldiers, who appear in the last episode, simply shoot Germans attempting to surrender with their being no varnishing about it occurring.  One major character cheats on his wife during the film without seeming to have any remorse.  

Material details are excellent.  Historically, its' very well done.  The characters are for the most part real with probably only one slight fictionalization and a dramatized portrayal of the liberation of a POW camp which no doubt did not occur in the close combat fashion portrayed.

As a bonus, as discussed on the American Heritage Center's website, the story features two Wyomingites, both from this county.

History in politics. Post I. Immigration, crime and strife.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905

The Five Points Gang of New York City, which was formed as an Irish American gang, but under the leadership of Italian born "Paul Kelly", Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli.  The gang evolved from an entirely Irish gang into an Italian gang, reflecting demographic trends in Five Points.

Well, first of all, I also said there were a lot of benefits to that wave of immigration, but has anybody ever seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York’? That’s what I’m talking about. We know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates.

* * *

What happens when you have massive amounts of illegal immigration? It actually starts to create ethnic conflict. It creates higher crime rates.

J. D. Vance

Is Vance right?

Keep in mind, I'm just basically fact checking here, not trying to make a political point.

Secondly, Gangs of New York is a horrible motion picture and historically inaccurate.¹

So let's start with the two basic assertions.  When you have:

• massive ethnic enclaves it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates; and
• massive amounts of illegal immigration creates ethnic conflict and higher crime rates.

Are these assertions correct, based on the historical data?

On the surface, a person could certainly argue yes.   The US Mafia was, at its core, an ethic gang. So was the US expression of the Camorra, as were the Chinese Tongs, and as are the various Mexican gangs sometimes loosely referred to as the "Mexican Mafia".  All of these entities found their first expression amongst ethnic groups that immigrated into the US, from Sicily, Italy, China and Mexico respectively, and retained their ethnic character thereafter.  And the US also saw, in the late 19th Century and into the mid 20th, Irish gangs and Jewish gangs, the latter two of which are largely forgotten.

But then, in examining it, there have also been African American gangs, and still are, as well as Hispanic gangs made up of American born Hispanics.

And, while we commonly do not think of it in this fashion, there have been domestic native born European American gangs.  The James Gang was made up entirely of Missourians and was widely tolerated in rural Missouri.  The Wild Bunch was a criminal gang with rotating members headquartered in Wyoming and made up entirely of whites.  Any number of Depression Era gangs out of Missouri and Oklahoma could also be named.

Hmmm. . . . 

So what can we draw from this.

The common element in all of this is poverty.  The common thread in the formation of all gangs, at their onset, is that their membership is poor, originally.  Gaining wealth is a primary motivating force of gang formation.

Gangs go right to crime, obviously, to address their lack of wealth.  The next element of it, however, is that they do form, originally, based on commonality, with the common element being shared ethnicity and status.  The Mafia formed originally in Sicily, an impoverished region of what is now Italy, for complicated and obscure reasons, but Sicilian ethnicity was obviously an element of it, and that element was imported into the US.  The Camorra was (and is) Neapolitan, and was when it came into the US.²  Sicilians and Neapolitans made up part of the impoverished Italian community that immigrated into the US in the late 19th Century and early 20th Centuries.  Indeed, the criminal organizations associated with them basically re-formed in the US, rather than being directly imported.

The James Gang sprang up from impoverished post Civil War rural Missouri with every single memer of it being a white, Protestant, Missourian.  The Rollins 40 Crips and the Bloods came from impoverished African American neighborhoods.  The Zetas and the Sinolas came out of impoverished communities in Mexico.

So, poverty is an early major motivator.

Poverty, combined with ethnic identity, creates the basic constituents for ethnic gangs.  It is, quite frankly, evolutionary biology at work.  Humans are tribal by nature, and form tribes in order to acquire and protect resources.  Gangs do that, operating in a world in which the members are outsiders due to their poverty and ethnicity.

But therein lies their weakness as well.

Over time, the ethnicity normally dissipates, and its always the case that the members of gangs are a minority of any one ethnicity.  Indeed, gangs tend to terrorize the members of their own ethnicities far more than anyone else.  As the economic fortunes of the ethnic class rise, being a member no longer retains its original benefits.  While being a gang member might offer wealth, it also offers a high risk of shortened life. At a certain point that is a decreasing benefit to the ethnic cohort.  To a very large degree this is why the Camorra has largely disappeared in the US, the Mafia is a shadow of its former self, and why Irish and Jewish gangs simply no longer exist.

And ethnicities, moreover, dissipate.  To be in the Mafia, originally, you had to be of straight Sicilian descent in the US. Now you must have some Sicilian descent, but it's a decreasing amount.³ 

So, there's some truth to what Vance related about immigration and crime, but its a much more complicated picture than he relates.

What about ethnic conflict?

Well, as noted part of human nature is tribalism, and an interesting aspect of that is that the "different" both repels and attracts.  Large immigrant groups usually do cause some consternation in a prior group, no matter what it is, but contacts nearly immediately arise.  Indeed the relatively accurate historical novels Giants In The Earth and Peder Victorious by Ole Edvart Rølvaag do a good job of demonstrating that as, in his novels, a Lutheran Norwegian immigrant family is at first horrified by a Catholic Irish immigrant family moving into their region, only to have a child, Peder, marry into it.  Entire ethnicities, such as Creoles in the US and the Mexicans of Mexico are the result of intermixing of cultures.  The degree to which a culture is hostile to this varies, with some being very hostile to it, and others not so much.  Even where there's pretty strong resistance, however, it happens.

Strife, however, between two cultures in one reason also tends to have a strong common element, that being, once again, poverty.  When hostility breaks out between two ethnic groups in a region, it usually features a very strong element of poverty, so in a way, its once again scarcity of resources that is the common problem.

Where's that leave us on Vance's assertion?

Well, its not completely untrue in a superficial way, but in a really in depth manner, its poverty that's the problem.  So what we really are looking at is an economic topic, or should be.

Footnotes:

1.  Gangs of New York is not only historically inaccurate, its downright perverse.

The movie depicts the New York borough of Five Points in the 1840 through 1860s with a Nativist Protestant gang fighting an Irish Catholic gang, the Dead Rabbits (which was in fact a real gang).  New  York ethnic gangs in fact existed, but the conglomeration of nativist feelings, Irish immigration in general and Irish gangs is way over the top.

In terms of oddities, Daniel Day Lewis character is just weird.

2.  In fact, all the Italian criminal gangs come out of southern Italy, a region of Italy which has been historically impoverished and still is to a significant degree.

3.  A movie that depicts this really well is Goodfellas.

Last edition:

History in politics. A new trailing series of threads

Labels: History in politics, Politics

Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet On the Western Front).

 

He fell in October, 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.

The last two paragraphs of All Quiet On The Western Front. 

I've never reviewed All Quiet on the Western Front, even though I'd long ago seen the prior two versions.  I just saw the newest, German made, production of the book, which in Germany was released under the novel's German title, Im Westen nichts Neues, which literally translates as "in the West nothing new".*

All Quiet On The Western Front has a reputation as being the greatest anti-war novel ever written.  I'm sorry to say that I haven't actually read it, which I'll have to do.  Indeed, the recent German made version of the novel sort of compels me to do so.

The novel was first adapted to film in 1930 in an American version, which is a great film in its own right.

It was later adopted to a television in 1979, in another version that is very well regarded.  In 2022 this German version was released and shown on Netflix.  My original intent was to review just that version, but you really can't.  You have to review all three.

The best of the three is frankly the first one, although it does suffer from being a film that, due to cinematography, and due to pacing, hasn't aged as well as it should have.  It's hard not to watch the 1930 version and not, at least at first, appreciate that you are watching an old film.  

Still, this version sets the story at well, and perhaps with more than a degree of unintended irony in that the film came before the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1932, and therefore the early scene of enthusiastic school boys being eager for the war were ominous, retrospectively.  It's a gritty, good protrayal.

The 1979 television version is good as well, but frankly I just couldn't quite get around Richard Thomas in the role of the main protagonist, Paul Bäumer.  Lew Ayres was better in that role.  For that matter, Ernest Borgnine, who almost always turned in a good performance, did in the 1979 version as well, but he's just way too old for the German NCO Stanislaus Katczinsky he portrays.  For that matter, Louis Robert Wolheim really was as well, at age 50, but he carries the role off better, even though he was within a year of his own death at the time.

Anyhow, Thomas was so whiny, in a way, in The Waltons that I just can't get around that in this film, which really isn't his fault.  I just can't see him going from a green, naive recruit to a hardened combat veteran.

Which takes us to the new production.

This is the first German production of the film, and it shows it.  The production values in the film are absolutely excellent.  the material details are superb and. . . . the plot massively departs from the novel.

And for that reason, frankly, it suffers.  

This film really carries the post World War Two German guilt/excuse into a World War One work that was a novel.  It doesn't, therefore, really get Remarque's warning about militarism across, so much as it portrays average Germans as victims of the Great War and future victims of the Second World War.  The death of Katczinsky, which is a completely pointless combat death in the novel and first two films, is a weird murder by a French child in this version.  

And the ending of this movie departs massively from the novel and looses the point of it.  The protagonist dies on a quiet day, like thousands of soldiers did.  In the new German version he died in a  massive late war German assault at the end of the war.  That's completely different.  

For that matter, that's a major departure from actual history and it ties in, just a tad, to the Stabbed In the Back myth. The Germans had an ongoing revolution at home and the Frontsoldaten were collapsing. You couldn't have ordered them into an attack in late 1918 no matter how hard you tried.

So, the first version is the best.  I don't think I could get through the second again, and the third version is worth watching, once.

*This review was started in October, 2022.

Tuesday, August 22, 1923. Oaths of Office, Air Mail, No French Concessions, Japanese Navy Disaster, Societal Shifts.

Calvin Coolidge was administered the oath of office for the second time because of a question of whether the presidential oath had to be administered by a federal official. Judge Adolph A. Hoehling Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia administered did the honors this time, at the  Willard Hotel.

The Coolidge's then moved into the White House later that day.

I'm amazed that our disgraced former business magnate President didn't think of having a notary at the bank or something administer another oath to him.

Mail was getting speedier.

France informed Britain that it would not make concessions on the Ruhr.

Kalamazoo, Michigan banned dancers from staring into each other's eyes.

This sounds absurd, of course, but society was having a difficult time figuring out how to adjust to the arrival of dating.  It didn't come in all at once, of course, but the arrival of modern dating, principally in control of the dating couples or prospective couples, had increased enormously following World War One.

We've dealt with it extensively here before, but the 1920s really saw the onset of domestic machinery which would end up changing women's relationship with work.  And it also saw a dramatic rise in the number of young women who lived outside their parent's homes, or who were semi-independent of their parent's household.  FWIW, a really good portrayal of this can be found in A River Runs Through It, in a rural setting, which is of course a memoir of this period.  Much of this would be arrested with the arrival of the Great Depression, which retarded the advance of household appliances of all sorts, and sent many young people, male and female, back into their parent's households.

Among the difficulties being adjusted to were the morality problems the shift presented.  Now presented as quaint, they really were not and were not easily instantly adjusted to, and in some ways can be argued to have never been worked out.  We may in fact be in the final stages of working them out now.  An item from yesterday demonstrated an aspect of that, being the rise of pornography before there was any consensus on how to address that, which there still really is not.

The Imperial Japanese Navy's submarine 70 sank in a disaster, killing 88 of its men.  She was swamped by a passing ship with her hatch open.  Only six men survived, including her commanding officer.

Six men sawed their way out of the Natrona County jail.

Sawing your way out of a jail window is such a Western movie trope that it's odd to read of it actually being done.

Related Threads:

Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two

El Alamein, (Tanks of El Alamein)

This is a 1957 Italian movie that's almost completely unknown to English speaking audiences.

It's surprisingly good.

The film surrounds the raising of, and training of, an actual well known Italian paratrooper unit, going through the early training of the film and the personalities of the soldiers followed in the film.  Some are conscripts, some are men who have been recalled from earlier service, including the first character who is introduced who is a monastic friar, and some new recruits. Their airborne training is explored and well done.  After they are fully trained as paratroopers, they are deployed to North Africa, which the actual unit really was.  It fights to its destruction at the Battle of El Alamein.

In some ways, the movie is a typical 1950s war movie, but more effort was expended on the prolonged tank battle scenes than normal.  Clearly making use of the Italian army at the time, the tanks depicted are a mix of M4 Sherman's and M47s.  Large numbers of tanks are used, and period fighter aircraft (although I could not identify them) are as well.  The movie is very well done.

In terms of historical accuracy, here too I don't know enough about Italian, or Axis units in general, at El Alamein to know how accurately this is depicted, but it does involve a real unit that was in fact basically destroyed in the battle.  Other armies, including the German and the British Army, are nearly dealt within the abstract, a fact assisted in that the British, with some exceptions, are depicted principally as armored formations so actual encounters with identifiable human beings are fairly rare.  Equipment wise, the movie seems largely accurate on the Italian side, although the number of submachineguns used by the Italian paratroops is presumed to be heavily exaggerated.

This is an almost loving portrayal of the unit that is completely apolitical, which may be one of its faults.  These men, in real life, were fighting for Mussolini, but in the movie neither Mussolini or fascism are ever mentioned.  They're basically portrayed as men doomed to a tragic fate, which in a way they were, but in wars, there is always a larger picture.

Worth seeing, and something that we rarely actually see portrayed, that being a unit history, like that given in Platoon, of an Axis unit in World War Two.

Movies In History: The Wild Geese

Some time ago I started listening to the excellent Fighting On Film podcast by two British gentlemen.  It's excellent.

This 1978 movie is one of the first movies they reviewed, and apparently it has an enormous cult following in the UK, particularly amongst military movie fans and British servicemen.  It's a guilty pleasure of mine, and I was surprised to find that I'd never reviewed it.

Set in the 1970s at the tail end of the mercenary era in Africa, the plot involves a group of British mercenaries, all with British Army backgrounds, who are recruited to serve in a commando mission to free a secretly imprisoned African leader.  Outfitted with merchant banker money, the band assembled in the UK and trains in Africa, outfitted in period British uniforms (but with the members retaining the berets and cap badges of their old units), and generally European NATO firearms of the era.  They preform their mission of rescuing the president, only to be betrayed, and then must fight their way, basically, to Rhodesia.

Coming just at the end of that period in time in which there had been in fact a lot of European mercenaries with roles in Africa, and in fact advised by "Mad" Mike Hoare, who was one of the more famous ones, the film had a certain air of credibility to it.  It's loved, as noted, by British military film aficionados.

Frankly, the film ain't great.

It has a good cast, including Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris and Hardy Kruger.   The rough outline of the plot, taken from a novel, isn't bad.  The equipment is fascinating.  

But, the production values are frankly low, and the actors, save for Kruger and Moore, are past their prime and not credible in their roles at all. Burton, as Col. Faulkner, was well into his alcoholic demise at the time and looks like he'd not make it more than a few 100 yards into the bush.  Harris, who looked vibrant a decade prior in Major Dundee, doesn't look much better.  It just doesn't work.

Still, like Major Dundee (which is much better), there's just enough there, there, that the film is worth watching and somehow compelling.  It's heavily flawed, but you can almost see the move that might have been.

In terms of historical accuracy, we'll just note that there was a lot of mercenary action in Africa in the 60s and 70s as the old European empires fell apart.  Professional European soldiers, not all of them the most reputable, found roles in those wars, most notably in the Congo.  A certain cache developed about them that found itself expressed in novels and films, with this being one of the better known ones.

In terms of material details, the producers of this film chose to outfit the actors as if they were a British army unit of the time, and they look like one.  That probably isn't how an actual mercenary outfit would look, but as is often noted about this film, these guys do look good in the uniforms, physical decline aside.  The weapons chosen are a mixture of older British pattern uniforms and selective fire FALS, which are clearly not being really fired, as the recoil from a FAL on full automatic is pretty heavy.

All in all, it's entertaining, but not great.

Movies In History: Quo Vadis

I was recently forced to spend some semi idle time in front of the television.  For reasons, I can't really explain, if I'm sick or injured, I don't read much.  I will listen to things like podcasts, and I'll watch television, but I don't do much reading.

Anyhow, during that period, I watched this 1951 "epic".  The plot surrounds a returning Roman general, Marcus, during Nero's reign who comes back from a long extended campaign just in time to experience, over a few weeks, the arrival in Rome of St. Peter and the great fire of Rome.

Condensing years of history into a few weeks, the plot is frankly improbable.  Marcus returns from campaign and stays at the house of a retired Roman general who has converted to Christianity.  He meets St. Paul there, but doesn't appreciate who he is.  He also meets Lygia, a captive in the household who was raised by her captors as their adoptive daughter, who is also a Christian.  In a matter of seeming hours, Marcus falls deeply in love with Lygia and vice versa, which leads to some drama.  Marcus is present when St. Peter preaches, having just arrived in Rome, but remains unconvinced.  Nero has Rome torched when he's at his out of the city estate, and Marcus races back, ending up being thrown in confinement with the Christians blamed for the fire. He saves Lygia and causes a Roman army to revolt against Nero.

This film was well regarded in 1951, but it's really just too thin on plot now.  Indeed, darned near any Roman epic save for Ben Hur really suffers in viewing.

Usually, I review these films for historical accuracy and material details. I really can't do that in regard with Roman material details, as I don't know enough about ancient Rome of this period to do so.  In terms of historic accuracy, Rome did suffer near destruction in a fire during Nero's reign, and he was blamed for it.  The Christians were too.  It was frankly most likely just a fire that spread by accident that was inevitable, given the conditions of the city at the time.  Nero, who became Emperor at an absurdly young age was emblematic of what was wrong with Rome at the time, but he was probably not as weird as portrayed in the film by Peter Ustinov, who really does steal the show with his depiction.  Christians were persecuted under Nero, but Nero's demise didn't come about in this fashion.

St. Peter did suffer execution, it is more than worth noting, following the great fire in 64.  The title of the film comes from St. Peter's encounter with Jesus outside of Rome, as he fled persecution there, with his encountering the risen Christ and, in the Latin translation, asking "Quo vadis?", to which Jessu replied "Romam eo iterum crucifigī", or "Where are you going", and "I am going to Rome to be crucified again".  This caussed Peter to return to Rome.

A much better film could have been made out of all of this, but at the time this one was highly regarded.  One thing of note is that it would be hard to make a Hollywood blockbuster of this type now, as this film was 100% Christian in outlook.

The Professionals. A second review.

As recently noted here, Fighting On Film just dropped a podcast episode on The Professionals.  I reviewed that film back in 2015, along with a collection of others, in which I stated:

The Professionals

This film from the 1960s is in the star packed genera, which many films of this period were.  Featuring Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode, Burt Lancaster, and others, the film is set in the Mexican Revolutionary period, with a plot centered on American soldiers of fortune being hired by a wealthy rancher to retrieve his kidnapped wife.

All in all, this film is pretty entertaining and is done pretty well.   In terms of history, it has some interesting features including the fluid nature of the border and the confusing  nature of Mexican revolutionary forces. The film has an offhand referenced to the "Colorados", who were an actual faction in the Mexican Revolution and who were followers of Pascual Orozco, and who fought for Modero at first and then switched to Huerta against him.  This would also place the film in the 1913 to 1915 time frame and would place the revolutionaries generally depicted in the film into some category of Villistas, more or less. 

The firearms in the film are period correct, and small details, such as Marvin's clothing (he's supposed to be a former professional soldiers) show some surprisingly small scale correct details that are generally omitted in films in this period.  One of the better films of this type.

I try to go more in depth in my reviews now, which is why I'm never current on them, sad to say.  

This film is one of my favorites and it sort of stands, in my view, as a bookend to The Wild Bunch, which was reviewed in the same original collective post.  In looking back, I notice that I noted what Fighting On Film did about Lee Marvin's "drip".  I didn't notice, but it's very evident in the film, how realistic, period correct, and almost acrobatic Marvin's handling of firearms is in the movie.

Fighting On Film places this movie in about 1920, which is likely correct, which makes it a true Fin de Siècle, passing of the frontier west film.  Indeed, it's really almost past it.  It's an excellent film, one which I've watched many times.  Given that, I'm surprised to see that I didn't mention, when I originally reviewed it, that the movie, based on a novel serialized in the Rocky Mountain News (A Mule for the Marquessa) and features bombshell Italian actress Claudia Cardinale in it.  Fighting On Film hardly mentioned her either, FWIW.  She's the one weak role in the whole film and is frankly there as window dressing.  There was no effort at all to do anything about her extraordinarily thick Italian accent, even though Jack Palance, playing "Raza", a Villa like character, has an affected one, and Marie Gomez, a Mexican actress who also played roles in American television, a genuine one.  Indeed, Gomez's English, while accented, is crystal clear, whereas Cardinale's English is not.

The Fighting On Film website has a link to an original poster or theater card from the movie, which would lead to protests today, as it depicts Cardinale so stripped down that it's effectively a poster emphasizing her breasts over anything else.  It probably realistically demonstrated why she was in the film in the first place, however.  Indeed, in at least one scene the film toyed with Gomez's portrayal in this fashion as well, going further than it did with Cardinale, but so briefly that it's almost not noticeable.  This latter fact is more than a little 60s misogynistic, but the casting of Cardinale was simply silly.  It's notable that in films today, moviemakers at least cast real Hispanic actresses in Hispanic roles and wouldn't get away with the Italian bombshell thing today.

In contrast, Woody Stroke, who was elevated to star status by this movie, was amazingly 52 years old when it was released.  I note this as he was clearly cast in part as he was a remarkable physical specimen, the only male character to be shown shirtless. At 52, he appeared much younger than his actual age.

Anyhow, this move is very well done.  The clothing, as noted, shows real attention to small details. The firearms are mixed and period correct.  Horses are shown not to be free of fatigue.  It's a good watch.