1970, we've already noted, was the year the United States participated in an invasion of Cambodia with the Republic of Vietnam, while war protests raged across the United States. In popular recollection, it was also the year that the nation was increasingly anti war and anti military.
Well. . . maybe, but it was one heck of a year for war movies.
Patton, a movie I've never reviewed here (until now), was released that year. It goes down in cinematic history as a great movie and one of the greatest World War Two pictures ever made. George C. Scott's portrayal of George S. Patton, for which he was awarded but did not accept an Academy Award, so defined the controversial American cavalry commander turned armored branch general that Scott's movie Patton is better remembered than the real Patton.
It's interesting to note that Nixon watched the film in a private showing just before ordering the invasion of Cambodia.
The film is justifiably famous for a fairly accurate portrayal of Patton's personality, although it's portrayal of Omar Bradley is more charitable than Bradley deserved, perhaps because Bradley's memoirs of World War Two were used in part for the film, along with Ladislas Farago's Patton: Ordeal and Triumph. Bradley worked as an advisor on the film which also no doubt influenced his portrayal. Irrespective of that, it's a great film. Taking the viewer from Patton's elevation after the Battle of Kasserine Pass to just after the war, it is limited, and wisely, to just his biography as an important American commander during the war.
It's not a very materially accurate film, however. Armor for the film, as well as the numerous soldiers portrayed in it, were provided by the Spanish Army and the film was largely filmed in Spain. M4 Shermans were Spanish M47s and Spanish M48s filled in for all German armor, giving the impression of more modern armored combat than World War Two actually featured, although the large scale combat scenes in the movie are very will done. There's a reason that its recalled as a great film to this day.
In contrast to the material inaccuracy of Patton is the accuracy of the peculiar and appealing World War Two sort of drama/comedy, Kelly's Heroes, was released on June 23, 1970. Filmed in Yugoslavia, the producers were able to make use of American M4 Shermans and other World War Two vintage hardware that remained there. Not stopping at that, however, three Soviet tanks were carefully converted to be nearly dead ringers for German Tiger Is. In terms of ground equipment (but not air) the film is the first materially accurate World War Two film made. The depiction of the fluid nature of France in 1944 is fairly accurate, and the combat scenes are well done.
It isn't accurate, of course, in terms of the portrayal of soldiers and it wasn't met to be. Donald Sutherland's portrayal of "Oddball", a hippie tank commander, steals the show but he portrays a figure simply impossible for the time. The film's main star is supposed to be Kelly, portrayed by Clint Eastwood, but its really Sutherland who shines. The film portrays an armored reconnaissance unit that goes rogue on a mission to loot a bank behind German lines under the leadership of former, and now demoted, officer Kelly. The cast in the film is really impressive.
Released in 1970, the film anticipates the changing mood of the time, but it remains today a cult classic and its popular with careful students of World War Two for the reasons noted. It's odd to realize that Sutherland's portrait of Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H was actually from earlier the same year, as his portrayal here was a risky choice. It's also odd to realize that Carroll O'Connor's portrayal of an Army general in this film was not intended to be a parody of Patton, even though it seems to be.
M*A*S*H was as noted, released earlier this same year, and its an awful film. Ironically, it's one I've already gone over, so I'm not going really get into it again here. I would note, as I did originally:
Which doesn't make it a good film.
If M*A*S*H was heavily influenced by the country's developing mood, and Sutherland's Oddball at least had a cheerful character more out of 1970 than 1944, the other great war picture of the year was much more like Patton in nature, that being the great film Tora! Tora! Tora!, which portrayed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Tora! Tora! Tora! is one of the greatest World War Two movies ever made and is far and away the best film about the events of December 7, 1941. The later effort Pearl Harbor is pathetic in comparison. Getting the history and the material details correct, and filmed on location, it's a masterpiece which may be free of errors. It stands as the greatest true depiction, quasi documentary, movie of its era and inspired more than one attempt to follow up in its portrayals of later events that were real failures. Using a large number of actors and depicting sweeping events, it fits into a series of movies of that time, including The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far, that took real big picture and small picture looks at singular events in the war. It's a great film.
So what does it tell us, if anything, that they were made when they were? It probably tells us at least in part that our recollection of the country's mood in 1970 isn't very accurate. M*A*S*H was an anti war film using the vehicle of the Korean War to discuss the Vietnam War. But none of the three movies about World War Two, which had concluded just 25 years earlier, could be regarded as an anti war film. Even Kelly's Heroes, which has an element of cynicism, had it only lightly. So even as the country grew increasingly disenchanted with Vietnam, it didn't feel that way about World War Two. For that matter, of course, the youngest of the country's World War Two veterans were only in their early 40s at the time.
