greatest generation

Were African-Americans at Iwo Jima? →

Sixty-three years after U.S. forces vanquished the Japanese and planted their flag on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi, the remote outpost in the Volcano Islands is the focus of another pitched battle. This time, acclaimed film directors Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee are engaging in verbal warfare over the verisimilitude of Eastwood’s two films about the epic clash, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Lee has claimed that by soft-pedaling African-American contributions to the battle, Eastwood is misrepresenting history.

A look back at the Spike Lee-Clint Eastwood spat over Eastwood’s decision to ignore the contribution of African Americans in the Pacific with Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. If I remember correctly, The Pacific and Band of Brothers also failed to include references to African-American soldiers.

While all four productions have an out because they tell the story of soldiers in segregated units, we can’t escape the fact that the two three most recent films to include African-American storylines, Red Tails, Miracle at St. Anna’s, and Hart’s War, were extremely weak. 

I would agree with Eastwood that it is wrong to placate current sentiment by messing with historical fact, but Hollywood could do a much better job of telling a broader “America-at-war story” in general.

What do you think..Why is Hollywood missing the mark?

‘Red Tails’ a disservice to Tuskegee Airmen →

The movie “Red Tails” could not possibly have been “inspired by” the Tuskegee Airmen, as billed, for it is little more than a black comedy about guys who clown and connive their way through World War II, supposedly as combat pilots. Disheveled, undisciplined, crude and uncouth, they are the exact opposite of the real men who served in the all-black fighter group in the 1940s.In this movie — which has raked in millions of dollars at the box office and even got a thumbs up from President Obama — the squad leader finds courage in a bottle of booze while his wingman’s lust for an Italian woman leads to insubordination. During dogfights with the German Luftwaffe, the black pilots behave like kids in a video arcade.

I have to say I agree. Too bad! 

gunsandposes:

Jeremy Davies in Saving Private Ryan (1998).

View high resolution

I have a John Wayne perspective on things today. Look out!

Tell us your favorite World War II film?

Roberto Rossellini’s Trilogy

If you are into classic film and World War II, you must check out these articles about Roberto Rossellini’s epic war trilogy!

Critiquing each film in the trilogy, the American Society of Cinematographers analyzes Rossellini’s style and impact on modern cinema. Seen through the vision of a European filmmaker, the end of World War II and its aftermath are shown at its most gritty and personal with a depth of emotion and drama that American filmmakers of the time could not begin to recreate.

Part One: Rome, Open City

Jean-Luc Godard famously said, “All roads lead to Rome, Open City.” Much has been written about the first of the films in this trilogy, which Rossellini and his crew began to shoot in January of 1945, only weeks after the nine month German occupation of Rome had ended with the Allies’ liberation of the historic capital—even as fighting continued to rage in the north of the country until early April.

Part Two: Paisà

On July 10, 1943, combined American and British Commonwealth troops invaded Sicily. Nine days later, the first air raid on Rome sent a signal that the Allies were on the move. This march north through Italy is the subject of Rossellini’s Paisà. Told in six discrete episodes, with newsreel footage of combat as a bridge between the stories, Rossellini is here able to expand the scale of his narrative beyond the confines of the Italian capital. The success of Rome, Open City in the United States made it possible for him to exploit a much larger budget and a broader scope. Partly funded by US sources brought together by a WWII GI, producer Rod Geiger, who had acquired the American rights to the first film, and who had re-invested his money back into Paisà, MGM acquired the US rights; it is more than a bit surprising to see the MGM Studio credit in front of the main title.

Part Three: Germany Year Zero

To sound the film’s title, in German, as the camera dollies and pans to reveal block after block of bombed-out Berlin, is a visual and aural shocker. The guttural sound of Deutschland im Jahre Null, rather than the mellifluous Italian of Germania, Anno Zero echoes the utter wasteland that was this city two years after the Third Reich crumbled into rubble, victim of Allied bombing of an unprecedented scale. This film, the last in Rossellini’s War Trilogy, documents the once proud civilization of Goethe, Bach, Schiller and Beethoven—its citizens now reduced to scavengers in an opportunistic struggle for survival among the scrap piles that once were their shops and homes.

Actor turned pilot Ronald Reagan stars in this Air Corps training video demonstrating the prowess of the Japanese Zero fighter plane.

Little known World War II surrender signed on Ie Shima →