A Bridge Too Far (1977)
DIRECTOR: Richard Attenborough
CAST: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, Liv Ullmann
REVIEW:
From producer Joseph E. Levine and director Richard Attenborough comes this unwieldy but sporadically impressive “war epic” making the strange choice to throw up a boatload of money and effort portraying in grandiose, The Longest Day–style one of the Allies’ biggest fiascoes of WWII, the ill-conceived Operation Market Garden. Adapted from Cornelius Ryan’s 1974 best-selling book chronicling the operation in comprehensive detail from compiled interviews with both Allied and German participants and Dutch civilians (The Longest Day was also based on Ryan’s book covering the D-Day invasion), A Bridge Too Far was self-importantly touted as “one of the most expensive war movies ever made!” (costing $26 million, an impressive sum in 1977) but was only a modest box office success and received mixed critical reviews. Perhaps this is partly because watching a big, lavish, star-studded movie about an Allied defeat is too much of a downer for audiences expecting some “rah rah” flag-waving, but also the movie lacks the drive and focus to maintain consistent interest over its formidable three hour runtime. It’s overlong, muddled, ponderous, and overbaked, though not without scattered impressive moments. For WWII buffs, it’s worth watching as the kind of epic “classic” they don’t make this way anymore, but for anyone without a strong interest in the subject matter, it’s likely to be a slog. Continue reading
Patton (1970)
DIRECTOR: Franklin J. Schaffner
CAST:
George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Ed Binns, Michael Bates, Karl Michael Vogler, Siegfried Rauch, Richard Münch, Paul Stevens, Tim Considine, Clint Ritchie
REVIEW:
Equally effective as a war film or a character study, Patton still holds up today chiefly due to the towering lead performance by George C. Scott. Rod Steiger, Lee Marvin, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and Burt Lancaster were all offered the title role, but after watching the film it is impossible to imagine anyone else but Scott. Patton can be enjoyed simply as one of the great film performances of all time. Scott does not simply play Patton; he has become so synonymous with the character that the real George Patton of WWII archive footage seems like an imposter. Credit is also due the capable direction by Franklin J. Schaffner, producer Frank McCarthy (a retired brigadier general who had worked for twenty years to make a movie about Patton), the intelligent, even-handed screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, and the cinematography by Fred Kroenkamp, who enhances the film with his sweeping shots of Tunisia, France, and Germany. John Huston, Henry Hathaway, and Fred Zinnemann had declined to direct. William Wyler agreed but later left over script disagreements with Scott. Whatever difficulties they may have had during filming, the efforts of the cast and crew paid off, as Patton went on to win eight Oscars, including Best Actor for Scott (which he famously refused, calling the Oscars a ‘self-serving meat parade’), Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Production Design.
The Bridge at Remagen (1969)
DIRECTOR: John Guillermin
CAST:
George Segal, Ben Gazzarra, Robert Vaughn, Bradford Dillman, E.G. Marshall, Hans Christian Blech, Joachim Hansen, Peter Van Eyck, Heinz Reincke, Richard Münch, Günter Meisner.
REVIEW:
Director John Guillermin and an American and German cast brings us this exciting, fast-paced, and remarkably even-handed account of the desperate struggle of two small groups of men, the Americans to capture a bridge leading into Germany, and the Germans to destroy it, in the final months of WWII in Europe. Continue reading
Is Paris Burning? (1966)
DIRECTOR: Rene Clement
CAST: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer, Leslie Caron, Jean-Pierre Cassel, George Chakiris, Bruno Cremer, Alain Delon, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Gert Frobe, Yves Montand, Anthony Perkins, Simone Signoret, Robert Stack, Pierre Vaneck, Marie Versini, Skip Ward, Orson Welles, Claude Rich, Gunter Meisner, Joachim Hansen, Wolfgang Preiss, Karl-Otto Alberty, Hannes Messemer, Billy Frick
REVIEW:
From French director Rene Clement and a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal comes this large-scale but rather muddled and ponderous French war film that tries to be a classic WWII epic like The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far but doesn’t achieve their status. Continue reading
The Longest Day (1962)
DIRECTOR:
American scenes: Andrew Marton
British scenes: Ken Annakin
German scenes: Bernhard Wicki
CAST:
Americans: John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Richard Beymer, Rod Steiger, Sal Mineo, Roddy McDowall, Eddie Albert, George Segal, Paul Anka, Red Buttons, Fabian, Mel Ferrer, Steve Forrest, Robert Ryan, Robert Wagner, Stuart Whitman
British: Richard Burton, Peter Lawford, Kenneth More, Sean Connery
Germans: Curt Jürgens, Hans Christian Blech, Heinz Reincke, Paul Hartmann, Richard Münch, Wolfgang Preiss, Peter Van Eyck, Werner Hinz, Gert Fröbe
French: Irina Demick, Christian Marquand, Georges Wilson
REVIEW:
The king of the ’60s and ’70s epic WWII films. One of the most colossal productions ever mounted, and a pet project of high-rolling Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, The Longest Day was an adaptation of journalist and author Cornelius Ryan’s book of the same name, a 180 degrees chronicle of D-Day from compiled interviews from both Allied and German participants, as well as French Resistance agents and civilians. Like Ryan’s book, the movie tells the story of the pivotal Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France in June 1944 from every conceivable angle, from the Allied commanders risking it all on a nail-biting roll of the dice, to their harried German counterparts across the English Channel struggling to organize an effective counterattack amid hopeless confusion, to the common soldiers fighting it out on the beaches and in the hedgerows, to the French Resistance fighters doing their part to aid the liberation of their country, to the French civilians, overjoyed even as they are plunged into the middle of one of the most famous battles in history. This is a boon to history buffs with a strong interest in the subject matter, while those less enthralled might uncharitably refer to The Longest Day as “the longest movie” (it runs a formidable three hours). It’s not for everyone, and it lacks the intensity and immediacy of smaller-scale, more character-driven onscreen depictions of the D-Day invasion from Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers, but for history buffs seeking a comprehensive overview of D-Day, or fans of classic ’60s and ’70s war films, this is an epic “classic” the way they don’t make them anymore. Continue reading
Spartacus (1960)
DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick
CAST: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Tony Curtis, Peter Ustinov, Charles Laughton, John Gavin
REVIEW:
Rightfully regarded as one of the best of the old sword and sandals Roman and/or Biblical epics that were in vogue in Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s (see also the likes of The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, etc), Spartacus exists in the same vein as the likes of Braveheart or Gladiator, blending epic spectacle on the kind of lavish grandiose scale seldom mounted, and a surprising amount of intellectual weight. Some elements are dated, but the core aspects retain their strength.
Continue readingThe Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951)
DIRECTOR: Henry Hathaway
CAST:
James Mason, Jessica Tandy, Cedric Hardwicke, Leo G. Carroll, Luther Adler, Everett Sloane, William Reynolds, Richard Boone
REVIEW:
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was undoubtedly Germany’s most famous General of WWII and continues to be regarded as one of history’s great military commanders. Gaining fame in North Africa, where his outnumbered Afrika Korps divisions pushed the British back for two years and nearly drove them off the continent, the Desert Fox was held in awe even by those fighting against him, both for his battle prowess and for his famously strict adherence to the rules of war. Recalled back to Germany before the end in Africa, he did not share the fate of his captured men, although he would have been more fortunate if he had. His star never again reaching its former heights after the African campaign, he tried and failed to defend Normandy against the Allied invasion and died a few months later, officially of injuries suffered when his staff car was strafed by Allied planes little over a month after D-Day. Only after the war did both the Allies and the German people learn the more complex and dramatic truth: Hitler had forced his once favorite General to commit suicide when information regarding his involvement in or at least knowledge of the conspiracy to overthrow him reached his ears. While Rommel has been portrayed onscreen in a number of war films, by far the best-known and most extensive depiction came in 1951, only seven years after his death, in the form of Henry Hathaway’s The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel. That such a sympathetic—indeed, practically sanctified–portrayal of Rommel could be made so soon after the end of the war is telling of the high regard in which Rommel was held even by his enemies. Unfortunately, a disjointed and episodic narrative structure, stilted dialogue and performances, and an interminable amount of WWII stock footage results in a mediocre production that doesn’t really do its subject justice. Continue reading
The Hitler Gang (1944)
DIRECTOR: John Farrow
CAST:
Robert Watson, Martin Kosleck, Roman Bohnen, Victor Varconi, Luis van Rooten, Alex Pope, Sig Ruman, Fritz Kortner, Tonio Stalwart, Alexander Granach, Poldi Dur, Helene Thimig, Reinhold Schünzel, Ludwig Donath
REVIEW:
The Hitler Gang is a curious (albeit highly dated) little time capsule—a docudrama about the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany made in 1944, when both still existed. Considering its production during WWII and Hitler’s lifetime, its propagandistic slant is unsurprising, but what’s a little more intriguing is that The Hitler Gang actually makes an effort to portray its subject matter with a level of seriousness and historical accuracy (to a point). The result is heavily dated by today’s standards, but retains a certain level of interest both as essentially a biopic made about Hitler while the real Hitler was still alive, and as a slice of Allied propaganda that doesn’t completely abandon the facts. Continue reading