Movie night
While conejodanz is away for Turkey Day I'm catching up at work during the day and tossing World War II movies in the DVD changer at night.
Last night's triple feature:
Objective, Burma! (1945) - Directed by the legendary Raoul Walsh and starring Errol Flynn, this is a bit of patriotic fare about an American unit that parachutes into the jungle and then has to fight its way out without any sign of any British or Australian soldiers anywhere... which would never have happened in reality since Commonwealth forces did most of the fighting in the China-Burma-India (CBI) campaign. One memorable scene is actually filmed in and around the house from Fantasy Island which is a bit odd. The Japanese are referred to as savages and monkeys which is actually mild language for a film made in 1945.
Go for Broke! (1951) - The true story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team which was formed from Japanese-American volunteers and sent to fight in Europe under the command of white officers. Van Johnson plays a reluctant Texan who isn't happy with his assignment but eventually comes around. The film doesn't pull a lot of punches about racism during the war and avoids the preachy tone of later films like Glory and The Tuskegee Airmen. Near the end is a really great scene where a captured German officer asks Van Johnson's character if his troops are Chinese and he replies that they are Japanese and didn't Hitler tell them that Japan had surrendered and was fighting for the Allies now?
Never So Few (1959) - We're back in the CBI campaign again as Kachin rangers battle the Japanese with the assistance of American and British advisors from the OSS. Aside from one token British character the rest of the troops are American (one wears an Australian style bush hat through the whole film for no apparent reason) so accuracy was never the point of this film. In fact I would guess the only point of this film was to get Gina Lollobrigida and Frank Sinatra on screen together for a romance that totally derails the main plot. Otherwise this is a pretty bad movie with lots of inaccuracies and a heavy 1950s style that makes you forget several times that the story is set during World War II. Even more strange, the Japanese are just cannon fodder, the real bad guys turn out to be Chinese warlords. There is a large and familiar cast backing up Sinatra: Peter Lawford, Paul Henreid, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Aki Aleong, James Hong, George Takei... Charles Bronson plays a Navajo code talker who spends most of the film bristling when another American calls him Hiawatha. The script reads a bit like The Green Berets at times and if you didn't know that the film was made in 1959 you might think it is a commentary on the Vietnam war.
Ok, back to work.
Last night's triple feature:
Objective, Burma! (1945) - Directed by the legendary Raoul Walsh and starring Errol Flynn, this is a bit of patriotic fare about an American unit that parachutes into the jungle and then has to fight its way out without any sign of any British or Australian soldiers anywhere... which would never have happened in reality since Commonwealth forces did most of the fighting in the China-Burma-India (CBI) campaign. One memorable scene is actually filmed in and around the house from Fantasy Island which is a bit odd. The Japanese are referred to as savages and monkeys which is actually mild language for a film made in 1945.
Go for Broke! (1951) - The true story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team which was formed from Japanese-American volunteers and sent to fight in Europe under the command of white officers. Van Johnson plays a reluctant Texan who isn't happy with his assignment but eventually comes around. The film doesn't pull a lot of punches about racism during the war and avoids the preachy tone of later films like Glory and The Tuskegee Airmen. Near the end is a really great scene where a captured German officer asks Van Johnson's character if his troops are Chinese and he replies that they are Japanese and didn't Hitler tell them that Japan had surrendered and was fighting for the Allies now?
Never So Few (1959) - We're back in the CBI campaign again as Kachin rangers battle the Japanese with the assistance of American and British advisors from the OSS. Aside from one token British character the rest of the troops are American (one wears an Australian style bush hat through the whole film for no apparent reason) so accuracy was never the point of this film. In fact I would guess the only point of this film was to get Gina Lollobrigida and Frank Sinatra on screen together for a romance that totally derails the main plot. Otherwise this is a pretty bad movie with lots of inaccuracies and a heavy 1950s style that makes you forget several times that the story is set during World War II. Even more strange, the Japanese are just cannon fodder, the real bad guys turn out to be Chinese warlords. There is a large and familiar cast backing up Sinatra: Peter Lawford, Paul Henreid, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Aki Aleong, James Hong, George Takei... Charles Bronson plays a Navajo code talker who spends most of the film bristling when another American calls him Hiawatha. The script reads a bit like The Green Berets at times and if you didn't know that the film was made in 1959 you might think it is a commentary on the Vietnam war.
Ok, back to work.