DB7

D-Day brings memories and reissues

Geoff Brown basks in the glories of d-day reissues

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE an anniversary to make film copyright holders scour their back catalogues for new promotional angles, and the biggest angle this spring is the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

For authentic footage of the events and their aftermath you need the Collector’s Edition of The True Glory (DD Video), the official documentary of the Allied campaign, compiled from footage by some 1,400 cameramen. Four other wartime documentaries covering the European campaign fill out the two-disc set.

There should also be space on the shelf for Warner’s George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin. The DVD may be short (45 minutes) but it still has value for collectors. Here is rare colour footage, filmed as a personal diary by the American director serving with the Special Coverage Unit of the US Expeditionary Forces. There is a poignancy in seeing the war through the rosy glow of home-movie Kodachrome.

During the Second World War, British cinema found a subject matter and a tone of voice that Hollywood could not match. Audiences wanted to see reflections of their own courage, travails and heartbreaks living through the war.

The Way Ahead directed by Carol Reed, and Anthony Asquith’s The Way to the Stars, written by Terence Rattigan, both newly available from Warner on DVD, present lively and sensitive fictional portraits of Army and Air Force officers and recruits coming together in a common cause. Don’t go to these films for Hollywood-style heroics: British understatement rules, and the films seem all the more real and poignant for it.

Maddeningly, the films of Humphrey Jennings, the true poet among wartime documentary makers, are currently available only on video. The Imperial War Museum’s Listening to Britain collects three key titles, including his masterpiece, Listen to Britain.

I Was a Fireman (DD Video) presents the uncut version of Jennings’s only feature, Fires Were Started, a brilliant recreation of the London Blitz. Jennings came from a cosy upper-class background, yet he was able to put the Home Front’s ordinary workers on the screen with an ease never seen in British cinema before.

Making war films during the war was understandable. But why did British cinema expend so much effort fighting the war again in the 1950s and beyond, revisiting old battles and campaigns, condemning Jack Hawkins and company to spend much of their working lives saluting and wearing gold braid? Possibly it was an attempt to bask in past glories, both national and cinematic.

The Battle of Britain drama Angels One Five (DD Video) found quick popularity in 1952, and still wears quite well, though for intelligence and edge-of-the-seat excitement the 1950s British war movie to beat remains The Dam Busters (Warner), with its bouncing bombs aimed at Ruhr dams.

The big daddy of the genre in Hollywood, with one of the longest cast lists as well, is The Longest Day, newly released by Fox in a two-disc edition. But British collectors may be more interested in the new edition of Battle of Britain (MGM).

The film’s merits vary, depending on whether planes are flying or Susannah York is trying to be the forlorn female interest. But it looks great in its widescreen format; the supporting features are interesting, and it gives the option of removing the impoverished Ron Goodwin score and hearing all the William Walton music originally recorded but rejected by the studio.

Steve Crook

Maybe it's because people in life and death situations makes for good drama.

Maybe it's because they still can't believe we won :)
Seriously, although in the spate of D-Day programmes on TV (some of which are very good) I've seen mention of a few that consider what would have happened had it not worked, but not many that stress how close it was. Similar with the Battle of Britain.

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

Marky B

Sorry to get on my soapbox about this,but I think in this day and age of overpaid footballers,popstars and,yes,actors,I feel there is very litte recognition of the young pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain and indeed all the others who served to defend and look after our country.
I am proud to boast my father served in the Merchant Navy during the war,crossing a vast and infathomable ocean pestered with U-Boats.
We have people today who go around the streets,fuelled to the brain by drink and pill chasers,thinking they are hard. If only we could transport them back to the 1940's,plonk them in a Spitfire or Hurricane and send them off into the sky against the mighty Luftwaffe. Or put them on the landing craft at Normandy;or a ship crossing the angry Atlantic,the cold Arctic;or how about the Allied liberators of the Death Camps and witness the ultimate zeal of rascism.
I think the anniversary of these events should be remembered,not as a dig against the modern Germany or Germans,but as a way of reflecting of how we take our life for granted.
If the Battle of Britain was lost,the invasion of our country would have taken place. The USA would have had no foothold for the liberation of Europe and it is more than likely we would still be under the Nazi hammer...
Ta Ta
MArky B :mad:

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

Steve Crook

I wouldn't go as far as saying "very little". But maybe one Sunday each year isn't enough.
There's even less recognition for the merchant seamen even though there were probably more of them killed than in any branch of the armed services.

An often heard comment to go with that idea is that modern youths are much too soft and couldn't do it.

That's why I was very pleasantly surprised by the programme on the BBC where they took a bunch of volunteers and are putting them through (admittedly slightly limited) D-Day training. Most of the lads are doing very well.

And having D-Day veterans there as well to tell the lads what is was like for them makes it really special.

Who's using it for a dig against modern Germany? Have you been reading the newspapers again? You should know that there's nothing in them that you can believe :)

Similarly with D-Day. And, as I said, they were both remarkably close run things.

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

Gibbie

HERE HERE! thumbs_u

Bob M.

What about the imperial war museum at Duxford charging the vets £8 to get in for the anniversary celebrations? If I had the money I would pay for them myself. These celebrations are only happening because of these heroes.
I think those war films of the 50's (Jack Hawkins and co.) are probably the result of an action hungry public. They fell of after the war and gave way to fantasy and romance which also soon fell away from younger audiances.
I expect someone will put me right on this one!

"How about dat, a? How about dat?

Gibbie

My late-father told me a lot about the war when I was a child. After D-Day, he went through Liverpool right to Southampton on a train and right onto a boat to France. At the end of the war, he was one of the Dachau liberators and his pictures still haunt me. That war made such an imprint on the souls of that time that WWII was well on the conscience of people well into the 1970s. The older men used to talk about it at least once at all the family gatherings and thats about all they talk about when my uncle gets together with his old friends when he goes to visit his hometown. By meeting people, I think this is as true for the Brits as it is for the Yanks. The anti-war stuff developed from several factors in the post-war years. Won't go there now.

Also, per the fantasy thing, English and French literary romanticism really hit big in mainstream film from about the 30s until about 68 or 69 when the "in-your-face" gritty brutalism ravished the romantic impulse. Even today, romantic movies are somewhat brutalist. They don't nurture Ronald Colman or Joan Fontaine types anymore. Any form of traditionalism or national pride is considered rather heretical today, especially in our media culture and that includes film (contrary to what others perceive about the US). I don't think we will see certain documentarians winning at Cannes for a study of war heroes anytime soon.

People born after the passing off of that oral culture (memory of the war) pretty much have no clue what those people sacrificed back then.

One movie that greatly stuck with my dad and a film writer I once knew and many others was "The Best Years of Our Lives." A provoking story, but memorable to those elders of that time, about how the world changed after they came home from the war. Quite a study in post-war realism. Still enough romanticism to buff out the rougher parts. Also, great Indiana piano player/songwriter Hoagy Carmichael makes a cameo. Dana Andrews was in top acting form.

By the 60s, over here, WWII movies became more sentimental and action oriented, "The Longest Day" and "Where Eagles Dare". If you get to see it on video, try to catch the war comedy "Hogan's Heroes" it is a TV classic and an excellent send up of Stalag 17 (Richard Dawson is the British contribution and quite the comic). One of the best comedic timing programs ever made!

I don't think the 70s films were as good and during that period concern about getting a period right was disregarded (men with long hair in 45?). "Apocalypse Now" (79) was the turning point for anti-war movies and films on war, for that matter.

Through the 80s and 90s, the anti-war lobby pretty much had Hollywood and reduced war-type movies to anti-service pictures ("A Few Good Men", etc). In the place of war movies, fantasy pictures like "Bladerunner" and "Terminator" took the place of war pictures (the "Star Trek" formula removed the capacity to show culture conflicts on a nationalist level - that is both good and bad).

Free passes for the Veterans! And, don't forget your poppy in November!

Gibbie

Bob M.

Gibbie, What a fantastic write up. Do you do it for a living? My dad was a regular soldier when war broke out. He was a prisoner of the Japanese. He did a total of twenty eight years in the army. When he came out he got rid of everything, his uniforms, medals, photos and all. He would have nothing to do with associations, but once a year he would go to a Burma Star do in London.He would not even tell us about that.My mum would say it's his time. He suffered terribally in later life, recurrant nightmares etc. and would never buy a Japanese car. When he died, I was surprised to see the Burma Star and British Legion standards at the funeral, They looked after him right till the end. They knew what we didn't.
Anyway, I don't profess to know a lot about films, all I do {now is I like Brit films pre 70's and the actors in them.
By the way, do you know anything about Dick/David Fennell? Did a few bit parts in the 60's and 70's. Then disappeared.

"How about dat, a? How about dat?

Gibbie

Thanks Bob! Actually, no. I wanted to be a director as a child though and I know contemporary history a little.

Sounds like your dad was quite a soldier. May he rest in peace!

I'm with you, I tend to like pre-70s films myself.

Did a quick Websearch on Dick/David Fennell and found this. They seem to be two different people, but on one page, David Fennell is credited for the Dick Fennell part in Crossroads. Read paragraph two in the teaberry coloured column.

Best,
Gibbie

Marky B

Yes,Steve
There were more men killed in the Merchant Navy during WWII than any of the service.
Ta Ta
Marky B frown

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

Marky B

Thanks for your tempered replies,Steve. Sorry I came over as bombastic,but it needles me the sacrifices made in those days are taken for granted. The youths I am referring to who go round thinking they are hard,and are often boozed up and coked up,but put them in the situations served sixty years ago,or even further still back to the horrors of the First World War (which don't forget stated ninety years ago).
I am sure there are plenty of young people,outnumbering the thugs,who would quite happily listen to the memories of veterans and appreciate the service they gave along with their fallen comrades to defend their country and liberate Europe.
My comments on Germany are relfected from my own witness point as people still mock the Germans for coming last. As my own father observes,who was buried alive in the bombing,we were enemies between 1939-45,after then we had to re-build a friendship. I have repect for Germans and Germany,as indeed I have for any other nations and their people,and I look upon remembrance as being a time to reflect and a view to hope for everlasting peace.
I hope I have not offended anyone on this site with my views,that is not and never will be my intention.
Mark wink

I am special. The heavens always open for me.