The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[zedz]

As I recall, Children of Men involves a repressive government and a secret 'terrorist' group. No military invasion or anything, not even any involvement of a foreign state. If that's a war film, why not The Parallax View?

You're not wrong. But I guess when I came up with the subheading "Life in a War Zone," it was one of the first things that came to mind.

I agree that it certainly has that look about it in some sequences, and I wouldn't be surprised if Cuaron were playing very close attention to films like The Cranes Are Flying and Ashes and Diamonds.

[matrixschmatrix]

The most striking scene in Children of Men involves two groups engaged in politically motivated armed combat- if films about the Troubles and The Battle of Algiers are war films, I don't see why terrorists/resistance groups can't count more generally.

[matrixschmatrix]

Also, I want to drop a reminder that you're free to harvest titles from previous genre lists that overlap- in a cursory look at the Animation top 100, these are all movies that would fit (by my lights.)

Grave of the Fireflies
Princess Mononoke
Fantastic Planet
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Yellow Submarine
Akira
Watership Down
The Iron Giant
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
The Sinking of the Lusitania
The Secret of Kells
Der Fuhrer's Face
Shooting Range
The Games of Angels
Education for Death

[Mr Sausage]

How long after a war has ended and an occupying force has become the established government can we finally cease calling films made in an occupied country war movies? Obviously the limit has to be somewhat arbitrary, but it needs to be made otherwise every single movie set in Britain, say, would be a war movie because in 1066 the Normans invaded, subjugated the citizens, and never left.

I'd never call Werckmeister Harmonies a war film for another reason besides the fact that it's too far removed from the violent conflict that allowed for the soviet occupation: because the entire political dimension of the story, the depiction of fascism and militarism and their legacy, was removed in its entirety when Krasznahorkai adapted his novel into a screenplay. All references to the political consequences of soviet rule have been removed, leaving us with the metaphysical side of the story only, which plays out in abstraction. Hence, I suspect, the change in titles from The Melancholy of Resistance, with the political under/overtones of "resistance," to one of the book's subtitles, Werckmeister Harmonies, with its more abstract and a-political reference to an intellectual, ordering framework that it would be almost unthinkable not to have, and yet is so arbitrary and so obviously imposed on the world by humans that it seems all too rickety for something meant to forestall chaos. The book may in some ways be about the legacy of war, but the movie is exclusively about how closely chaos lies underneath our attempts to make a meaningful order out of things (in language, in music, in religion, in science), and how precarious are all the things that we believe give life meaning and value.

[swo17]

But, um, it has a tank in it?

[Mr Sausage]

You may have won the battle, swo17, but I will win the war (genre list)!

[zedz]

But, um, it has a tank in it?

That's just what your average Hungarian car looks like.

[domino harvey]

Werckmeister Harmonies

Game over man, game over

[domino harvey]

Red Angel (Yasuzô Masumura 1966) --zedz Spotlight-- While I found this to be a competent if unexceptional film (better than we usually fare on any given title, zedz!), I am a bit perplexed at why this film hit zedz the hardest in terms of being profoundly anti-war-- which I'm not even convinced it is. Is it anti-being wounded as a soldier? Absolutely. Is it anti-pre-war naivete? That too. But the central nurse character, who is taken advantage of several times by the men in her care before finally succumbing to the somewhat more chaste advances of her morphine-addict superior, is barely a combatant, and the idea behind the best scenes in the film relating to the interchangeable victims of war have already been done as well or better in plenty of other wartime flicks. I did appreciate the tossed-off moment wherein the doc is quickly surmising the immediate needs of dozens of wounded soldiers and he quickly rattles off "Amputation, Dead, Surgery," only to not notice when the wrong body gets carted away as "Dead" in the background-- it's a good observation, but it seemed lonely in a narrative of repetitive traumas which land their blows without nearly as much impact as I hoped or expected.

Stars and Stripes Forever (Henry Koster 1952) Unbearable, often physically unwatchable biopic of John Philip Sousa with Clifton Webb merely appearing on-screen without much effort made to emote, give presence, or appear alive. This was only 89 minutes but I felt every last one. Even the potential saving grace of non-Sousa music numbers are shockingly bad-- Debra Paget has an (intentionally, but no matter in this company) awful music number that has to be seen to be believed (but don't see it), and even the fondest of Sousa's admirers would surely tire of hearing the same two or three compositions over and over. I see knives loved this, so he's wrong once again on the internet. Reading other "fan" reviews, most praise boils down to loving marching band music and America. I love both and this movie sucks.

13 Rue Madeleine (Henry Hathaway 1947) Shabbily executed post-war flick about then-recently declassified OSS operations starring James Cagney as the US military leader put to the task of not only training his elite squad of spies, but ferreting out the hidden German double-agent among his charges. This is a frustrating movie in that the basic idea is a great one and this could have been a great movie with a couple rewrites and a different second and third act. Unfortunately, for all the scrappy charm of the film's first thirty minutes, the rest of this cheaply made (and quickly produced, by the looks of it) war adventure isn't nearly as much fun as the early scenes of a room full of bright young things being played file footage of two warplanes colliding in mid-air and then getting barraged with dozens of minute questions or the moment when the German villain tips his hand by being too good to be a US spy-- wait, think about what message that sends!

[matrixschmatrix]

If anyone wants to watch Stars and Stripes Forever, here's the short version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPysJVdO3vM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Lemmy Caution]

Watched Zvezda (2002) aka The Star last night.
Good to see Russia still churning out WWII pictures.
Fairly well-made and well-cast.

A group of reconnaissance scouts are sent behind German lines to learn what the enemy is up to. Since the last two scouting parties left a total of only two survivors, a new group of men is brought in, and everyone knows it's akin to a suicide mission. The film does a nice job of presenting a diverse team with different skills, character, features. A love interest with one of the new female radio operators and a scout is rather weak and overwrought. But the perils the scouts face and their resourcefulness is handled well. A fairly solid war film based on a true story. Almost made me want to invade the near-abroad...

[knives]

I actually like Stars and Stripes Forever quite a bit, but I watched it in the middle of a musical bio-pic marathon of a few weeks so I will entirely blame it on being in the right headspace.

[knives]

Torpedo Run
Pretty nondescript studio war picture to the extant that the director going into television is the only logical option. The hook of having to kill his family to complete his mission is okay, but this is Ford at his most bland leading man. Even Borgnine, somehow getting above the title, doesn't do anything particularly memorable.

The Monuments Men
This is a flawed, flawed, flawed movie yet hot damn do the moments that work work. Seriously just a film of Murray and Balaban's characters fucking around on the western front listening to christmas carols and smoking with the Germans would be a significantly better film. I think the main problem is that the film desperately wants to be the sort of thing you just can't have in 2014, hell in certain parts of the world like Italy you couldn't have it in 1944. That it seems aware of this fact and does implicitly try to counsel the modern and the nostalgic only makes this major flaw all the more clear. Nevertheless trying to make a true throwback to war pictures of the '40s and '50s without the meta play of a The Good German is worth doing just to see if it could be done (it can't).

They Died With Their Boots On
Going into this even with Walsh's support I carried the fear of whitewashing history due to the star and era, but without politicizing anything Walsh manages to get a number of shots in on Custer all the while using Flynn's star persona to degrade him more. Flynn himself seems to be having a blast acting out his charming drunkard as incompetently as can be conceived. This is a man falling to the top. At times he even seems confused by his own success, but takes it out of petty arrogance. The film doesn't always play so straight against him though. The romance stuff seems regular enough and I have to assume that's just a case where no one involved really cared about the section. It's possible the film could have improved without it, but since at worst it is an inoffensive little pot.

It also seems like Walsh is having a lot of fun being the camera playing with a few visual gags like an opening breaking of the fourth wall and some decorative gags, onions and his uniform, which further turns the film into a full on farce. Whatever serious elements are present just get squashed under the light turning Custer's story into the tale of a lone idiot.

Bullet in the Head
I'm not really sure if I like Woo as a director, but each of the Chinese films I've seen of his really bring home the point that I desperately need to see more Chinese/ Hong Kong films in general. This one for instance seems tonally a mess with cute white cinematography and a bouncy score based on some good American pop with some serious stuff on war and death backgrounding it all. I suppose the best example of what I mean here is in the riot sequence where we get this dramatic little romance thing going on right next to a man trying to defuse a bomb with both elements making each other simply not work. It makes the perfect synthesis of weirdness at the end when we graphically and in slow motion see a soldier get blown to pieces as the romantic music from the lovers plays. Yet somehow I can't help but be endeared to this messy and kind of terrible film. There's honestly very little I can say nice about the movie. Its ambition and chutzpah though is too strong to deny with me ultimately just liking the idea of a Chinese film using Vietnam to scold China with. Most of the war scenes do work within the strangeness of the film thanks to how strongly they contrast with everything else going on. It's hard not to wince with most of the deaths in a way that I didn't think Woo was capable of. The violence remains very pretty, but the end result is uncomfortable which has to be seen as a positive. I some what wish he had gone further down this road as the beautification of violence in his American films isn't as interesting as the mess on display here.

Causalities of War
I say this in full praise, but this has to be the most visually inelegant film I've seen from De Palma. I suspect that some of it is trying to grasp with the visuals of that the war presented to Americans (though in that case I find More American Graffiti to have more verisimilitude). Most of the shots, especially early on are rough with the sense that the world has become too abstracted for any framing to be beautiful. Even when things calm down after the kidnapping De Palma seems to engage in uglification of the frame having the camera tilt too far in one direction and the grass swallow up the actors. These moments show the usual De Palma care, but seemingly to make the film random. For instance in the what is a VC speech the beauty comes from Fox being in the left of the frame while the rest of the soldiers are to the right, but then the rule seems broken at the end when the woman is to the right of Penn and Penn himself gets centered to the frame making Fox less unique and thus fully culpable in a way the script doesn't suggest.

As a war film the movie is fantastic and brutal. The actors are all very baby faced which is distracting at first, but seems to be part of the point. Making literal the 'we were just kids, man' thing that gets thrown around all the time. It somewhat disengages with reality, but seemingly to the benefit of the themes. Primarily though they are dumb with Fox again being placed in this category during the gun fight which results in a soldier's death. Fox's character is really interesting in this regard since the movie seems to want to make him the hero, but at the same time is resisting giving him any success. I suppose ultimately this makes him a good German type of soldier rendered more pathetic by giving him a morality. He's not simply following orders, but mumbling to himself its all wrong. Penn may be an absolute monster, but at least he doesn't try to hide that. Just because he doesn't see the rape, which for an aesthetist like De Palma must mean a lot, doesn't mean he isn't to blame. That's probably why De Palma is willing to separate Leguizamo post coitus with the orange light, but baths Fox in blue like the rest. Everyone in the film is just vile.

The Burmese Harp
Maybe I'm just getting better taste as I get older, but I found this to be significantly better than the other Ichikawa war flick everyone gets so hung upon. It contains a lot of similar elements, but all of them seem to solidify here in a less manipulative fashion. In both cases the 'hero' seems to be a cypher, but here there's some humanity lying there on the surface so that he doesn't just come across as a tool for plotting. Perhaps this is just a performance thing, but whatever it is the changes to presentation has done wonders. Even the way he's an enigma seems improved with motivations left unstated and a face which seems to be saying more than the words heard. In short he seems to be a reasonably intelligent guy. Even in terms of that theme, the cost of war, which Fires on the Plain seemed to take with more urgency in thirty minutes I thought this had tackled better with less blatant manipulations and a painted sense of reality. Visually through both films it seems like Ichikawa wants what is seen to be viewed as a skewed warped with odd editing and overly bright lighting to show the nervous break the protagonist goes through. Due to that I'm not saying they're to be treated as strict realism, but the emotions revealed here as the lead begs for a surrender and the rest deny is the more identifiably human way to comment on this than the Gomer Pyle turns feral storyline of the other film.

Shame
This isn't the most entertaining nor devastating war film I've seen, but it has one element to its premise which strikes me as making it one of the most essential war flicks ever. The film almost seems to ask what would it be like if the table were turned and Vietnam was the aggressor on the west (for lack of better phrasing). Ullman and von Sydow are some of the most ordinary protagonists I've encountered from Bergman. They act like normal people, talk like them, and worry as such without even a hint of the philosophical tendencies Bergman usually tries to load into language. It doesn't even seem to be trying too hard to make the world the film occupies unique or psychological. This could fit in with a De Sica war picture if not for the language which is just an utterly genius move. Instead the film seems to be cannibalizing war footage and placing it in unusual circumstances (namely ordinary middle class Sweden). This leaves the film and war at large this amazingly humanizing effect. All barriers are broken down just through this simple setting change. The film thus doesn't really exist within itself, but rather as a way of giving meaning to the newsreels. Early on Bergman makes this very explicit, but the film keeps going to this idea over and over again with long shots and a surprising amount of handheld (or at least handheld like movement). About half way through with the camp the entry way is distanced and isolated from the narrative so that it isn't clear what is happening. This leaves only that connection to the newsreels forcing those scenes to be part of this movie's narrative. In all of this I suppose the film sounds like it could have been a Red Dawn type of paranoid fantasy, so it is all the more shocking that Bergman succeeds so well at creating this sympathy.

[bamwc2]

Knives, thanks for reminding me about Bullet in the Head. I last saw it about fifteen years ago, but was utterly taken by it at the time. If I had to vote now, it'd definitely make my list. In light of the flaws you mentioned, I'll try to rewatch it before the deadline.

[Cold Bishop]

knives, you might also want to read up on the various extended/alternate edits of Bullet in the Head.

[colinr0380]

I think Casualties of War is a fascinating film, one of the few to understand the way that aestheticising war can be a kind of tyranny in itself (It is a dangerous tactic as it can easily backfire into making a film seem pat or offensive if handled poorly or thoughtlessly, which of course is a common criticism of many of De Palma's films. I've just written a two page rant about The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas that I'm not sure whether I should post that illustrates what happens when aestheticism without subtext is all there is) by using aesthetics to undermine 'realism' and reach deeper into the psychology of exploitation, guilt or self-mythologisation that allows individuals to function in their brutally reductively defined roles in conflict.

I would be really curious to see what you make of De Palma's Redacted, knives, as that seems like a modern day Iraq-set, technologically updated (with all the distanciation of war at a remove that the update implies) version of Casualties of War, itself containing a conflicted hero but with the 'alone against the system' theme from Casualties of War stripped away into a kind of more disturbing blank nothingness where even immorality would be.

Interestingly I have just been listening to The Cinephiliacs podcasts for the first time and Matt Zoller Seitz chooses to discuss Stone's Born On The Fourth Of July as a film which indulges in Americana imagery only to rip it away as Kovic is injured and cannot fulfil his original societal function any more. It has been a couple of weeks since I listened to it so I'm not describing it well, but that discussion raised Stone's film much more in my estimations (which is presumably why they have the discuss a film slot at the end of each episode, in order to illustrate the power of film criticism at its purest).

Oh, and while we're on Vietnam I'd like to recommend the excellent 84 Charlie MoPic, a film that anticipates all of the handheld 'found footage' films by decades!

[knives]

I'd love to read your rant if just because that is a film that doesn't get enough hate. I sadly haven't seen Redacted yet though it is definitely on my to watch list. I think you're right though that DePalma seems curious about how the language of art affects the language of war (and perhaps more broadly reality) and indeed makes a great double feature with the Bergman. The film seems oddly personal as if reflecting on how the politics or non-aesthetic themes of De Palma's own work has accomplished nothing. As an argument concerning left wing morality the film strikes me as utterly cynical.

[colinr0380]

OK, here's my poorly thought through Boy In The Striped Pyjamas rant!:

It's a problematic, somewhat annoying film. I can see what it is trying to do in tackling a Holocaust story from a more unorthodox point of view (of an oblivious child of a Nazi officer) to try and inspire horror and compassion firsthand rather than through a more distant empathy for those who died.

Yet that perspective itself becomes the most troubling aspect of the film. Is the implication here that audiences will not care enough about the Holocaust unless a non-Jewish character (or non-Gypsy, non-homosexual, non-dissident etc, although the film doesn't really acknowledge anyone beyond the neatly oppositional Jewish and Aryan boys) is involved? That people will not care about men who died (shown dejectedly, facelessly milling about in the background like cattle, then as a fleshy lumpy mass in the final sequence) unless children are there too? That the death of the German boy 'by accident' is a kind of punishment or penance for the Holocaust, visited on his parents and on a wider scale the society itself, as if this was the incident that showed the true cruelty of Nazism? The film feels as if it is blundering through this subject, raising all of these rather insultingly simple moral questions that allows it come to some pat (and back-patting) conclusions about Nazism and the Holocaust.

Sure, it is a 'children's film from a child's perspective that is introducing big events to younger viewers' but that shouldn't allow any film the excuse of reductively over-simplifying events. In fact some of the best 'children's films' are those which do not sugar coat darkness, the threat of death or frightening elements (Forbidden Games comes to mind, or Watership Down), or use death as a punchline, but faces dealing with difficult subjects as a part of life and important to deal with honestly. Here Boy In The Striped Pyjamas plays like a big joke that the audience is in on, feeling smugly superior to the characters at every point, and our lead character is never given the opportunity to wrestle with the issues or even understand them on any level, remaining wide-eyed and oblivious to the end. (I think it is interesting to compare this to Ender's Game, a much better film which Asa Butterfield also stars in and which also does a turnaround at the end, but one as much directed at the audience as at the main character, and which then gives the character time to deal with his newfound knowledge).

I think that my biggest problem with Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is just how aesthetically 'tasteful' and composed everything is, which itself becomes morally repugnant on every level. Particularly during the jaw droppingly bad taste sequence of the intercutting between the kids getting manoeuvred closer and closer to the gas chambers whilst the slow-moving parents are pursuing the dropped clues a couple of steps behind. The whole scene is full of manufactured tension that appals on a number of levels, from using the idea of extermination as the basis for a race against the clock sequence (also see Schindler's List), through to at the same time the sequence containing an obvious lack of tension due to needing the pellet dropping pay off in order to provide the 'moral lesson' of the story. In a strange way this film has the same problem that the Saw films have in that you need to see the traps working and killing the victim otherwise there is no point to showing them in the first place. Which then drains any sense of drama from situations and makes the films seem even more callous in seeming to relish presenting completely inescapable death sequences.

That sequence also features the archetypally dressed German family members (Nazi uniformed father, classily dressed respectable mother, the girl in Hitler Youth dress) struggling through the mire of muddy, rain sodden nature (compared to the boy's happy sunlit stroll to his doom moments earlier - even the elements have a sense of dramatic irony, it seems!) that is adding a layer of obvious commentary that makes Lars von Trier's Antichrist seem subdued in comparison!

Even if the issues raised were not handled so bluntly ham-handedly, I would still feel it would be impossible to have an aesthetically tasteful and inoffensive treatment of an offensive subject, as if by somehow treating a subject in a 'discreet' manner it has somehow been made 'acceptable for viewing'. As if by simply hearing the, quickly silenced, hammering at the gas chamber door and having a lingering shot of the 'pyjamas' hanging on hooks in the locker room has made the material somehow manageable. By reducing people to abstractions and archetypes and ignoring the messiness and the horror the film is kind of finishing the job of removing humanity from the subject on either side. In some ways I ended up feeling Boy In The Striped Pyjamas was less respectful to the subject matter than even the Italian Nazisploitation titles, revelling in their cartoon cruelties (or even Inglourious Basterds!), were.

[Gregory]

They Died With Their Boots On
Going into this even with Walsh's support I carried the fear of whitewashing history due to the star and era, but without politicizing anything Walsh manages to get a number of shots in on Custer all the while using Flynn's star persona to degrade him more. Flynn himself seems to be having a blast acting out his charming drunkard as incompetently as can be conceived. This is a man falling to the top. At times he even seems confused by his own success, but takes it out of petty arrogance. The film doesn't always play so straight against him though. The romance stuff seems regular enough and I have to assume that's just a case where no one involved really cared about the section. It's possible the film could have improved without it, but since at worst it is an inoffensive little pot.

It also seems like Walsh is having a lot of fun being the camera playing with a few visual gags like an opening breaking of the fourth wall and some decorative gags, onions and his uniform, which further turns the film into a full on farce. Whatever serious elements are present just get squashed under the light turning Custer's story into the tale of a lone idiot.

That's a very uncommon reading of it.
If this isn't a whitewashing of history, then nothing is. The format as presented is the story of a real person and actual events, and the easy goal seemed to be for viewers to feel good watching a hero martyr himself and his men, and reassuringly to see politicians in Washington totally scapegoated for the horrible outcomes—regardless of the omissions and outright reversal of historical fact needed to achieve this. Custer instigated it himself, violating the Treaty of Fort Laramie that he's portrayed as trying to uphold, to cause a war for reasons of political ambition, with an eye toward the presidency. The film didn't create this portrayal of Custer, it just amplified what had been spread by his widow since 1876, which virtually everyone accepted uncritically on the terms it was presented to them. The reason Americans feel okay about this is that this history is not deemed politically relevant, and glorified/falsified hagiography of "Indian fighters" still feels okay to almost everyone. If this kind of thing were done with, say, the history of Reconstruction and the Klan, the film would be viewed in a drastically different light.
I had to get this out of my system.
Now, as for Wildcat... Wild... cat... *ch-powwww* I'm gonna go.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Escape by Night (Roberto Rossellini, 1960): A lesser known work by Rossellini to be sure, and while it doesn't reach his upper echelon of works, it's certainly a decent enough wartime thriller. The plot revolves around three allied soldiers (an American, a Soviet, and a Brit) who are trapped behind enemy lines in Rome. The trio find a sympathetic Italians willing to help them escape to friendlier territories. It'll never be mistaken for great, but it's good enough for a mild recommendation.

Good Times, Wonderful Times (Lionel Rogosin, 1966): Good film, wonderful film. Kidding aside, this very heavy handed documentary works despite the less than subtle approach of Rogosin. The film juxtaposes footage shot at a British cocktail party with stock footage of WWII battles and concentration camps. Of course, it's entirely unfair to the bourgeois party guests who mostly have nothing to do with war (aside from the man who discusses how much he enjoyed the power to kill in WWII), but the comment on the way that the upper class prattle about and isolate themselves from the horrors of war seems pretty apt to me.

Oh... Rosalinda!! (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1955): I thought that this would be more applicable to the project with a greater emphasis on the occupying forces, but alas there was too little of it to justify it's inclusion. Not that it'd be in danger of making my list. It's actually my pick so far for the worst film of the archers without only three left unseen on my part. Their A Matter of Life and Death, on the other hand, is a strong contender for my number one spot.

Private (Saverio Costanzo, 2004): Constanzo's film tells the story of a Palestinian family who have their already fragile existence turned on its head when a small battalion of Israeli soldiers quarter themselves in their house during a battle. The soldiers are less than friendly with the family, and turn the already chaotic experience of living on the outskirts of an Israeli settlement into a nightmare. The children's lives are put at risk, and every moment that the soldiers are there seems to draw the parents further apart. It's not a great film. All of the ingredients seem to be there, but the final product never feels right to me.

The Second Track (Joachim Kunert, 1962): This tautly paced East German production production begins with an attempted robbery in train yard. What happens next sets up a long journey of remembrance that relates a story of loss and betrayal. As it turns out, the crime's only witness and one of the thieves are inextricably linked based upon the events of the war, and share a secret that could ruin both men if it ever gets out. Will he do the right thing and come clean? Will his daughter uncover the truth before he does? The film's lean 75 minute run time doesn't allow for too many deviations from the main story line, but this only helps to keep the film on the right track (pun intended). A very good movie indeed!

[domino harvey]

Rambo: First Blood II (George P Cosmatos 1985) I thought First Blood had some promising material but was weighted down by a nonsensical premise. This first sequel, though ridiculous in many many ways, at least fixes this issue by giving both the hero and the viewer far more understandable cathartic goals: Here's a Vet who is going to go back to the last remnants of a war we lost and win it for us! It's audacious and ludicrous, but I "get" it and could appreciate it on the level of wish-fulfillment for both Vets and those who had emotional/political/personal investment in the war. The action is turned up so high, the explosions so plentiful, the dangerous situations so inescapable yet escapable, that it became a bit like watching someone else play a video game after a while. By the end, when suddenly Rambo is shooting bullet-arrows (?) and taking down fucking military choppers (plural) single-handedly, I mean, what possible investment could anyone have at that point other than the mildly perverse desire to see what unbelievable stunt Stallone will try next? Was surprised at the outset to see James Cameron co-wrote this, but it certainly ended up being in his wheelhouse, didn't it!

Top Secret! (Jim Abrahams / David Zucker / Jerry Zucker 1984) The ZAZ gang are probably best known and revered for Airplane!, but I found that film amusing but far less so than I recalled on a recent rewatch. This is their followup, mocking war films rather than disaster movies, and while the hit or miss ratio on movies like this are always variable, I was legitimately surprised at how much I laughed at this film, and how many of those laughs were big, belly-laughs at that (an expression not found much outside of movie poster pull quotes, I know, but it applies here). Val Kilmer is the teen heartthrob singer who is also a spy for the US, working to stop the lingering Nazis in East Germany from reforming Hitler's party. But the plot hardly matters, the film is a nonstop barrage of smartly silly gags both verbal and visual, and while the stream of pisspoor ZAZ imitators that came gunning for cash-ins in the interim may have diluted this kind of humor's appeal, this is the best example I've seen yet of the heights such an approach can reach (or at least up there with A Fistful of Yen). Could possibly make both my War and my 80s list.

Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti 1942) Effective British propaganda piece that sells the necessity of wartime sacrifice, vigilance, and aggression for non-combatants while persuasively arguing that there are no non-combatants in this war. I won't spoil the diabolical twist of the premise even though it was ruined for me beforehand, but I found the film's best moments in those instances where the everyday folk of the town take a stand, often with dire but honorable outcomes. It's telling that the two most powerful and shocking scenes in the film involve matronly women-- anyone and everyone can be a hero, die a hero, and do their part, the film tells us. I believe it! Thanks to those who recommended this upthread.

[Mr Sausage]

It's telling that the two most powerful and shocking scenes in the film involve matronly women-- anyone and everyone can be a hero, die a hero, and do their part, the film tells us.

I read those scenes a bit differently. I have no doubt their original propagandistic intent was to say exactly that, but the way Cavalcanti films them empties them of a portion of that meaning. They don't feel heroic (nor unheroic); the feeling, especially in that early scene, isn't so much that anyone can be a hero, as that war forces even harmless people to make horrific choices and engage in savage actions. Just the character's reaction to her cold-blooded killing of the unsuspecting soldier, and the way her own death renders her action meaningless...it's closer to an anti-war statement than a propagandist one. Many of the other scenes have that tinge--the killing of the traitor, for example, feels less like a victory than the degeneration of the executioner. She hasn't ascended to her position as executioner, she simply has nothing else left. That's partly why I love the movie: it's both full-throated propaganda and an unflinching look at the brutality and savagery that war forces on even the least likely among us. The movie is sober where it could've been crassly celebratory.

I mean, what possible investment could anyone have at that point other than the mildly perverse desire to see what unbelievable stunt Stallone will try next?

If you haven't had your fill of that feeling, I recommend Rambo III, in which Rambo adds winning the Soviet/Afghan war to his 'winning-the-cold-war' resume. It has such ludicrous (fun) moments as competing in Thai stick-fighting for money, killing a whole squadron one-by-one in a pitch-black cave, and battling a soviet helicopter while single-handedly driving a tank. Considering Rambo's effectiveness at defeating entire armies by himself, it's surprising he had so much trouble with a few bumpkin sheriffs.

A fourth Rambo also exists, and while it's also insane, it's a much darker movie that takes its political context--or at least the violence behind that context--with pitiless severity, and replaces physics-bending stunts with a level of violence that's shocking even compared to its predecessors. It also maintains a surprising thematic coherence with the other three. Rambo comes to an unexpectedly mature realization that his violent nature has nothing to do with patriotism, saving the innocent, or winning wars--he's violent solely because he wants to be. His violence is essentially selfish. A commendable sentiment considering where things started out. Of course he still goes on to murder everyone.

By the end, when suddenly Rambo is shooting bullet-arrows (?)

They're explosive tipped arrows. Unsurprisingly, they're a real thing.

[Cold Bishop]

Now maybe some people will take me up on my constant recommendation of They Made Me a Fugitive (which has some war-related content...) :-"

Sausage: there's also the very curious way Cavalcanti films the battle once the cavalry arrive: as both British and enemy combatants are dressed in the same uniform, it starts to become impossible to tell which side is killing and which is dying. It's makes easy "rah-rah" rabble-rousing somewhat difficult.

[domino harvey]

Oh, I still have the other two Rambos waiting for me, I just think a little bit of this kind of thing goes a long way so I'm spacing the other entries out!

As for the point on heroism, that's fair, but I think this may boil down to personal definitions of heroism as well. For me, being a hero means doing what has to be done because no one else is going to do it, not, as I think it sometimes gets used, as a substitute for glory. I was actually just talking about this with my class the other day, and it's relevant to both these seemingly disparate films-- It's hard to take Stallone or Schwarzenegger too seriously in most of their "heroic" movies because they look almost inhuman, like they're just waiting around for an action movie to start, whereas the appeal of Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies is that he's this average guy forced into doing what needs to be done practically against his will. That pull of doing what needs to be done not necessarily without comment or anguish but still doing it because someone has to and why not you (or, it has to be you) is to me the essence of modern heroics (I'm not touching the ancient tradition!)

Cold Bishop, I watched They Made Me a Fugitive last year and it didn't leave any impact on me, sorry! But I did remember you and Herr S liked it a lot if that helps (it doesn't). And I had the same concerns with the final shootout. I didn't worry about "rah rah" sympathies, I was more concerned with how the British troops knew who were Germans and who were their men! But I wonder this about battles all the time when the two uniforms aren't that different (or it's Braveheart or whatever and all that's differentiating you is a sash or something)

[Mr Sausage]

As for the point on heroism, that's fair, but I think this may boil down to personal definitions of heroism as well. For me, being a hero means doing what has to be done because no one else is going to do it, not, as I think it sometimes gets used, as a substitute for glory. I was actually just talking about this with my class the other day, and it's relevant to both these seemingly disparate films-- It's hard to take Stallone or Schwarzenegger too seriously in most of their "heroic" movies because they look almost inhuman, like they're just waiting around for an action movie to start, whereas the appeal of Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies is that he's this average guy forced into doing what needs to be done practically against his will. That pull of doing what needs to be done not necessarily without comment or anguish but still doing it because someone has to and why not you (or, it has to be you) is to me the essence of modern heroics (I'm not touching the ancient tradition!)

No, I don't think we disagree on the definition of heroism, and I think there is definitely heroism in, say, the grenade scene. It's just a heroism in retrospect, ie. not the overwhelming feeling of the moment, because when it happens it's so fast and so shocking you hardly have time to contemplate the sacrifice beyond sitting there speechless. It's such a punch to the gut that it takes some distance before you can get over the negative feeling you're left with.

The propagandistic aspect of the movie is definitely there, but the way a lot of the scenes are shot, it's less "everyone can do their part" than "everyone will have to play a part, and your part may be more horrible and filthy than you think." The sacrifices in the movie are given so little nobility by the aesthetics that the heroism on display is almost a melancholy fact. I didn't get the usual feeling I do when characters make noble sacrifices for each other. I thought that was commendable of the film not to lie about how bad things can get.

Now maybe some people will take me up on my constant recommendation of They Made Me a Fugitive (which has some war-related content...)

I watched it entirely on your enthusiastic recommendation and was really impressed. Not quite the gut punch of Went the Day Well?, but close. A great noir.