A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2015 Paramount Home Entertainment When Australian director Peter Weir (“Gallipoli”) began filming “Witness” in 1984, Harrison Ford was a major action-adventure star known for his roles as Han Solo in the “Star Wars” trilogy and Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” At the time, though, few moviegoers considered Ford as an actor capable of playing a romantic lead on the silver screen. (Ford starred in Peter Hyams’ 1979 World War II melodrama “Hanover Street,” but it failed to earn popular and critical acclaim.) Happily for Ford and movie audiences everywhere, Weir’s film about John Book, a Philadelphia police captain who falls in love with a beautiful Amish widow (Kelly McGillis) while hiding out in the Pennsylvania countryside from a posse of corrupt cops changed that perception forever. “Witness” proved that Ford could play complex and down to Earth characters beyond the iconic heroes he is still best known for. Writt...

There is, of course, no such thing as a perfect movie. There’s always a little visual flub that got past a cinematographer or an editor, or there will be a bit of dialogue that doesn’t jive with reality. Such things are part and parcel of the art and business of filmmaking, after all. (C) 2012 Warner Home Video For instance, history-savvy "Casablanca" fans often wonder why the Nazis would honor letters of transit signed by Gen. Charles De Gaulle. De Gaulle, after all, was considered a traitor by the French collaborative government in Vichy. A more accurate script would have mentioned General  Weygand  as the issuer of the letters of transit. However, there are a handful of movies that are so good that they’re considered perfect even if they have flaws, and 1942’s Best Picture winner “Casablanca” is one of them. Written by Julius and Philip Epstein with Howard Koch, the screenplay is based on the stage play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" ...