A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Miramax Films Director John Dahl’s “The Great Raid” is a World War II film that is in turns an old-fashioned war movie and a realistic depiction of a military action that actually took place. Written by Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro, “The Great Raid” depicts a successful U.S.-Filipino raid in early 1945 on a Japanese prisoner of war (POW) camp to free 500 American survivors of 1942’s infamous Bataan Death March. Based on the books  The Great Raid on Cabanatuan  by William Breuer and  Ghost Soldiers  by Hampton Sides, “The Great Raid” stars Benjamin Bratt, Connie Nielsen, James Franco, Joseph Fiennes, Marton Csokas, Motoki Kobayashi, Gotaro Tsunashima, Sam Worthington, and Dale Dye. “The Great Raid” starts on a gruesome note by depicting the massacre of American POWs by Japanese forces on the island of Palawan in late 1944. The Japanese were not signatories of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, and their military code, called  Bushido,  taught Japanese soldiers

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"

World War II.  It was the largest and bloodiest conflict in human history, with battles raging on the air, land, and sea from the steppes of the Soviet Union to the steaming jungles of Guadalcanal. Every major world power was a combatant, and after six years of fighting, over 50 million human beings were dead, millions more were wounded or left homeless, and the seeds of the Cold War were planted as the balance of power now shifted to the United States and the Communist-ruled Russia and its unwilling allies in Eastern Europe.  Naturally, even during the war, World War II became a popular subject for filmmakers in all the warring countries. not only as entertainment but also as part of the war effort; both the Axis and Allied camps infused their wartime films with propaganda, sometimes grossly heavy-handed (such as the Nazis'  The Eternal Jew , which stirred up anti-Semitism in Germany and the countries it occupied), sometimes subtly ( Casablanca,  which on the surface seems

Spring, 1945. After the failure of his Ardennes Counteroffensive - the famous "Battle of the Bulge" - three months earlier, Adolf Hitler huddles in his bunker beneath Berlin, trying desperately to stave off certain defeat as his "Thousand Year Reich" falls back on all fronts. In the East, the Red Army has overrun most of Poland and East Prussia. Russian armies, several million soldiers strong, are now less than 100 miles away from the Nazi capital.  Only the floodwaters of the Oder and Neisse Rivers, as well as the tattered remnants of the once mighty German forces which invaded Russia in 1941, block their advance. In the West, the American, British, Canadian and French forces have liberated most of France, all of Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Holland.   And though the surprise German attack in December caught Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Anglo-American subordinates by surprise, its failure has eliminated one of the Allies' worst strategic scenarios f

One of the problems about making a movie an actual conflict while said conflict is still raging is that sometimes events on the ground tend to overtake the filmmakers’ production schedule, especially if the movie is set in a specific place where battles are being fought.  This is exactly what happened to producer Robert Fellows when he was making  Back to Bataan , a blend of action-adventure, wartime propaganda, and a not-so-subtle reminder to the American public that the Philippines wanted independence not only from their Japanese occupiers but also from their U.S. “protectors.”  Written by Ben Barzman (who was pro-Communist, as was director Edward Dmytryk), William Gordon, and Aeneas MacKenzie,  Back to Bataan  starred John Wayne as a U.S. Army colonel who stays on Luzon to help organize a U.S.-Filipino guerrilla group to fight the occupying Japanese forces and help pave the way for Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s long-promised return.  During the filming of  Back to Bataan,   which took 13

So Proudly We Hail! (1943)   It is May 1942.  Less than six months have passed since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Allied forces in the Pacific have endured defeat upon crushing defeat.  From Burma, Java, Wake Island, Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Rabaul and the Philippine Islands, the flag of the Rising Sun has replaced the Union Jack, the Dutch flag and the Stars and Stripes.  In Melbourne, Australia, a U.S. transport plane arrives with a group of recently-evacuated Army doctors, medics and  nurses aboard.  As they deplane, Lt. Janet Davidson (Claudette Colbert) is carried on a stretcher due to  her mental and physical exhaustion.  The nurses are then shipped Stateside aboard a Navy transport and given what amounts to first class treatment.  Most of them respond well to the care they receive, but “Davy” remains withdrawn and wheelchair-bound, perhaps haunted by her experiences during the sieges of Bataan and Corregidor.  Determined to help his patient recover, her attending p

Considering the success of director Robert Aldrich’s 1967 war-action film  The Dirty Dozen , it’s not surprising that MGM/United Artists – the studio which owned the film rights to E.M. Nathanson’s 1965 novel – decided to produce a sequel which would depict the further missions of Maj. Reisman (Lee Marvin), Sgt. Bowren (Richard Jaeckel) and their wily superior officer, Maj. Gen. Worden (Ernest Borgnine).  As anyone who is remotely familiar with how the film industry works, studios are usually owned and operated by very conservative (in the fiscal sense of the word) men and women who tend to focus on how to make movies economically while making huge profits from them. This point of view also means that studio heads and producers tend to prefer “safe bets” rather than take huge cinematic gambles which may hurt the profit line and even sink their studios.  Because sequels and franchises tend to be “safer bets” than truly innovative movies, Hollywood tends to take a property – such as  The