The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[colinr0380]

I'd also like to put in a mention for the brief flurry of Yugoslavian War films from the mid 90s to early 2000s: Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, Savior (starring Dennis Quaid and briefly (until she gets blown up in a terrorist bombing in the prologue) Nastassia Kinski), and especially the amusing No Man's Land with its story of men from both sides of the conflict bickering across the prone body of a man lying on top of a landmine, a conflict that eventually ends up dragging in predatory journalists (Katrin Cartlidge) and utterly ineffectual UN representatives (Simon Callow). They all throw in some pretty biting satire about international politics intruding into and exacerbating local conflicts.

We also shouldn't forget that brief but illustrious subgenre of 'white, middle class journalists exposing war atrocities' that encompasses The Year of Living Dangerously (Indonesia), The Killing Fields (Cambodia), Under Fire (Nicaragua) and Salvador (um, El Salvador)!

[zedz]

What kind of a zedz list is it without Sherman's March? (Or does that veer too far off topic to qualify?)

That actually hadn't occurred to me, but why the hell not? My list could use a bit of lightening up!

(As for Come and See, it's a film that I was never all that impressed with (too bombastic), but I'll try to watch it again for this project.)

EDIT: It now seems that I have sixty-something films on my initial, off-the-top-if-my-head must-haves list. -sigh-

[Gregory]

I could never think of Come and See as bombastic because unlike the endless number of 'spectacle' kind of films that try to overwhelm the senses and the emotions just to impress the viewer, this film does it for a purpose, making an experience of shock and madness.

[bamwc2]

As this project's Il Duce, I'll direct your attention to the first post: one Spotlight only.

Grrrr. If that's the case, I think that I'll forgo my planned endorsement of Andrzej Wajda's magnificent Katyn (see what I did there? ) and instead focus on another Polish masterpiece, Andrzej Zulawski's The Third Part of the Night. Here's what I wrote on it back in the most recent 70s project:

This was my third film by Zulawski (the others being Possession and Szamanka). While I felt lukewarm to his other work, this one blew me away. Michal (played by Leszek Teleszynski) witnesses his wife and son's murders at the hands of the Nazis. He joins the underground, but is seriously wounded during his first mission. He then helps a woman give birth to a son and dedicates his life to her. By the end of the film we find out that

Spoiler

he has been dead all along after finding his own corpse in the hospital that he works at. Everything after being shot was imagined a la An Occurrence at Owl Creek as he was dying.

While this conceit might spoil a lesser film, it worked well amidst the insanity of the Nazi occupation. I honestly cannot think of a single weakness in the film.

You can now add That Most Important Thing: Love to my disappointments from Zulawski, but I still find his feature length debut to be nothing short of extraordinary.

[swo17]

What do people think about films focusing on terrorists, like Munich, Day Night Day Night, or Four Lions?

[domino harvey]

Absolutely. My favorite pic dealing with 9/11, Wenders' Land of Plenty will def be making my list. Good call on Munich too

[zedz]

I don't feel the same way. There are some great films about terrorism (The Third Generation, Carlos, Stammheim, One Day in September) but none of those strike me as 'war' films in any meaningful way, and modern terrorism is to a large extent defined by the fact that it's not traditional warfare. For me, the so-called "war on terror" is just one more of those bogus metaphorical wars - until it leads to the military invasion of another country.

[Michael Kerpan]

It's up on That Site Which Shall Not Be Mentioned, but without English subs

Fighting soldiers can probably be appreciated (even if imperfectly) even unsubbed. It's pretty visual...

[Shrew]

Here's a rundown of some war films from mainland China. I tried to include some places to get a hold of them, but quality and subs prove tricky. Still I don’t actually know how to name the site that must not be named, so better stuff might be floating around.

Devils on the Doorstep 2000
Spotlight I spotlighted this before in the last 2000s list, and I’ll do it again here. This is a coal-black war comedy about a Chinese village right under a Japanese naval camp that in a Bunuelian moment ends up tasked with hiding a Japanese prisoner (who wants to be killed) and his Chinese translator (who doesn’t). Things stay pretty funny (and the language quite colorful) for a long while, until they’re not funny anymore. With a conflict as awful and sticky as the Sino-Japanese side of WWII, Devils has a fine line to walk, but manages to acknowledge the horror of the conflict while reveling in its absurdity. Mostly, it brings into question the nature of collaboration and challenges the myths of China’s resistance. There’s an OOP HVE R1 disc that’s good, and a cheaper Chinese disc also available via Amazon, though I can’t vouch for the quality.
BUT WAIT, before you watch this, check out at least 10 or 15 minutes of Tunnel War/Mine War below, even if you can’t understand Chinese or find subtitled versions. Devils is to those films what MASH is to The Fighting Seabees and the like.

Tunnel War/Tunnel Warfare (Di Dao Zhan) 1965
Mine Warfare (Di Lei Zhan) 1962
These are two straight-forward war as entertainment films, again about the Sino-Japanese conflict in WWII, particularly the role of the CCP’s guerrilla fighters and their tactics. Morality is black and white, the Japanese are evil and mostly stupid, the peasants poor and run-down but able under good leadership, and the party representative an ideal hero. However, unlike much of the other ideologically inflected output of the era, these are first and foremost trying to entertain, and they have a fairly fluid style, using more dynamic framing and handheld camerawork. It’s a stretch to call these great or even good, but they’re not boring, and worth a look at anyone looking to expand beyond the usual. Tunnel War is probably the more approachable of the two, as it’s not celebrating the use of landmines, nor does it feature a little kid planting a dud mine full of shit for the Japanese to find.
China’s official military channel (or someone posing as them—they also uploaded a lot snooker videos) and some others have uploaded copies of both films to youtube, but unfortunately without subtitles. I thought a subbed DVD existed somewhere, but I can’t find any signs of it anywhere. Anyway, like said, it’s worth watching at least a few minutes anyway, and it’s not like you’re missing much great dialogue. Tunnel War
Mine War

The Red Detachment of Women (Hong se niang zi jun) 1962
Continuing with Communist era depictions of WWII, though this is a much more usual “well-made” war film, coming from one of the period’s most sensitive directors, Xie Jin. This story of a servant girl who ran away and joined the Red Army was adapted in multiple forms during the Maoist era, but this is probably the best. It’s still propaganda, but Xie’s touch is much more graceful and focuses on the self-actualization and comaraderie of the women soldiers. There’s subbed (though sloppily), decent-looking version up on youtube.
Now, for those looking to get to the crazier outliers of the war genre, you might want to check out the 1971 version of the same story made under the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution, which is basically a filmed ballet, also supposedly directed in part by Xie Jin. It’s the same basic plot, but far more black and white (and the original wasn’t too gray) and ideologically didactic. It’s also a hybrid play-traditional Chinese opera-ballet. The combat scenes consist of a lot of impressive acrobatics, mainly of women in uniforms and short-short shorts leaping through the air while wielding rifles.
There’s a copy on youtube, though no subs. Still, you really don’t need them for something like this, as you don’t need subs for opera (or for crazy).

Spring in a Small Town (Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun) 1948
China’s self-proclaimed best movie could also be considered a Homecoming war movie, with some stretching. The big arguments for are the very visible scars on the land and buildings and the invisible scars on the characters psyches. While no one is a returning solider, there’s a clear sense of what war has cost the individuals and the country at large, and the resulting love triangle melodrama is an effort to heal. This one should be readily found on DVD and around the web, though I think the quality is pretty much blegh.

Assembly (Ji Jie Hao) 2007
A big decade-spanner of a regiment’s commander’s efforts to find the bodies of his fallen unit and have their deaths officially recognized. In its structure and many of its approaches, this is a Chinese Saving Private Ryan from a director who’s been called the Chinese Steven Spielberg, Feng Xiaogang. It starts in the Chinese Civil War with a very bloody opening battle, then builds to less bloody but more significant battle, and takes a detour through the Korean War (with guest awful American actor) before settling into the protagonist’s quest. Feng, like Spielberg, has a great eye and can film powerful sequences, but he can also be shamelessly manipulative and feels no qualms about melodramatics. Still, despite my Spielberg comparison, it’s definitely its own thing, and worth a look. Unfortunately, its approach to gore is the um… “hamburger” look, which is gross but not so much horrifying.

City of Life and Death (Nanjing Nanjing) 2009
A well-made, long, and relatively balanced (in that it devotes a fair amount of time to the conscience of a “good” Japanese soldier) look at the horrors of the rape of Nanjing. It’s pretty, pretty ugly, and very dour. The focus and death are mostly on the civilian population (and the aforementioned Japanese solider) and their struggle to keep people alive. At times it feels a mix of Schindler’s List, Rome: Open City, and Germany: Year Zero, but is ultimately less than the sum of those parts. Still, for anyone unfamiliar with Nanjing or the Sino-Japanese war, this is a good strong introduction.
Kino put it out on Bluray and DVD in the US.

A Battle of Wits/Battle of the Warriors (Mo Gong) 2006
This is another fun trifle more than great filmmaking achievement, but I wanted to highlight it as a non-gun war film contender. I’ve seen a portion of the last decade’s rise in Chinese historical action-epics, but most of them either seem mostly too Epic (John Woo’s Red Cliff) or too Action (Hero et al) to be war. Ultimately, they probably fit better in their own wu-xia category.
This one though feels more like war film. It’s in old China times, where one small city-state is being invaded by another. For help they seek a disciple of Mozi, one of the rival philosophers in Confucius’s day. Mozi’s big thing was that a state should strive for pacifism and universal love, but study defensive tactics because others probably weren’t going to respect pacifism. This means a bit of moral hangwringing, especially when the defending king decides he’d rather be on the offensive, but overall it’s a fun period-war film with more emphasis on the strategy than the swords clashing. Battle scenes are mostly well-choreographed (save an embarrassing everyone’s burning with digital fire moment). It’s available from Dragon Dynasty on R1 DVD and Blu-ray, retitle (ludicrously, since the whole thing is the main character is a strategist, not a warrior) Battle of the Warriors

[knives]

Because of work I doubt I'll be able to give this an appropriate level of concern, though I think the fatigue of the doc list already evidences that, but I'll try to add to discussion when I can. As to Spotlight, how about Delmer Daves' Pride of the Marines. It's the second great blind soldier movie that will be making my list and I find the mix of Daves' versatility and Garfield's autobiography make it the best. The whole film is surprisingly filled with grit and pessimism taking the piss out of ignorance and racism that helped build the war which is barely shown in a short montage of stock footage and one similarly documentary like shootout. The whole authorial voice is very harsh on Garfield's character lacking in any of the American style sympathy you usually see in these films (it's great, but especially in this respect Bright Victory is a radically different film).

This sort of skirts how much of the film that deals with Garfield the person removed from the star. His character is portrayed as the average American type of playboy that Garfield could do in his sleep, but constantly confronts him with cultural and political baggage from other characters that apply to the man. This is particularly vocal with regards to the difference both good and bad being Jewish presents. There's a ton of imagery throughout the film with even an explicit use of the star of David (which I suppose makes it all the more interesting that this is a pacific war). This reaches its head with Garfield's friend who in a speech very explicitly discusses the morality of the film in terms of his Jewishness. This blind as Jew thing I think also explains a lot of the more unusual choices in (Jewish) Albert Maltz and Marvin Borowsky script. Rather daringly I think the film precedes Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Austeria (which I'll also be voting for) in this respect. The film directly places Garfield's blindness as earned for going into war without understanding what he is fighting for and further (and much more explicitly) is very harsh about his rejection of the fact that he is blind which as I said earlier the film directly connects with being Jewish. This is all coming from the American immigrant standpoint so its point isn't as controversial as Kawalerowicz's, but it is still a pretty nasty work about how Jews adapt to their surroundings and are unable to accept reality.

Though I suppose Eleanore Parker being the love interest is the better reason to watch the film.

[Dr Amicus]

OK - Having taken time out from the last couple of lists (although I had intended to take part in the Documentaries list - many of my likely picks from there will migrate to this project easily), I'll jump in again with a spotlight:

Next of Kin (Thorold Dickinson, 1942) Ealing's greatest war film - Cavalcanti's Went The Day Well? - has already been mention, and jusitfiably so and it did rather well in the 1940s list. Dickinson's film isn't quite in the same league, but it comes very close. Essentially a dramatised warning that Careless Talk Costs Lives, this was expanded from a short training film to a feature by Ealing. The result is a gloriously paranoid thriller as we know from the offset that information will leak - the opening points the blame directly at the film's audience - and the enemy seems to be everywhere (perhaps excessively so, but that just builds into the paranoia). In that respect, it links interestingly to the Archers' Colonel Blimp - this is now a professional war on all fronts and just muddling through isn't going to be enough, as further evidenced by a final cameo from Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne. A fine DVD from the Imperial War Museum is seemingly now OOP, but is still available cheaply - it also comes with Carol Reed's The New Lot, the original version of The Way Ahead , and an interesting film in its own right.

A couple of other Ealing war films from the period that come highly recommended are:

The Bells Go Down (Basil Dearden, 1943) Effectively the all star version of Jennings's I Was A Fireman, this is one of several Ealing pulling-the-classes-into-a-team films from the period. How much you take to it - and I really like it - will depend largely on your feelings to Tommy Trinder, the comic lead of the film. A popular comedian of the day (and for television later), his films seem somewhat less remembered than his contemporary, George Formby - maybe because they are less star vehicles and more ensemble works. I rather like him - and he makes an interesting foil to the less sympathetic romantic lead, James Mason. It's an impressive, ultimately quite moving film and should be happily making my list (whereas the Jennings is in contention at the very top).

San Demetrio London (Charles Frend, 1943) Again, all hands together - this time to sail a stricken ship back to England. This is, in outline, eminently spoofable - stiff upper lip and all - but in Frend's hands this becomes an impressive, low-key, almost documentary like (it was based on a true story) allegory for Britain itself. Charles Barr deals with this film at some length in his book on Ealing by the way. Another probable list member.

A book recommendation for the resources - James Chapman's The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939-1945. This covers the films made during the war itself - documentary and fiction, shorts and features - and is particularly impressive on the structures surrounding film production and the government's role.

[colinr0380]

City of Life and Death (Nanjing Nanjing) 2009
A well-made, long, and relatively balanced (in that it devotes a fair amount of time to the conscience of a “good” Japanese soldier) look at the horrors of the rape of Nanjing. It’s pretty, pretty ugly, and very dour. The focus and death are mostly on the civilian population (and the aforementioned Japanese solider) and their struggle to keep people alive. At times it feels a mix of Schindler’s List, Rome: Open City, and Germany: Year Zero, but is ultimately less than the sum of those parts. Still, for anyone unfamiliar with Nanjing or the Sino-Japanese war, this is a good strong introduction.
Kino put it out on Bluray and DVD in the US.

If you feel you might have the stomach for it (and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend City of Life and Death over it), I would recommend comparing and contrasting that rather sober film with the ultimate war exploitation version of the same events, Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre (available on DVD from Unearthed Films in the US). This is an utterly nihilistic film in which character after character gets introduced only to get brutally killed five or ten minutes later in an unforgiving parade of artrocities. It is directed by T.F. Mou, the director behind the Men Behind The Sun film, aka the notoriously horrific and exploitational film that detailed Japanese experimental camp atrocities in lurid detail. Black Sun is often credited as part 4 of that series but is angling for a little more 'historical respectability', although that doesn't prevent pregnant ladies being bayonetted or severed heads bouncing all over the place!

I'm not going to make any great pronouncements on the film's worthiness or status as a neglected masterpiece in any way, but one of the reasons that I mention this film is that it climaxes with a jaw dropping scene involving at least a square mile of bodies being cremated in a gigantic pyre, which is simultaneously horrific and impressive (and perhaps the best example of pure lurid exploitation of a 'serious subject' actually inspiring perhaps more 'authentic' emotions and visceral responses than a more intellectual detachement, or even an over-personalised link to the subject of war atrocities can provide).

Plus the Unearthed disc also includes the extremely un-PC 1944 propaganda film Why We Fight: The Battle of China, co-directed by an uncredited Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak!

[zedz]

A couple more recent war films occurred to me that are worth seeking out:

The Last Train (Aleksey German Jr) - Grim, glum (and beautiful) black and white film about an obese doctor who ends up in a disintegrating society / landscape during the Great Patriotic War. Lots of bumbling around in the snow and general despair. (Apparently there's a German Holocaust film of the same title from a few years later - as far as I know, this masterpiece isn't available on subtitled DVD)

Red Cliff (John Woo) - This is a big glossy epic, but it's really well done, and actually pays much more attention to (somewhat fantastical) battle strategy than most war films. Make sure you get the full-length original cut, not the truncated western one (which actually muddles things with screeds of expository introductory titles).

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Children of Nagasaki (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1983): In a strange twist, Kinoshita decides to begin his examination of the aftermath of the bombing of Nagasaki with Pope John Paul II pontificating on the evils of atomic warfare. While I certainly agreed with the sentiment expressed by the Pope, it was about as blunt as getting hit on the head with a sledgehammer with "Ban the bomb" written on it. Once we get to our main cast, we're treated to the story of a family devastated by the effects of the atomic bomb. Their matriarch is killed within days of the blast without ever seeing her family again, while other members of the family succumb to radiation sickness much slower. It's passable for the director, though far from his best. I liked the approach of personalizing a horror that we often only think about in abstract terms on a grand scale, but the pacing felt off and it could have used some more judicious editing. All in all it's a flawed late work from this august director.

The Emperor and the Assassin (Kaige Chen, 1998): Gong Li stars as Lady Zhao in this epic set in per-unified China, as the wife of a cruel king with a tenuous grip on reality. After she brands herself on her face for reasons that I still don't understand, her hubby tasks her with finding an assassin for him to use, but she may have other plans in mind. All three leads turn in excellent performances, and the battle sequences are handled well, but in the end it never felt like it added up to much at all. I suppose that a greater knowledge of the era would have enhanced my understanding of the plot, but much of what occurred simply left me confused.

Lili Marleen (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981): Willie (Hanna Schygulla) is a seductive crooner in Nazi Germany who's ditty "Lili Marleen" wins her both fame and admiration in her home country. However, Willie is also friends with Robert (Giancarlo Giannini) a German-Jewish composer who works to smuggle refugees over the Swiss border. Despite her allegiances, Willie risks it all in a bid to help her old friend out one last time. It's ultimately a minor film in Fassbinder's oeuvre, but minor Fassbinder is still better than the best work by most other directors. With this, I've now seen all of Fassbinder's works from the 80s, so I think that it might be time to put together a director spotlight in the appropriate thread.

World War Z (Marc Forster, 2013): Okay, so I watched this one before the rules were made explicit, thinking that I could stretch the limits of what constitutes war based entirely on the title. No dice. My only reaction was meh; not terrible, not great, just sort of...meh.

[matrixschmatrix]

Wait who says World War Z isn't a war movie?

[zedz]

Oh my god, I completely forgot Black Rain. And Grave of the Fireflies. And Fires Were Started. (And I haven't even looked through my decades lists yet for other obvious contenders that I've overlooked.)

Can I submit two lists if I promise that they'll have no titles in common?

[bamwc2]

Wait who says World War Z isn't a war movie?

In the conceptual analysis at the beginning:

"War" as a genre consists of films dealing with an organized and/or armed poltically-motivated struggle between two or more opposing forces.

Definitely not organized or politically motivated.

[swo17]

(And I haven't even looked through my decades lists yet for other obvious contenders that I've overlooked.)

I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you're able to submit three lists.

[zedz]

(And I haven't even looked through my decades lists yet for other obvious contenders that I've overlooked.)

I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you're able to submit three lists.

Damn, swo, just you saying that made me think of The Sinking of the Lusitania. It's like I've got war film hiccoughs.

[domino harvey]

Better to just not participate, obv

[zedz]

Better to just not participate, obv

Yeah, may - La Silence de la mer - be.

[domino harvey]

You could always just put all your hundreds of possible titles into randomly decided March Madness brackets to narrow it down, because sports

[zedz]

You could always just put all your hundreds of possible titles into randomly decided March Madness brackets to narrow it down, because sports

I assume those words make some kind of sense to (the starry island) people who know even a small (back room) bit about sports. I guess I should quit before I make an arse(nal) of myself.

[domino harvey]

Come and see

[zedz]

You want me to make war films eliminate one another through trial by combat?

(Hey, I think the shock of seeing that terrifying diagram cured my hiccoughs!)