I got my treadmill area set up with a DVD player and I’ve started watching stuff I bought a long time back. I’m currently working my way through a value pack of World War II propaganda movies.
I figure that I’ll comment a la Walt Crawford on some of these and other things I watch while treadmilling. I hesitate to call them reviews because that implies evaluation. So I’m calling them comments in the blog entry titles.
My first movie was Attack! Battle of New Britain from 1944. Several things struck me as historically interesting about this film from the US War Department:
Surprisingly low technology — I shouldn’t have been surprised by soldiers using machettes to clear jungle or hand axes to fell trees for thatched huts. After all, it was the mid-1940s and a lot of our modern conveniences (gas chainsaws, rowing mowers, weedwhackers, etc) were post WWII. But surprised I was. Good reminder that we live in an age of constant innovation.
Different standards of modesty — There was one scene showing naked soldiers cooling off at a swimming hole. Most of their naked behinds were clearly visible for nearly a full minute. This from an official US government film. If any government official filmed a similar scene today, I think Focus on the Family and the FCC would be all over them.
Overt Racism — During a discussion of jungle construction showing a number of New Guinea tribesmen, the narrator said, “For jungle construction, there’s nothing like a fuzzy-wuzzy. And Uncle Sam has thousands on his payroll!” It was said very happy and breezily.
The last thing that struck me about the film was the success Frank Capra had in humanizing the soldiers going to this battle despite no soldier dialog. He did a great job of showing different groups of men going about different tasks with a variety of expressions. It was made very clear that these were just regular guys doing their best to keep Japan from getting its ways.
Filed under: history, movie reviews, war
