Tag Archives: WWII

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Tomorrow We Live (1943) British Black and White Movie on French Resistance

Do NOT mix this up with the US movie with the same title. They are not exactly in the same league. The US movie is very clearly a B-Movie and has absolutely no war theme in it. Tomorrow We Live aka At Dawn We Die is a British movie on the French Resistance. It is unlike anything I have seen before. Apparently the film makers got the support of General de Gaulle. Be it as it may, this is forties cinema at its best. Atmospheric, black and white, gaslight feeling… It seems as if every scene was shot in the studio (and likely was) which makes it look at times like a theater play. It does look artificial but it also has a very special charm because of this. Many of the scenes reminded me of the feel of an Edith Piaf song.

Jean Baptiste, a member of the French Resistance is a fugitive on his way to England. He lands in a little occupied French town swarming with Nazis. A young woman, the daughter of the mayor,  helps him to hide and find a place where he can spend the night. There are quite a few female characters who all have an interest in Jean Baptiste. Some want romance, others see their son in him, and others just want to help him and use him for their plans. The mayor and his daughter are seen by many as collaborators. In fact this is just a cover for them. Unknown to anyone they are the leaders of the town’s resistance and organize many acts of sabotage. Like in any Resistance movie you have some vile and treacherous characters who really collaborate.It’s frankly quite entertaining but what I liked most is that it is so dated. Movies like this are not done anymore. They were probably not even done anymore in the fifties. I would say it has an appeal  for any cinephile and not necessarily for someone interested in war movies only. Some of the characters are great, reminiscent of Fellini. Many are funny eccentrics. And we got some mean and ridiculous Germans too. The way they are treated is quite amusing. They are so full of themselves, it’s easy to annoy them; loud yawning and singing during a broadcast of Hitler at the cinema will suffice, to infuriate them.

Tomorrow We Live is special and entertaining, the right thing to watch during the festive season. I can see how this was supported by de Gaulle. It bestowed a little light on those dark and bleak days of the Vichy Regime.

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WWII War Movie Quotes Film Quiz 10

It has been a while since I posted the last Movie Quotes Quiz and as far as I remember I haven’t done a WWII one. I did one on Holocaust movies, but not on combat ones.

I will not post the list of movies that are quoted or it might be too easy.

Off we go…

[the troop stops before a memorial]
“Would you look at how fast they put the names of all our guys who got killed? ”
“ That’s a World War One memorial.”
“But the name’s are the same.”
“They always are.”

Solution 1

[about his wound]”It hurts… Don’t pick me up anymore.”
“Listen Bob, if I leave you, ain’t nobody gonna find you. You’re gonna die out here.”
“Just sit here for a bit.”
[after a pause]
“I AM dying.”
“[evasively] We can’t sit here.”

Solution 2

[voice over]” We were a family. How’d it break up and come apart, so that now we’re turned against each other? Each standing in the other’s light. How’d we lose that good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered it, careless. What’s keepin’ us from reaching out, touching the glory?”

Solution 3

“What will we do when we have lost the war?”
“Prepare for the next one.”

Solution 4

“Did you hear what Tom did this morning?”
“No.”
“He went to see old Nickelby, and asked him if they gave out compassionate leave if there’s been a death in the family. So Nickelby said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, depending on the circumstances.” And Tom said, “Well, there hasn’t been a death in my family yet, but there’s going to be one very soon, and I request leave to go home and console my parents.””

Solution 5

“I got a bad feeling about this one.”
“When was the last time you felt good about anything?”

Solution 6

“You were an accountant in Montreal?”
“Yes, sir. Uh, not really an accountant, sir. That is, I didn’t have my charter.”
“Exactly what did you do?”
“Well, sir, I just checked columns and columns of figures which three or four people had checked before me, and then there were other people who checked them after I had checked them.”
“Sounds a frightful bore.”
“ Sir, it was a frightful bore.”

Solution 7

“How many hours in Spits?”
“Ten and a half, sir.”
“ Let’s make it *eleven*, before *Jerry* has you for *breakfast!*”
“Spring chicken to shitehawk in one easy lesson.”
[at low volume, almost whispering, after xxx and xxx leave the building for their aircraft]
“daka!-daka!-daka!-daka!-daka!-daka!-daka!-daka!”

Solution 8

“How the hell do they expect us to keep schedule on a road like this?”
“ You don’t know the worst. This bit we’re on now?”
“Yes?”
“It’s the wide part.”

Solution 9

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Stalingrad (1993) The German Movie That is One of the Best War Movies Ever

Joseph Vilsmaier’s Stalingrad is one of the most powerful war movies I have ever seen. It bears testimony to Germany’s outstanding filmmaking capacities. It is also one of the rare that I have watched at least three times and every time I discovered something new. That’s why it is difficult to write a decent review and not one that is so long that you jump to the next post without even finishing the introduction.

Stalingrad focuses closely on five characters, four of which have been together since they fought at El Alamein.  We first see them on leave in Italy  from where they board a train to the Eastern Front. They don’t really have a clue where they are going or what for. They know the Führer says it is crucial and they have to trust him on that but first voices can be heard that doubt the decision-making of their command. During their train trip they meet their new Lieutenant, Witzlan (Thomas Kretschmann), for the first time. He isn’t battle hardened like the others are, in fact he has never fought at all and there is immediately a lot of friction.

When they get off the train in Stalingrad they face total chaos. There are heavily wounded soldiers everywhere, fighting is extremely heavy and they are in the midst of it all right away. The German officers in Stalingrad are mostly cruel Nazis, the treatment of Russian prisoners is harrowing. Witzlan is, as the privates discover now, a very humane person. He will not tolerate abuse and cruelty and comes into conflict with superiors on that subject. He may be inexperienced but he has a great character and his decision making isn’t all that bad, as we soon see.  As a matter of fact his subordinates learn to respect him a lot. One of the majors however is one of the most obnoxious characters of war movie history, a real jerk.

Stalingrad consists more or less of seven very distinct parts, the first one is the leave in Italy, followed by a heavy infantry combat one, then a sequence in which they are doing forced labour, next is the so-called “tank episode”, then they escape, meet again later with a part of their original group and finally try again to escape, out of Russia and back to Germany.

Because Stalingrad focuses practically only on five people it is a very intimate and emotional movie You have the feeling to know these people, you care for them, they are really humans with all their strengths and flaws. They are no heroes, they are normal people caught in what was one of the biggest tragedies of WWII, one of the battles that cost the most lives.

And there is the setting and seasonal implications. Russia in winter is one of the coldest places on earth. This really is a winter movie. Snow, ice, freezing and the total hopelessness of the people involved makes it unforgettable. Most of those who survived the battles froze to death later.

I have often wondered, if I had to choose, which climate I would choose. Fighting in the desert, in the jungle or in the icy cold planes of Russia? All three settings bear their own horrors as did the war soaked trenches of France and Belgium. My father fought in the desert, where you fight exhaustion, thirst, Fata Morgana and hallucinations from the heat and have to endure long walks through arid barren country where you can’t hide and are an easy target.

From my own personal point of view, I tink that icy Russia would be the worst. Stalingrad is for me the worst battle that ever took place. The battle and its aftermath are horrible.

I haven’t seen the Finnish movie Talvisota aka The Winter War yet, this might be similar, also a winter movie, but apart from that I think the extreme that is depicted in Stalingrad is unique. No other war movie achieves to convey such a powerful anti-war statement.

It think it safe to say that it is not only one of my Top 10 but it is also generally acknowledged as one of the best ever.  It manages to combine very intimate portraits of five soldiers, intense infantry combat, the depiction of a grueling climate and one of the biggest miscalculations of Hitler. 5/5 is an absolute understatement.

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Sink the Bismarck! (1960) A British Movie About One of the Most Crucial Moments in British History

The British black and white movie Sink the Bismarck! tells the true account of one of the most difficult moments during WWII. The new German battleship the Bismarck was the biggest and most powerful battleship to ever cruise the sea. A frightening enemy that had to be stopped before it could break loose and reach the Atlantic. The war on the North Atlantic was at its height and so were the British losses at sea.

Sink the Bismarck! switches back and forth between scenes in the war room and scenes at sea. As a narrator states at the beginning of the movie, the war is fought at sea but the decisions are made in the war room. The scenes taking place in the war room resemble many others that are depicted in British movies but they are much more psychological. The filmmakers decided to focus closely on Captain Shepard who has been promoted and is in charge of the navy on land and on his assistant, Anne Davis, a young woman whose fiancé died at the beginning of the war. Shepard himself is grieving for his wife and one of his sons. He is shown as hard and rigid in the beginning but he changes considerably over the course of the movie. The people around him, although annoyed by his harshness, still know that he has to take some of the most difficult decisions that have to be taken during the war.

The most tragic moment in the movie is certainly when the biggest British battleship, The Hood, is sunk within minutes of attacking The Bismarck. It explodes in front of the eyes of the rest of the British fleet which is close by.

After this has happened Churchill gives one of his famous speeches and utters the memorable words “Sink the Bismarck!”.

We all know what course history has taken so it is not too much of a spoiler to say that the British navy, together with the assistance of the pilots of aircraft carrier Ark Royal, did manage to sink the huge German fortress. Quite a tragic moment even for the British. No one really cheered. There is something eerie about naval combat; many people die when a ship is finally sunk but the ships themselves are lost as well and they often look like gigantic wounded animals dying a violent death.

All this said, it’s a fine movie. The characters we see in the war room are well-developed, the tragedy of the initial defeat of the British navy is palpable, the huge burden that lasted on those who take decisions can be felt and the utter senselessness of war is symbolized in the sinking of those huge ships. I couldn’t help admire the German engineers at one point, the Bismarck was an astonishingly powerful ship. But I also admired those people in charge in the British war rooms. They worked day and night, hardly ever slept and were dedicated to the last. 4/5

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A Midnight Clear (1992) Christmas in War Movies II

Ardennes Forest, December 1944, just after the Battle of the Bulge. A small intelligence unit is sent to an abandoned estate in the forest to do some reconnaissance. The men all have an IQ above 150 and have been chose especially for this unit. While staying at the house they encounter a small group of German soldiers who want to surrender. They have just returned from the Eastern front, happy to have survived and war weary. They don’t see any sense in fighting anymore. During an evening of truce the two parties exchange Christmas gifts and sing their respective Christmas songs. The time before the two parties meet is the best part in the movie. It is quite spooky. The men, surrounded by the ghostly winter forest, start to doubt at some point that there really is someone, they only hear noises and voices that shout “Good night” in German.

The day after the Christmas celebration they are going to fake a skirmish in which the US soldiers will pretend to take the Germans prisoners. It doesn’t quite turn out the way they planned it.

A Midnight Clear is based on a novel by William Wharton (the same author who wrote Birdy). The most striking feature of the movie are powerful images. There is an instance where the group comes upon two frozen soldiers, a German and an American one, who seem to be dancing together. The icy cold winter forest is beautifully filmed. Another really great aspect is a flashback element where we see the young American soldiers getting ready for going to war and spending a night on the town looking for an occasion to lose their virginity.

I have read a lot of positive reviews about this movie. Funny enough, a person on amazon, who gave it high praise, compared it to Castle Keep and called it surreal. I didn’t think it was surreal, I thought it was at moments a bit forced.  This was mostly due to the character called “Mother” who annoyed me totally. Sure, he suffered of post-traumatic stress, still.

Since I have been complaining about the use of languages in Silent Night, I might add here that this is flawless in this movie. The German soldiers are played by German actors.

Another interesting element is that we see a few fine actors at the beginning of their career: Ethan Hawke, Kevin Dillon and Gary Sinise.

How would I rate it? All in all I can’t give it more than 3/5. I have a feeling, comparing my impressions with all the positive reviews, that I didn’t get this movie. Or is it too similar to Silent Night?

This is the only trailer I could find. Whoever did it found it appropriate to use Albinoni’s Adagio which we never hear in the movie. It would have been fitting though.