We finally had a gorgeous, warm day after months and months of cold, overcast and rainy weather. Today felt like it might just have been the first day of Spring here in the Valley, and as if to mark the occasion there were thousands of small monarch butterflies, newly hatched, flying everywhere you looked. Someone said they were migrating, which I had not known. Imagine that - they are no sooner born than they know exactly what they are supposed to do.
It was a wonderful sight to behold, and I can't tell you how grateful I was for the nice weather. :)
Tonight I watched a third film from the stash I picked up at Mid Valley on Sunday : "Operation Burma" (1945), which - as you can once again tell from the title - is a WW2 movie, lengthy and big budget, starring Errol Flynn, one of my very favorite actors. Burma lies just above Thailand on the map of southeast Asia, and just below Thailand is Vietnam, so it's kind of interesting how the United States wound up in a war in that country just 20 years after World War Two came to an end. I am a WW2 history buff, but I had not known that the US had any forces in that area during the war in the Pacific. I knew we were in China, which was an ally at the time, and that we used some of their bases for strategic reasons, with a minimum of troops, but I never knew we were all the way down in Burma. You learn something new every day.
Errol Flynn is "Captain Nelson", who will be leading a squad of paratroopers into a secluded area of the Burmese jungle, hopefully away from any Japanese troops, who have already invaded Burma to set up radar stations. The mission of Flynn's group is to blow up one of these stations that can identify American planes before they reach Japan.
The first half hour of the film sets up the mission and deals with the varying levels of anxiety among the men, including the ever present fear of jumping from a plane into a potential combat situation. This is the first war film that I have seen take such a detailed look at the prelude to the actual jumping of the paratroopers; even the most experienced among them are nervous and Captain Flynn admits this to a novice newspaperman who has been chosen by Washington brass to tag along. The writer is an older man and a civilian who would seem to be unfit for such a thing, but his character will prove to be tougher than the soldiers expect. He becomes a central part of the story as he jumps out of the plane with the rest of the troops and then chronicles their journey to the radar station in his notebook, for later use in his newspaper columns back home.
The objective to destroy the Japanese radar station is achieved with relative ease, and the troops retreat to a predetermined clearing where an airstrip is located. They are to be picked up and flown out of there by a C-47, and they can see and are in radio contact with the planes which are within a minute or two of landing. But then a scout from the perimeter comes running up with the announcement that Japanese troops have been sighted behind the treeline - hundreds of them - and they are waiting for the planes to land so that they can ambush the American plan of extraction.
All of a sudden the plans must be changed. Captain Nelson (Flynn) radios for the rescue planes not to land and to depart the area immediately. He messages a secondary plan for them to rendezvous with his troops at another location down the trail, in two days.
This plan does not unfold successfully because it is discovered that Japanese troops are lining the Burmese trail all the way to the border. There is no way for planes to land.
Errol Flynn and his men will have to walk the two hundred miles out of the jungle by themselves.
"Operation Burma" is a very realistic war film as WW2 movies go. There are scenes of atrocities (shown off screen from the witness' point of view) that are very grim indeed, and there is also an existential "one for all and all for one" resolve among the men after they feel themselves to be left for dead. The script never says that the Army command has abandoned them, but they still feel the eternal soldiers' bond that they are only fighting to save themselves, and that their predicament is no longer about the greater jingoistic war objective. They keep fighting because they are there, and because it is the only way out against the Japanese soldiers of the same mindset.
This is a very brutal and truthful war film. It has some of the character traits of all WW2 films from the 1940s, meaning that there is a Brooklyn Wise Guy making a lot of jokes in between firefights, and there is the newspaperman documenting the stories and hometown histories of the individual men. But overall, and in the jungle sequences mostly, it looks very accurate. The men are out in the wild, having parachuted in, and now they are stuck there.
The Japanese know the territory, the paratroopers don't, and so they face danger at every turn and every time night falls. This is a story more about endurance in extreme conditions than it is a hard core battle film, though there is plenty of combat action. Director Raoul Walsh focuses on the tension before battle.
He pays attention to the average soldier and how he got there in the first place. A lieutenant has recently been a schoolteacher. Now he is in the fight of his life, in a suddenly incomprehensible set of circumstances.
Errol Flynn shows why he was such a good actor (within his range), and that he was more than just a matinee idol movie star. Here he shows real pathos and grit as the Captain leading his depleted squad through miles of unknown territory, reminding his men to swallow their salt tablets and their dysentery pills so they won't get sick, all while keeping a keen eye out for the enemy.
If you are a fan of WW2 films, then I can give you a high recommendation for "Operation Burma", which again is not a mega-combat film but more a story of survival. But it has incredible location photography by the great James Wong Howe, shot in shadowy black and white somewhere in the wilderness areas around Palm Springs. It looks and feels like you are in Burma, and Walsh directs with a tension that maintains the pace throughout the 142 minute picture. This is a long film but it never lets up for a minute.
One of the best World War Two films I've seen, with a great performance by Flynn and his support actors, and deserving of Two Very Big Thumbs Up. But only if you are a serious fan of war films, because it is also very grueling. ////
Tomorrow I will try to do another music pick. I think we have done eight pieces so far, by as many composers, which means that we have two to go. I can't even remember my exact list now, of my top ten composers. Who have we already done? Bach, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Mozart, Scarlatti, Wagner and Tchaikovsky. So who do we have to go? Beethoven and Rachmaninoff? I am not sure I'd put either of them in my top ten, but then - to be truthful - I don't know the complete oeuvre of any of my composers. I have heard a lot of stuff by most of them, but not all the work by any, and so for some of them I am judging the greatness by their most famous pieces. Actually, if I think about it, I might choose Debussy over Beethoven for my top ten favorites, simply because I love piano music over symphonies (although Beethoven has his share of great piano sonatas, too).
At any rate, I promise not to use "oeuvre" again, just as I recently promised never to use "milieu" a second time. I will keep my word on both counts, so have no fear. :)
And I will do another music pick, too, though not sure by whom just yet.
So see you in the morning, maybe with some late hatching butterflies still flying northward, bringing up the rear of the migration.
Tons of love and warm temperatures. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment