Last night we found an excellent Navy film, "Battle Stations"(1956), the first 20 minutes of which is basically a tour of an aircraft carrier on it's way from Pearl Harbor to Japan. The ship's Catholic priest, "Father Joseph McIntyre" (John Lund) is our narrator, having boarded at Pearl. Many of the enlisted men know him from basic training in Alameda. He also knows the ship's boatswain, "Buck Fitzpatrick" (William Bendix), who gives him the "fifty cent tour" of everything from the ammo rooms to the ship's barber shop to the emergency steering hold on the bottom deck. The flight deck is crammed with folded-wing Corsairs. Fitzpatrick takes Father Joe up there on the hydraulic aircraft elevator.
He also meets the Captain, (Richard Boone), who has a rep for being tough. Part of the plot will bring Boone into conflict with the ship's bad boy, "Seaman Chris Jordan" (Keefe Brasselle), who keeps breaking rules in an effort to be transferred. He's upset over losing a promotion; his behavior is a vicious cycle. Nothing he does, no punchout he starts, no awol violation, gets him the transfer he's seeking. There's the typical war movie banter among the men, letters from home, talk of wives and girlfriends. One pilot, good guy "Pete Kelly" (William Leslie), has just learned he's the father of twins. Captain Boone drills the heck out of the men to shorten their reaction times to attack. Four and a half minutes isn't fast enough from sleep to battle stations: "The Japs'll have us at the bottom of the sea by that time." Boone is concerned because on a previous mission, this carrier was bombed. The Japanese officially reported it sunk. "If they find out we're still sailing, they'll send everything they've got to sink us, to avoid losing face. Four and a half minutes won't cut it. Have 'em run that drill again!" Boone's not a hard ass, he just doesn't want his men to die.
Pete Kelly gets stripped of his flight status when, low on gas, he disregards a "wave-off" (a do-not-land signal) and lands on deck. "I ditched once before and I almost drowned" he tells his gunner, "Seaman William Halsey" (Jack Diamond) who everyone calls The Admiral. Halsey, the ship's Official Earnest Geek, later breaks rank to talk directly to Captain Boone, asking him to reinstate Kelly.
There's also a dog on board, despite the "no mascots" order. Bo'sun Fitspatrick discovers him (a little mutt) and pretends to throw him off, but the dog finds his way back to quarters. 62 minutes of the 80 minute film is devoted to life on the ship, and for that reason alone, it's a great movie because you really get an idea about the size of an aircraft carrier, with 3500 men. It's like a 900 foot long 150 foot wide floating small town, with gigantic anti-aircraft artillery.
Then, all of a sudden, 40 miles from the coast of Japan, right when the pilots are briefed and ready for their mission, the director very effectively shows what one enemy pilot can do. Coming from out of the clouds, the Japanese pilot sees the carrier, circles it, and releases his bombs. His expression is that of a kid who's quite pleased with himself. Then, kaboom! This happens at the 62 minute mark. The final 18 minutes are made up of hellish stock footage showing a real carrier (supposedly the USS Franklin) getting blown to smithereens, while the studio-shot inserts show the crew trying to survive amidst massive explosions. Artillery shells are going off. Fire engulfs the Corsairs. Bo'sun Fitzpatrick and the manual steering team are trapped in the hull, with fire all around and rooms full of exploding shells. Bad Boy Chris Jordan becomes the hero as you knew he would, finding an escape route for the trapped guys through a ventilation shaft he used to hide in. He rescues the steering crew, and - after living through a 72 hour nightmare - the survivors manage to put out the fires. How they did this is a miracle, because by all rights the ship should be at the bottom of the sea. What's left is nothing but a charred hulk.
Bo'sun Fitzpatrick gets shot but lives. Chris Jordan gets promoted as a hero. Father Joe counsels Captain Boone on the men lost, 2800. Only 700 survive. But the ship makes it back to Pearl, then all the way through the Panama Canal and up the coast to New York. Two stories are never resolved: what happened to pilot Pete Kelley and The Admiral? And what happened to Mia the Dog? Oh well, you can't have everything. Richard Boone was such a strong actor as a younger, thinner man. His older self didn't even resemble who he was (he ended up looking worse than Charles Bukowski), but he is so great in this movie.
We love Navy movies and you can never have enough. Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Battle Stations", and again, the one shot in this movie that changes everything, is the look on the Japanese pilot's face, when, coming out of the clouds, he spies the carrier in the middle of the vast Pacific. One kid, 19 or 20 years old, three bombs, and a 30,000 ton carrier is destroyed, 2800 lives are lost. It's staggering to watch in stock footage. The picture is very good. ////
The previous night's film was "Deep Waters"(1948) the story of "Donny Mitchell" (Dean Stockwell), an orphan boy in Maine in the 1940s, who is taken in by a foster mother, "Mary McKay" (Anne Revere). Donny's a troubled kid; he's run away from all previous homes. Social worker "Ann Freeman" (Jean Peters) knows McKay is a last resort, the only one who'll take him. They're worked together before with other children. McKay is strict but fair, and Donny takes a liking to her. But every chance he gets, he's down at the lobster dock. His Dad was a lobsterman. So was his uncle. But both men are deceased, lost at sea, a hazard of the job. Donny's mother died young also. He's only 12 but has been alone most of his life. He can already sail, though, and one day, after he's finished his chores for Mary, he takes a skiff out to a small island to hunt ducks.
"Hod Stilwell" (Dana Andrews), the island's owner, sees Donny in the reeds, holding a rifle as tall as he is. After a laugh, he gives Donny two ducks he himself has bagged. "Take these with you so Mary won't get mad." They bond, and soon Donny is at the lobster dock every Saturday, when he has no chores, asking to sail with Hod and his first mate "Joe Sanger" (Caesar Romero), who dreams of giving up lobstering for farm life. Romero is so great in this movie, providing good-natured comic relief. Donny wants to help them catch lobsters, but he's a kid, and though skilled with a fishing rod, he's also trouble, hiding in the lobster barrel to steal. At home, Mary tries to bond with him too, but he's drawn to the sea. "It's in his blood" Hod tells Joe, who has another farming scheme up his sleeve in every scene.
A subtheme occurs between the social worker Ann Freeman and Hod. She was his fiance but broke it off because he won't quit lobstering. Ann fears he will die at sea, like so many in the profession, and indeed, the movie's most harrowing scene takes place in crashing waves, near huge rocks, after Donny steals a local man's motor boat to try running away once again. He gets caught in a storm. Luckily, Hod and Joe are out on a lobster run, see him, and manage to save him while nearly capsizing in the process. Yes, Donny is a handful, to put it mildly. Hod covers for him every time, telling Mary and Ann, "he fell in the water." Hod and Joe bring him home from the rescue, just in time for a surprise birthday party, the first he's ever had. Mary and Ann want to mother him, cooking special meals, teaching him manners, but he wants a father figure, and Hod is that. But both women don't want Donny on Hod's boat. Both have already lost someone to the ocean.
Donny decides to run away yet again, and to do so, he's stolen a camera from a drug store and pawned it for the train fare to Boston. He gets caught and sent to reform school. To get him out, Hod calls on local man "Josh Hovey" (Ed Begley), a boat builder with political clout. This is another big time Actors Movie. check it: Dana Andrews, Caesar Romero, Jean Peters (Howard Hughes' wife), Anne Revere (stage and movie giant who was blacklisted), Ed Begley, and - on top of them all - 12 year old Dean Stockwell, a tremendous child actor who would go on to become the Suavest Man Alive for David Lynch. You want actors? You got 'em in this movie.
It was shot on location in Maine, and if it weren't so Back East, and Freezing Cold (except in the Summer, which Stephen King says is hotter than Hades), you'd probably wanna move there yourself. It's quite beautiful in the movie, which was taken from a 1930s novel. It gets Two Huge Thumbs Up and the picture is razor sharp. ////
I also saw "Oppenheimer" this past weekend. You very likely have seen it, or are about to, so I shant give a big review. I will make a few comments, however, so if you haven't seen it yet but plan to, read no further. I really liked the last hour when the Strauss confirmation was underway, and his antagonism for Oppenheimer became apparent. I did feel the movie was overlong, and that the first 30-45 minutes were disjointed, edited in the modern epileptic style, and that the story, in that time, jumped around way too much, in brief snippets of information. It's the ADD generation of filmmaking, so I'm not surprised. You could say the first hour was All Christopher Nolan-ed Out. Cillain Murphy, while mostly excellent, maintained a little bit too much of the Wide, Blue-Eyed Stare, and the Expression of Mystical Self-Satisfaction, when the real Oppenheimer would've been more down-to-business and nowhere near that fey. Matt Damon was great as always. Downey Jr. was the best thing in the movie, and will almost certainly get an Academy Award nomination for Supporting Actor. The last third of the flick was Best Picture worthy, but overall, it was a different movie than I was expecting, with all the focus on the commie hearings. Still very good though, even if the Trinity test and Los Alamos in general was given the "cram it all in" treatment; i.e. an hour-long synopsis of the Manhattan Project, so Nolan could get back to the politics at hand. Was Oppenheiner a commie? Probably not, but he seemed to be entirely self absorbed. Again, it's a Christopher Nolan flick, so ya gotta take the good with the bad. His best movie is still "Dunkirk." If you want to know more about the Manhattan Project (which I thought would be the movie's main focus) read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. You get to know all about the scientists involved, and there were many. Werner Heisenberg (who we met in the film, and who worked on the German side) was probably the greatest physicist who ever lived. Him, Neils Bohr, and Isaac Newton. Well, anyhow, a good but not great movie. ////
And that's all I've got for tonight. My blogging music was "King Arthur" and "Criminal Record", both by Rick Wakeman. My late night is Handel's Esther Oratorio. I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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