Listeners questions - what’s your favorite war film

Looking into a lifetime of watching war films I tried to list my favourite 5 but went down the jo Jo rabbit hole 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Beats Battlefield. This is a bonus episode as one of the listeners has quite kindly messaged in, which you can all do if you've got any questions or ideas for the podcast, you can always chuck them through. This is from Michael, and sadly I don't know your surname or where you come from. It doesn't come through on those text messages that we get, but you've asked me what are what is your favourite war film? Now, I can't just give you one war film, and I can't just give you um a great synopsis, but I'm gonna try and give you my top five. However, we are gonna go down a slippery slope of within that top five. We're gonna talk about other films either side of it. But I grew up in a generation of a Sunday afternoon used to be a war film, and it'd always be a lovely Technicolor or black and white film, and I can still smell my mum cooking the dinner, or me and my granddad would sit there, and we'd watch amazing films like The Damn Busters, The Longest Day, The Bridge Too Far, The Guns Never Own. Some films which are particularly when you look back years later, aren't historically correct. Others which were made in the 1950s, and since then we've had a lot of information come back from those films, and we can tell even more of a tale. But in that in this period now, technology has got better cinematically, films are greater, but there is still a lot of dross getting churned out year after year. And there are certain war films, everyone's got their favourite. I mean, I can't can't do this podcast without mentioning Zulu. There's an entire generation of us who are in the historical uh historical recreation, historical um sites, you know, tour guides, or anyone who's got a general fair feel of history. I think Zulu is one of those first films that we all watch, and there are countless number of us who could probably sit there and go word for word, and it's actually my dad's favourite film, and I haven't been to uh Walker's River in San Juan yet, and that is on the bucket list, but the tale of that daring do in the Victorian period, which would create the Victoria Cross and create the film itself, creates a lifetime for Michael Cain, who appeared in many, many films, quite a few war films, and it sort brings up a lovely warm feeling in the day. Not the fact that we're killing people in other countries, but Zulu is one of those films that when all the chips are down on the backs of the walls, the British come up tops. But that is probably the only Empire film I'm actually going to talk about in these top five. I've I'm just looking at a list in front of me, I've done it quite um quite hurriedly. Now, the first film in the list, there is no top or bottom on these, I'm just going to run through them as we go, but went the day well. A film that not many people would have heard of. 1942, height of the Second World War. This film shows the Germans, those ghastly Germans, invading England, dressed as Polish paratroopers, they take over a small village, and that village is the same village they filmed, um the the Vicar at Dibley, but it's very much like The Eagle Has Landed with another Michael Caine film, and it's a propaganda film created in the height of the Second World War, and it shows us beating the Beastly Hun, where members of the Home Guard and the Women's Land Army take on the Germans with shovels and all other stuff like that. It is quite a gruesome, gritty film for its time, but I think it was in the Daily Mail years ago, one of those freebie war films they handed out. And my me and my granddad, it's one of the last films I watched with him before he died. And we sat there and he read he talked talked about his time when he got evacuated during the Second World War down to Somerset, and it reminded me very much of that that time in his life when he was evacuated just before he joined the army when he turned 18. And funnily enough, my granddad was in a uh in a war film. It was a foreman went to war with Tommy Trinda, and he appears in one of the group scenes like that. And sadly, I never got a chance to sit down and watch it with him, but when it was on the telly, everyone had to sit there and watch it, and for the two or three seconds he was in that film, he used to point it out to all his children. But went the day well, 1942, a story of the Germans trying to evade England during the height of the Second World War. And then we'll go on to another Second World War film, A Bridge Too Far, an absolute classic, telling that story of Operation Market Garden. And of course, it's another Michael Kane film, we've been mentioning him quite a bit in this podcast, but it's got so many other great actors within it. And I actually own one of the film props from it. I have got a sten gun that was involved in that film, and years later, when I've actually looked at it, it is a proper pucker World War II Sten gun, which the props department have grabbed hold of and they've welded everything shut. And for me, a bridge too far, it's not until it's years later when I've you sat there, you've watched this film, and we know the story of Market Garden, then it wouldn't be until years later that I would visit the battlefield of Arnhem, and quite often, if I've I will go back up to over to Arnhem and I I do a tour for young people, we do the Anne Franken Arnhem tour. So we do a day in Amsterdam, and then we'll get to take a day in Arnhem and Oosterbeek, and what I always try and do is if I go over there a day early, I'll go and do that wonderful walk from the Hartenstein Hotel through Oosterbeek up to the John Frost Bridge. But I haven't done that sadly for many years. And if any of you are interested in taking you for scout groups over to the battlefields, this is what we actually specialise in. And it's um it's an amazing thing, and it wouldn't be until years later that you read the stories of the outer line of Oosterbeek, what happened to the Hartenstein Hotel, and then you walk past the Elizabeth Hospital, and you stand on John Frost Bridge, and you read those little individual stories behind those men. And if you ever get a chance, you've got to spend a whole day in Oosterbeek, and you just walk up every single road, and there's plaques dedicated to those lone battalions, lone sections of men, and it tells you that story behind that amazing day when we came from the skies and we tried to help out to the Netherlands, and sadly it would lead on to the hunger winter afterwards. But if you like a bridge too far, please watch There's Is the Glory, and it's a film filmed in I believe 1947, I haven't got it in my notes, but it's where men from the parachute regiment go back and reenact it within Arnhem, and there's also an even more amazing YouTube film where they go behind the scenes behind that filming, and they're literally using the bombed-out buildings of Arnhem. Armand Arnhem hadn't been rebuilt by then. There are still damaged German tanks in the road, and they were using those to fire Piazza and tell the story of the brave Paras during that time. So you can, I still believe it's on YouTube. And then off the back of that you'll see the documentary, and they've got an amazing bit of footage with a um a child who was there in Holland when they were filming it, and they'd be playing games of football with the Paras, and then what happened is they kicked the football, it went into a minefield, and then the Paras drove lots to go back into that minefield and go and get the football. So there is the glory. Have a little look at that. Um, and also in recent times, the Forgotten Battle, uh, which is now I believe it's even on Netflix or Prime, and it tells a wonderful well, it doesn't tell a wonderful story, it tells about the occupation of Holland and those final battles in the days after Arlem where we're trying to fight through Holland. And what always grabbed me, and I didn't know this until I started, I've always been a First World War battlefield guide, and I'll always gen up on about the information that I've got to do for that area. But as you expand, you do really start to learn about your history. And for me, it wasn't um wasn't until you know, until re fairly recently. Well, I'm talking fairly recent, last or 15 years, I didn't realise Holland hadn't been um hadn't been liberated until the actual final days of that armistice. And you hear the story of the hunger winter, where thousands of of net people from Holland would starve to death over the winter of 1944. And of course, we tried to land in September 1944, and we couldn't relieve them. But to this day, you go to Arnhem and you walk through there, and they're still so happy that we did, and we tried to come from the skies and to save them. So, a bridge too far, a uh There's the Glory, and that little documentary off the back of it from there. Now, and my my guilty little pleasure is I love the film The Book Thief, and I do use this film occasionally to teach about the rise of Nazism and Germany during the Second World War. It is based on a novel, but in 2013, for people like me who can't read, um, the book was created um starring Geoffrey Rush, and it follows a story of Liesl Mengiger. It's a completely fictional story, but it does hold a bit of truth about the time during the Second World War. Liesl's mother dies, and what happened then is the German government will try and find a foster family for her. And she's sent out into a tiny little village in the middle of Germany, it could be any of those tiny little villages, and the entire film and the book is narrated by Deaf, and it tells a story of Liesl growing up in Germany. We cover the rise of Nazism and how within villages, in towns, the local people who would join the Nazi Party would try and ring and lord over those regular civilians. And for me, it's an amazing, amazing film, very well done. It tells the story of how men and boys were gathered up to work in the flak towers, the anti-aircraft gun positions and all other bits like that, and taken into the Volksturm. And also they try and hide a young Jewish boy, which is very similar to what my uncle did during the Second World War when he lived in Berlin. And it's just one of those films that you can see, it's not a big action film, it's not a big war film, um, but it does tell the story of the civilian side of war, which sometimes is often overgot. And if you like the book Thief, another film that I quite I quite enjoy is Jojo Rabbit, a complete work of fiction, but another good film for teaching young people about the rise of Nazism and the horrors of the Holocaust and what happened with it from there, and it is great for a comical view, and there is some truth in what happened there. So there we go. As I said, I'm going down I'm going down rabbit holes here, literally the Jojo Rabbit hole. So the Book Thief, and if you want a bit of a guilty closure, go have a look at Jojo Rabbit. Now, many years ago, there weren't that many book um films about the First World War. It almost had become a forgotten war, which at the time where cinema was growing and growing, that they the Second World War was the more higher end film, higher end thing that people would go to the box office to go and see. However, over the past 20 or so years, from 2004 and then with 2014, and quite a lot of times recently, there are more and more First World War films. But my favourite one, it's a French film. It's called A Very Long Engagement or Les Long Sounds of Engagement, the Long Sunday of Engagement, and it stars Audrey Tattoo, which we will remember from Emily, and it follows the story, a completely fictional story, of how she lost her lover at Verdun, and how he would be put up for execution at that time. And then it follows the story of men who were sent out into no man's land to die in that no man's land, and it follows each individual story, and the way it's filmed in such a way, it's got some amazing First World War battle scenes using Cintron tanks, and it's really well done, and it is a it is a foreign language film, so if you're but it is if you're wanting to pick up on your French, watch a very long engagement. 2004 film doesn't get the recognition that it should do, and its battle scenes are absolutely amazing, set around Verdun, and there is some truth in it. There is a scene where they are in a a a shelter and it's bombed, and the shelter catches fire, and that's based on the incident occurred in Verdun when inside a tunnel there was a hospital which had a lot of ammunition and it blew through and blew out. But a very long engagement, an amazing film, and the French have several great films. And um, here we go, going back on tangent again. If you can get a chance, and it is a it's a very long silent film, but the French um in the 1920s have a film called J'aqueus, which is just on the outbreak of the Second World War. Europe has gone to an absolute absolute dog shit, and um uh Gardner and one of these many uh um many uh cemeteries of the First World War is telling the dead, you know, why have you died? If only you could be here, you could see what how the country has become. And with this, a curse ensues, and from the ground, these veterans of the First World War, the dead, arise, and it's very well filmed because you see some soldiers missing arms and legs and the wounded, and it's only filmed in 1923 or 1924, and there are those soldiers of the broken faces, those who are missing limbs and arms from the battle, and they use those veterans. Now, of course, I can't talk about war films without talking about um All Quiet on the Western Front, all three versions of it, and each one of those films has its own individual way it's filmed, and it shows a sense of the time. The 1930s version, an amazing film, well done, and actually contained original First World War veterans. They gathered up all the Germans who'd emigrated to California in the post-war year, and many of them had served on the on the Western and Eastern fronts, and they used them as part of the choreography of that film. Then we have the 1970s film uh version, which is filmed, is filmed in the 1970s, so it's all very weird colours, and of course the modern version, which is absolutely immense. All three films, all quite on the Western Front, are films that are bearable and you can watch, and they are great first world war films. In fact, I'm just gonna go on about first world war films now for a little bit. So we have The Trench in the mid-90s, 1996. I believe it was just in time for the um the anniversary of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. It has uh uh Daniel Craig in it, uh Killian Murphy, and even Danny Dyer stuck in amongst it, and it's a an amazing film. It is a it depends, you have to be of a certain age to watch it. It's not great about the action, it's not great about the um the actual attacks and battles unless it's like the last 30 seconds, and a bit like um bit like glippoli, unless there we go, there's no film drop you can use there, but The Trench, uh it shows the build-up to the Battle of the Somme, and it's an amazing thing to teach with. I can use little segments of it, and it will show you the lead up to the battle for the battle, and they obviously see them get decimated in their final moments or during the 1st of July 1916. And of course, Gallipoli, which made Mel Gibson who he was, and it was his first major acting role out in Australia. I believe it predates Mad Max and shows about the Gallipoli campaign, and that's a a particularly good film to sort of watch. And obviously, off the back of that you've got the television series Anzacs, we're pre-dating Bander Brothers, but this shows those men of the first Anzac Division who fight through all the way from Gallipoli up into the final days of the first world war. So this section is just quite first world war stuff, really. Um obviously 1917, very well filmed, and there's a lot of uh lot of great factual bits and bobs, but it is a work of fiction, but it's an amazing film to go through, sit and watch. And of course, Peter Jackson, if any of you love Lord of the Rings, and this man, Peter Jackson, is an amazing director, and I can't uh fact I can't big him up enough, but did you know he has his own first world war uh set of aircraft, he's got his own squadron, he collects First World War memorabilia, and um he has an entire hangar full of great artefacts, and he could he probably outdoes the Imperial War Museum for the amount of stuff he has. And what he found is when he was film when he's doing any sort of filming, especially Lord of the Rings, after a long day's filming, he can go back and he can read his books about the First World War. And for the Great War Centenary, he created using archive footage along with veterans chatting away in the background, that amazing film, more of a documentary than anything else, but uh They Shall Grow Not Old. And that came out for the uh for the centenary, and I remember sitting in Eap after the um uh after the 11th of November celebrations for the hundredth anniversary of that, and me and my mate George went back to his flat and we sat there and watched watched that um had a little giggle because there are some scenes in there where you've got the veterans chatting away about their lives, and it is an amazing thing to see. So that's the first report section I've I've sort of blabber blabbered off into loads of different things, different things. But originally I was talking about a very long engagement, a French foreign language film, and I've just reeled off a load of First World War films. Now, the last one is Downfall or The Untergang, and this is based around Hitler's bunker in the final days of the Second World War. There are several other films that have been created about these last moments of Hitler in its time in the bunker, and we're not going to reel off all of those, but for me it's not just about that time in the bunker, it's not about Hitler at all, it's about what's happening outside around it. Those final days in Berlin, which my nan lived through back in 1945, and it shows the complete um disillusion of Germany at it that at that time, where they're sending children out to fight, old civilians out to go and die, and then the wounded are left in the hospitals. Um there's an amazing scene, and I wish they could cover a bit more of this, but they're using the U-Bahn as a bunker, as a as a as a temporary field hospital, and you see them go through there. If you do get a chance, um please go on YouTube and see the cutscenes from uh Downfall, and it shows the Russians coming into the bunker in those final days of 1945. Um there are some amazing German films out there, and I will I can't can't go on the German side of films without mentioning the 1997 film Stalingrad, a film I saw when I was about ten years old, and it is quite dark and quite disturbing. It's probably why I'm I am the way I am now. But in the in 2012 or 2013, the Russians made their own version of Stalingrad, which I think was the highest budgeted film the Russians have ever ever created. So there are two films from Stalingrad which you can watch from from both sides. Uh, and obviously, we also have joined the Battle of Stalingrad, which I think quite a lot of people, when they're first introduced to it, is Enemy at the Gate. So, opposed to me giving you my top five films, I've just rolled off a load of different films, loads of different genres, loads of different periods in time, but everyone has their favourite war film, and you can give them, you know, I can give you as many reasons for those as you can. But thank you for your question. Um, I probably haven't answered for you, I've just given you more films, but hopefully, if anyone else is listening to this, you've uh you might go and have a look at these other films and these back catalogues. But if you do want to message me with your favourite film, feel free to. Many thanks.