The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944)

Director:

William Wyler

Writers:

Jerome Chodorov (writer)
Lester Koenig (writer)

Release Date:

13 April 1944 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | History | War

Tagline:

Fly and Fight with the Crew on an Actual Bombing Mission Over Germany!

Plot:

Documentary about the 25th and last bombing mission of a B17, the "Memphis Belle". The "Memphis Belle"...

Plot Keywords:

Bomber | Propaganda | Aviation | Military | Public Domain

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Robert Morgan	...	Himself (pilot)
Vince Evans	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jacob L. Devers	...	Himself (commander, European theatre)
Ira C. Eaker	...	Himself (commander, 8th Air Force)
Haywood Hansell	...	Himself (USAAF)
Technical Sergeant Robert J. Hanson	...	Himself (radio operator on The Memphis Belle)
Eugene Kern	...	Narrator
King George VI	...	Himself (congratulates crew of Memphis Belle)
Captain Charles B. Leighton	...	Himself (Navigator on the Memphis belle)
Technical Sergeant Harold P. Loch	...	Himself (Engineer and top turret gunner on The Memphis belle)
Staff Sergeant Casimer A. Nastal	...	Himself ( 19 year-old waist gunner on The Mephis Belle)
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother	...	Herself (congratulates crew of Memphis Belle)
Staff Sergeant John P. Quinlan	...	Himself
Staff Sergeant Cecil H. Scott	...	Himself (turrett gunner and oldest crew member on The Memphis Belle)
Captain James A. Verinis	...	Himself (Co-pilot on The Memphis Belle)
Staff Sergeant Clarence E. Winchell	...	Himself - waist gunner on The Memphis Belle
Stanley Wray	...	Himself (group commander)

Also Known As:

The Memphis Belle (USA) (short title)

Runtime:

45 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

RAF Bassingbourn, Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire, England, UK

Company:

First Motion Picture Unit, United States Army Air Forces

Trivia:

Some of the footage was lost and portions of the film are actually recreations shot over Santa Monica, California.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Zomergasten: (#3.1)" (1990)

Hectoring, but beautiful.

The most interesting thing about this documentary is its inherent paradox. It is a look at a US air base in England, 1944; its preparations for and carrying out of a strike on a prime German economic base. This kind of event is a one-off, necessitating spontaneous film-making (you can't ask for another take). And yet the director is William Wyler. Wyler could be great, it is true, but he was one of the most rigid of filmmakers, with every scene so preprepared and exact that it was often difficult for it to breathe. He was a theatrical kind of director, favouring interior, static set-ups, often base on canoncial, or high-minded material (e.g. Emily Bronte, Henry James, 'Ben-Hur').

Of course, like all documentaries, this film is heavily controlled, its 'reality' mediated by Wyler's craft, as well as the propaganda needs of the War Office. The film follows a very schematic script - preparations, attack, return - which reads more like a Hollywood treatment than the messy loose-ends of a war. Every event and 'actor' is shown to have a purpose, from the glamorous bombers to the lowly mechanics. Several scenes are obviously contrived ('real' people are terrible actors), and we are asked to believe that in the middle of a life-or-death dogfight, salty veterans wouldn't swear.

The didactic narrator, a disembodied Voice of God in a very physical, corporeal conflict, gathers everything authoritively to himself - he tells us what we are seeing; he can inform us what the soldiers are saying; he explains tactics and motives, putting a relatively minor operation into the wider context of the US (definitely US!!) war effort. We are told, no less, what war is for. Images of brutal injury and death are not denied, but are appropriated for the optimistic project: we are tacitly asked to think of the greater good.

So, over fifty years on, with a completely different world view, does this film have any value, or meaning for us? Oh yes. Turn the sound down. Marvel at the sheer FACT (not in a history book, or a film) of history in motion, before your very eyes. Mere statistics now walk and talk and smile like actual people. This not all. The aerial sequences are astoundingly beautiful. There is a remarkable purity of geometry to the air formations, making you think they were set up by Wyler. The film stock, neither Technicolour gloss, nor the vapidly clear image of modern film, gives a bleached, dream-like effect to the spectacle, making you forget that in a few moments these machines are going to murder women and children.

There is also something curiously moving about the transition from the smooth, controllable base footage to the elliptical chaos of the bombing and subsequent dogfight. We are told at the beginning that much of this footage was lost because of over-exposure; its absence - making us confront in our much more potent imaginations what really happened - is a beautiful triumph of the power of imagery, editing and ellipsis (i.e. art) over the sterile, fascist hectoring of the narrator's words.