One of the Missing (1971)

Director:

Tony Scott

Writers:

Ambrose Bierce (idea) and
Tony Scott (writer)

Genre:

Short | War

Plot:

A Southern soldier in the American Civil War is sent to reconnoiter the enemy positions and becomes...

Awards:

1 win

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Stephen Edwards

...

James Clavering

Runtime:

26 min

Country:

UK

Color:

Black and White

Company:

BFI Production Board

Intensity of nature, solitude of war

Scott's early feature reflects the aesthetic predilections of students at the Royal College of Art and other similar schools in England in the late 1960s and early 1970s--that is an intense vision of nature related to the art of the radical painters in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth-century. This represented a rejection of then-dominant modernism in art. Scott's exquisitely photographed (in black and white) natural scenery relates to paintings by John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Arthur Hughes, then enjoying a renaissance of sorts. In the relation of natural innocence, poignant ruins, and war, the short anticipates Malick's "The Thin Red Line," and here can easily be seen as a reflection on the disaster that was Viet Nam in 1971. In addition, one wonders if Scott studied Winslow Homer's works in art school, for one of the most famous illustrations and paintings by the American artist who chronicled the Civil War was one of a sharpshooter in a tree, wielding a newly invented firearm that could slay at great distance--a coldly mechanized aspect of this particular war. Scott's protagonist reflects on that seemingly unfair advantage, from the position of someone who experiences the heat of battle both behind and in front of the barrel. An impressive early feature, very much of its time.