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Reviews
Battle Stations (1956)
Great war flick. It should be re-released, on tape and DVD.
Although I'm dating myself, I saw this in its original release. At the time, I was familiar with the WWII stories of the USS Franklin and the USS Bunker Hill. The dive bomb and kamikaze attacks on those two Essx class carriers provide much of the plot of this film, as well as some of the film footage. The film shows once again that ordinary men, of that time at least, had undreamed of reserves of valor with which to face otherwise overwhelming horror. If you chance to see this title in a flea market, grab it.
"Victory At Sea" devotes some time to the Franklin's saga and Gary Cooper's "Task Force" incorporates part of the story, as well.
Richard Boone, then playing TV's Dr. Conrad Styner on "Medic", William Bendix, of "The Babe Ruth Story" and his own TV series and a young Claude Aikens provided a human thread through the story.
Gods and Generals (2003)
How Ted Turner wishes it was.
The most appropriate sub-title for `Gods and Generals' would be `Ted Turner's Fantasy of How the Old South Really Was'. We must accept the need for film to edit and condense historical processes and to invent composite characters, in order to `accurately' depict the feel and flavor of the people and times which are the subject of a film. However, the liberties taken with the true racial relationships of the times depicted in this film fall well outside the realm of artistic license and four-square within clinically pathological denial. In `Gods and Generals', the relationship between master and slave was warm and loving. The slave shared the same quarters with the masters as well as the same perils. The slave possessed a loving parental concern for the welfare of the owners and cheered the gentlemen of the South as they marched off to battle the Untermenschen of the North. There were no slaves slaving in the fields. There were no beatings or rapes or murders of slaves. The Old South was bliss on earth for their African guests.
Quite fittingly, the men of the South were devout adherents of that particular sect of Christianity which did not require them to apply the precepts of their Bible to any other than their own kind. Although slavery has perished, that type of Christian has flourished.
There are two arguments which vitiate the need to consign all copies of this film to the fires of the nearest sanitary landfill. As you watch it and seethe at the travesty it does with the history of American race relations and ask yourself how it could have been made in the 21st Century, the first thing that pops into your mind is: Ted Turner. The Mouth of the South strikes again. This epiphany makes you realize there is no cause for alarm. There are Warner Brothers cartoons with more social significance than this.
The other argument reflects the fact that it was the North which won the Civil War. It means all people have a right to say what they want. It's a `North-man's burden' kind of thing. Because of the Civil War, people do have a right to tell a story from their own perspective and to preach their own causes. Cinematic history provides a rock-solid foundation for this tradition. To remain true to this genre, Ted should have hired Leni Riefenstahl.
That said, should you go see this film? The answer is an emphatic yes. It's the battle scenes which count. The re-enactors and stuntmen are magnificent. They bring to life the horror of those battles, without preaching all war is evil. What will turn-off our Hippie/Preppy/Yuppie/Beemer-Boomer generations is that the men of the Civil War, on both sides, had something they valued more important than themselves. Those men had something worth dying for. It may have been simply feeling the country could expect its people to fight for it. It may have been to preserve the Union or it may have been to free the slaves. For the South, it was the right to live their own lives or to defend their states, although denying such rights to the slaves. The difference between the two sides was the breadth of their view of life. The North's was simply broader. The point is, `Values' aren't what you rant and rave about in the media or the streets. `Values' are what you are willing to die for.
`Gods and Generals' is supposed to be part of a trilogy. The first part was `Gettysburg'. That did not show the North's view of the war, only how Gettysburg was fought. Since the North won the Civil War, it really doesn't need its side to be shown. `Gods and Generals' gives the South's side of what the Civil War was all about. My prayer is that, before Ted Turner is completely lost to dotage, he makes the third part from the slaves' perspective. I know he could say `Roots' and Mandingo' did all that but they really didn't. No one has humanized the brutality of slavery nor shown its legacy today. That story needs to be told. Reparations aren't the answer.