I saw only the last half of this one, appropriately enough on Anzac Day, tuning in just as the delicious Nurse Siggy Thornton is writing a love letter that intelligence Major Anthony Andrews is going to mislead Johnny Turk with. So I missed the alleged tedium of the first hour. The film is no doubt best viewed on a big screen, but what I did see in the last hour was the Australian Light Horse attack on Beersheba, brilliantly staged and filmed, with hundreds of horses and extras and tonnes of dramatic tension.
The actual battle was an Aussie military success, due in large part to their opponents, especially the Germans, underestimating them. It was a change from Gallipoli, where some of the horsemen had fought a couple of years earlier. It was terribly thoughtful of the Australian commanders to order the attack an hour before sunset when the light is best, and Dean Semler the cinemaphotographer takes full advantage of it. The close camera shots in the battle really give you the feeling you're right in it - there is nothing particularly original about "Saving Private Ryan" made 10 years later.
Yes, it's a cliché-ridden and chauvinistic script. The real villains are the Germans, all from Central Casting's Nazi division, despite this being a movie about the FIRST World War, but the British officers are also portrayed as pretty perfidious - the guys who made snobbery an art form to cover their incompetence. The Turks, though, are shown as brave and worthy opponents, if a little under the Germans' thumb. No doubt John Ford would have done it differently (I'm not sure he would have handled the horses any better) but this is the Australian point of view. A Turkish version would be interesting.
Anyway, worth it for the final battle.
The actual battle was an Aussie military success, due in large part to their opponents, especially the Germans, underestimating them. It was a change from Gallipoli, where some of the horsemen had fought a couple of years earlier. It was terribly thoughtful of the Australian commanders to order the attack an hour before sunset when the light is best, and Dean Semler the cinemaphotographer takes full advantage of it. The close camera shots in the battle really give you the feeling you're right in it - there is nothing particularly original about "Saving Private Ryan" made 10 years later.
Yes, it's a cliché-ridden and chauvinistic script. The real villains are the Germans, all from Central Casting's Nazi division, despite this being a movie about the FIRST World War, but the British officers are also portrayed as pretty perfidious - the guys who made snobbery an art form to cover their incompetence. The Turks, though, are shown as brave and worthy opponents, if a little under the Germans' thumb. No doubt John Ford would have done it differently (I'm not sure he would have handled the horses any better) but this is the Australian point of view. A Turkish version would be interesting.
Anyway, worth it for the final battle.