btbor Reviews

Decision Before Dawn (1951)

Just Saw Again After Many Years

[10/10 · 27 May 2006]

When this film & book came out it was the subject of very interested discussion in my school group. As a seventh grader I listened intently to the opinions of the older seniors, who really appreciated it. Not the usual gung-ho movie, lots of emotion involved. For the first time one had the opportunity to empathize with both the German and American aspects, and the torn emotions of Happy, who, by his actions, may indirectly be contributing to his own father's death. Also the potential love between Happy and the barmaid with whom he shared his glass of wine - (was she Hildegard Kneff?) very beautiful - the irony of his SS(?) buddy with the motorcycle & sidecar seen hanging by the side of the road. I would put this on a par with A Time To Love And A Time To Die, for its ability to transport us completely into the sealed world of Nazi Germany that few outsiders got to see (other than the participants). Another film, similar in genre was one about the Berlin Airlift starring Montgomery Clift (The Big LIft). Wonderful when a film could be well made and at the same time use a realistic WW II setting, thank goodness before the age of computerized simulation. I would also include (in a "movie marathon") From Here to Eternity, and Twelve O'Clock High, again for the ability to transport us like a time machine. BTW did I see an actor in this film who also played in Twelve O'Clock High?? The book was also as great as the movie!

The Enemy Below (1957)

Was There a Second Version of the Ending?

[7 April 2006]

I first saw this film when a student in Munich, circa 1957. My recollection of the ending differs from that which I am seeing on current reruns in one detail. The version I recall: As the two captains shared a smoke after the German sailor was buried at sea, the camera panned above to the mast, from which was fluttering the German naval ensign. Until this point it was not clear who the ship that picked them up belonged to. In other words, they had been picked up by the German raider with which the U boat was going to rendezvous, and it was the American Captain, not Kurt Jurgens, for whom "the war was over." Can anyone confirm that there was this second version (probably made for German viewers, who were certainly in need of some feel-good stories of the war)? I have seen no reference to this in the reviews I have checked on the web, but my search has been by no means comprehensive.

A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958)

ATime Machine....

[10/10 · 12 April 2005]

Re: Shannon Box's ([e-mail]) observation: "In short, this is an important film of significant value. Not because it is about history, but because it is about the redeeming quality of humanity, even if displayed in the setting of our onetime enemy." I would change the last of Shannon's statement to BECAUSE it is displayed in the setting of our onetime enemy. I saw this film shortly after it was released, in a theater on a USArmy post in Munich, Germany (McGraw Kaserne). At that time I was a student, especially of German history. This film provided an opportunity to be transported, for a few hours, into that closed society that our German friends had lived through but could not adequately convey to us. For those who enjoyed this film I would recommend reading "The Officer Factory" by Hans Helmut Kirst and Betrayed Skies (I have forgotten the author, but that is a first rate but largely unknown German pilot's story of his unwilling part in the air war). In short, this is a modern day All Quiet on the Western Front.

Twelve O'Clock High (1949)

The First Fifteen Minutes Are The Best....

[10/10 · 10 April 2005]

This is one of my favorites of all time. I often play the beginning over and over - up through the part where Dean Jagger (what ever happened to him anyway? He was a great supporting actor) hears the Wrights (or P&Ws?) start to crank up....the faint (a bit too faint on my video version - I have to set the volume to max - sounds of the airmen singing the popular war ballads (too bad they didn't include "White Cliffs of Dover" and of course it was too early in the war for Lilli Marleen) - makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. When I first say this film in 1949 (at the age of ten) my friends and I went to see it for the air combat scenes. At that point in my life I had lived for a year in England (1945-46) and heard first hand from my third grade classmates stories about Spitfires & Mescherschmitts tangling it up in the skies above. Later, as a student in Munich in the late 1950s I gained another, different perspective on "precision" daylight bombing which killed mostly women and children. This was made a bit more poignant when I discovered in 1990 that a cousin of mine had been shot down in his P51 Mustang just over an hour's drive from where I was attending school - on April 14, 1945, weeks before the end, on an extra mission he had volunteered for. Today (2005) in Munich they are still rebuilding churches. This is one of the great aviation stories of all time. And I see it from three or four different perspectives at once. No matter that most of the film takes place on the ground. If you enjoyed this I would suggest for collateral reading: "Bomber" by Len Dighton, and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. You will never look at air war the same way again.