WORLD WAR II MOVIES MADE DURING WORLD WAR II

The Master Race (1944)

Action in Arabia (1944)

Lifeboat (1944)

China (1943)

China Girl (1942)

They Were Expendable, like the already mentioned A Walk in the Sun, were made during the war but came out shortly after it ended. As I noted on the old board, the man They Were Expendable was based on lived around the corner from me in my yoot.

Interesting thing about US war films made during the war, they almost never show a German being killed. Planes are shot down, ships are sunk, but we almost never see a German soldier being killed. Contrast that to all the "Japs" who get mowed down.

Here are four of my favorites made during the War. I don't think any can be called "B" although they contain similar plots and tropes. All four have top of the heap action directors.

Air Force / Howard Hawks (1943). One of the earliest films – if not THE earliest - from Hollywood to show men in combat in WWII, “Air Force” sets the tone and style and many of the tropes for many a film to come. For modern sensibilities, the demonizing and de-humanization of the enemy may seem excessive. There is copious use of the J-word and many expressions of what treacherous rats America is up against.

Guadalcanal Diary / Lewis Seiler (1943). The battle for the small island of Guadalcanal (and two other islands) in the Solomon Islands northeast of Australia in late 1942 and early 1943 was a significant victory for the U.S. as it effectively stopped southern Japanese expansion and prevented the invasion of Australia. Given the usual Hollywood flag waving war propaganda, what we see seems more factual than usual in these films. There is the usual Stagecoach/Grand Hotel/Bomber Crew mixture of different people: the guy from Brooklyn (William Bendix, ‘natch), a Jewish guy, a naïve kid, the tough but tender sergeant, well, you know the drill. What makes this film stand out is how it shows the Marines going from eager fighters wanting to get into combat through a stage of doubt and fear and then to hardened veterans. One thing that may turn modern viewers off is that GD, more, I think, than any other war time film I have seen (including “Air Force”), delivers the harshest and most frequent racist epithets and stereotypes. Viewers will have to cope with dialog like: “Hey Hook? How do you feel about killing... people?” “Well, it's kill or be killed, ain't it? Besides, those ain't people.”

Back To Bataan / Edward Dmytryk (1945). This is the story of the WWII Resistance movement against the Japanese from their conquest of the Philippines in 1942 through the return of the American army in 1944 – events very close to and in the minds of the film’s first audience. Of course in Hollywood movies, you have to have a White Guy leading the native Filipinos. Here, it is John Wayne. At least, he is not portrayed as an outsider but as a resident of the Islands and already familiar with Filipino history and culture. Anthony Quinn, that generic ethnic, plays the (fictional) grandson of Andrés Bonifacio, who led his army, the Katipunan, in the revolt against Spain in the late 1890s. Again, a caution: the J-word is used about 348 times. Otherwise, an excellent ‘40s action flick that must have registered powerfully with the first home front audiences.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo / Mervyn LeRoy (1944). This was one of my father’s favorite movies and one of mine when I was young. Only four months after Pearl Harbor, an Army Air Force commander, Col James “Jimmy” Doolittle, laid a top secret plan to bomb the Japanese mainland. The set-piece at the center is the bombing mission itself. Forced to set the mission in motion early, the bombers take off from an aircraft carrier in bad weather. The Ruptured Duck’s (whose crew the film follows) target is Tokyo. This 20 minute sequence is a spellbinder. There is no music soundtrack. The roar of engines and the shouts of men yelling orders and good luck at each other provide the aural excitement. The bomb run over a Tokyo factory district demonstrates some special effects that still stand up today. To my more experienced eyes, the rear projection effects are more noticeable, but they are much more well done and match the action in the foreground much better than is usually seen in movies of the time.