BOT's Top 50 Historical Fiction Films - The Countdown

[The Panda]

 

 

"They've shot the Czar. And all his family."

 

Historical Setting: Primarily 1910s-1920s, The Russian Revolution and Civil War

 

Source from the Period

 

"CHAPTER ONE

1. Russia is proclaimed a Republic of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies. All central and local authority is vested in these Soviets.
2. The Russian Soviet Republic is established on the basis of a free union of free nations, a federation of National Soviet Republics.

CHAPTER TWO

The Constituent Assembly sets for itself as a fundamental task the suppression of all forms of exploitation of man by man and the complete abolition of class distinctions in society. It aims to crush unmercifully the exploiter, to reorganize society on a socialistic basis, and to bring about the triumph of Socialism throughout the world. It further resolves:

1. In order to bring about the socialization of land, private ownership of land is abolished. The entire land fund is declared the property of the nation and turned over free of cost to the toilers on the basis of equal right to its use. All forests, subsoil resources, and waters of national importance as well as all live stock and machinery, model farms, and agricultural enterprises are declared to be national property.
2. As a first step to the complete transfer of the factories, shops, mines, railways, and other means of production and transportation to the Soviet Republic of Workers and Peasants, and in order to ensure the supremacy of the toiling masses over the exploiters, the Constituent Assembly ratifies the Soviet law on workers' control and that on the Supreme Council of National Economy.
3. The Constituent Assembly ratifies the transfer of all banks to the ownership of the workers' and peasants' government as one of the conditions for the emancipation of the toiling masses from the yoke of capitalism.
4. In order to do away with the parasitic classes of society and organize the economic life of the country, universal labor duty is introduced.
5. In order to give all the power to the toiling masses and to make impossible the restoration of the power of the exploiters, it is decreed to arm the toilers, to establish a Socialist Red Army, and to disarm completely the propertied classes.

CHAPTER THREE

1. The Constituent Assembly expresses its firm determination to snatch mankind from the claws of capitalism and imperialism which have brought on this most criminal of all wars and have drenched the world with blood. It approves whole-heartedly the policy of the Soviet Government in breaking with the secret treaties, in organizing extensive fraternisation between the workers and peasants in the ranks of the opposing armies and in its efforts to bring about, at all costs, by revolutionary means, a democratic peace between nations on the principle of no annexation, no indemnity, and free self-determination of nations.
2. With the same purpose in mind tlie Constituent Assembly demands a complets break with the barbarous policy of bourgeois civilization which enriches the exploiters in a few chosen nations at the expense of hundreds of millions of the toiling population in Asia, in the colonies, and in the small countries. The Constituent Assembly welcomes the policy of the Soviet of People's Commissars in granting complete independence to Finland, of removing the troops from Persia and allowing Armenia the right of self-determination. The Constituent Assembly considers the Soviet law repudiating the debts contracted by the government of the Tsar, landholders, and the bourgeoisie a first blow to international banking and finance-capital. The Constituent Assembly expresses its confidence that the Soviet Government will follow this course firmly until the complete victory of the international labour revolt against the yoke of capital.

CHAPTER FOUR

1. Having been elected on party lists made up before the November Revolution, when the people were not yet in a position to rebel against the exploiters whose powers of opposition in defence of their class privileges were not yet known, and when the people had not yet done anything practical to organize a socialistic society, the Constituent Assembly feels that it would be quite wrong even technically to set itself up in opposition to the Soviet.
2. The Constituent Assembly believes that at this present moment of decisive struggle of the proletariat against the exploiters there is no place for the exploiters in any organ of government. The government belongs wholly to the toiling masses and their fully empowered representatives, the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies.
3. In supporting the Soviet and the decrees of the Soviet of People's Commissars, the Constituent Assembly admits that it has no power beyond working out some of the fundamental problems of reorganizing society on a socialistic basis.
4. At the same time, desiring to bring about a really free and voluntary, and consequentlv more complete and lasting, union of the toiling classes of all nations in Russia, the Constituent Assembly confines itself to the formulation of the fundamental principles of a federation of the Soviet Republics of Russia, leaving to the workers and peasants of each nation to decide independently at their own plenipotentiary Soviet Congresses whether or not they desire, and if so on what conditions, to take part in the federated government and other federal Soviet institutions."

- DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE TOILING AND EXPLOITED PEOPLES, 1917

 

Historical Context

 

"The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most significant events in the 20th century. It completely changed the government and outlook on life in the very large country of Russia. The events of the revolution were a direct result of the growing conflict in World War I, but the significance of an empire collapsing and a people rising up extends beyond the war effort.  In 1914, Russia entered the war with much vigor. However, their enthusiasm was not enough to sustain them and the army suffered many casualties and loss of artillery supplies. Russia lacked mobilization skills to counter its losses, but more importantly it lacked good leadership. Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894 – 1917) had complete control over the bureaucracy and the army. He refused to share his power and the masses began to question his leadership. In the summer of 1915, the Duma (parliament), demanded a government with democratic values and which responded to the people’s needs. Later that year, however, Nicholas dissolved the Duma and went to the war front. His leaving was detrimental.

 

The government was taken over by Tsarina Alexandra and her unique counterpart, Rasputin. Alexandra was a very strong-willed woman, who disliked parliaments and supported absolutism. She attempted to rule absolutely in her husband’s absence by dismissing and electing officials on a whim. Her favorite official, Rasputin, which means "Degenerate", was a Siberian preacher. He belonged to a sect that mixed sexual orgies with religion and he had mysterious healing powers. As a result of rumors of the two being lovers, Rasputin was murdered in December 1916 by three aristocrats. In the cities, food shortages continued to rise and the morale of the people fell. Riots broke out on March 8, 1917 in the city of Petrograd. (The Julian calendar that Russia used at the time was 13 days behind the western, Gregorian, calendar. Therefore, some date the riot on February 24th.) It was started by women demanding more bread, but eventually spread to other industries and throughout the city. Even the soldiers on the front joined in the revolution. The Duma set up a provisional government on March 12, 1917 and a few days later the tsar stepped down.

 

Lenin (1870-1924) was a strong supporter of Marxian socialism. He believed that capitalism would only disappear with a revolution and this was only possible under certain conditions. The socialism party was split between Lenin’s, Bolsheviks, or "majority group" and the Mensheviks, or "minority group". Lenin’s group did not stay the majority, but he kept the name and developed a disciplined, revolutionary group. The Bolsheviks attempted to seize power in July, but failed. Lenin fled from Petrograd and went into hiding in Finland. The party’s popularity, however, grew tremendously throughout the summer.

 By the autumn of 1917, it was clear that the main social and economical problems that caused the uprising in March still existed. In the second half of September, there was a debate in Petrograd between the Bolsheviks and the other parties (socialists and Mensheviks). The voting figures clearly pointed towards a Bolshevik majority. Leon Trotsky was elected as chairman of the governing body. Trotsky (1879-1940) was a radical Marxist, amazing orator and huge supporter of Lenin. Outside Petrograd, the feelings of the population coincided with the Bolshevik convictions. The people wanted to see the end of Kerensky's government, the end to the war and they wanted new land distribution. Trotsky and Lenin saw the answer to all these desires in a Bolshevik seizure of power.

 

From Finland, Lenin urged the Bolshevik committee to plan an armed uprising. Many thought it was too premature and reckless. However, after Lenin made a trip to Petrograd incognito and they debated with them for ten hours, the Bolsheviks were convinced. Trotsky masterfully executed the revolution. He formed a military-revolutionary committee to head the arming of workers throughout Petrograd. Factory meetings were held to boost the workers' enthusiasm. Finally, on the night of November 6 (or October 26), the combined forces of the Bolshevik soldiers and workers stormed the city and seized government buildings. They went on to gain the majority in the congress and declared Lenin as their new leader.

 

Lenin declared an end to the fighting and made armistice proposals. He also decreed the nationalization of land. However, he was far from solving the problem of hunger among the people. Lenin and his Bolsheviks had increased opposition in the next few years. Civil war broke out and external fears persisted. Earlier in the fighting, Tsar Nicholas II and family had been interned in the Ipatiev house, located on the Bolshevik base at Yekaterinburg. In July 1918, the royal family was killed. They were murdered out of fear that if they remained alive they could serve as a focus of the anti-Bolshevism movement. By the end of 1920, when some stability did return, Russia emerged as an entirely different country."

- The Russian Revolution of 1917, Elizabeth M. Fernholz

 

Historical Accuracy

 

"Fiercely proud of his work, Pasternak took the extremely risky step of having it smuggled out of the Soviet Union to be published in Italy. “You are hereby invited to watch me face the firing squad,” he is said to have remarked as he handed over his manuscript. Despite many attempts from the Soviet authorities to prevent it, the book was published in Europe in 1957 and was an immediate hit. It was translated into English and dozens of other languages in 1958, and Pasternak was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.  It was at this point that the CIA got involved. As detailed in last year’s book by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée, The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was doing all in its power to undermine and discredit the Soviet regime. In their view, awarding a major prize to a writer regarded as disloyal could only serve to embarrass the Soviets in the eyes of the world. The CIA secretly pressed for Pasternak to win the award (which, in fairness, he had been routinely considered for since the late 40s), and he did. In the meantime, the CIA covertly printed Doctor Zhivago in Russian and had it smuggled into the Soviet Union, where it became an underground sensation.  Despite the fact that Pasternak declined the Nobel Prize (in private, very reluctantly), the Soviet authorities continued to vilify him and at one point considered expelling him from the country. The stress took a toll on the aging author’s health, and by 1960, he was dead.

 

What didn’t die was Doctor Zhivago. As one of the most popular novels of the late 50s, it was only natural that Hollywood should seek to transfer its oversized drama and passionate characters to celluloid. There was one man in particular who seemed ideally suited to the task of adapting such an expansive work: British director David Lean.  Lean was well known for creating the types of movies commonly referred to as “epics” – wide-ranging stories, often placed in exotic settings, designed to convey the magnitude of a historical moment or particular person. His signature epics were Lawrence of Arabia (1962), about Arab partisan T.E. Lawrence, and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), about prisoners of war forced to build a bridge by the Japanese during World War II. Both of these popular and critical successes won Oscars for Best Picture of the Year.  Lean had read Doctor Zhivago in 1959 after finishing Lawrence of Arabia, and when producer Carlo Ponti suggested it as his next project, he was enthusiastic. Ponti originally conceived of the film as a vehicle for his wife Sophia Loren, but Lean couldn’t picture Loren in the key role of Lara, Zhivago’s love interest. Instead, once the project began to get off the ground in 1963, he went in a completely different direction. (Although Lean had sidelined Ponti’s wife, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was now involved in the financing of the film and gave Lean full control of casting. Ponti held no grudge.)

 

Zhivago cost a fortune to film; in 1965, it was one of the most expensive movies ever made, various estimates putting its cost between $11 and $15 million. The many settings, large crowd and battle scenes, and unusual requirements (including an interior of a dacha “frozen” in beeswax) guaranteed that it would be a pricey proposition. Confident in Lean and in the potential of the story, however, the film’s producers banked that it would find an eager audience. They were completely right.  Released on December 22nd, 1965, Doctor Zhivago soon became one of the biggest hits of 1966. Omar Sharif and Julie Christie became the screen’s newest stars, “Zhivago”-style clothing featured in fashion magazines and department stores, and the love theme from the movie (“Lara’s Theme”) by Maurice Jarre became ubiquitous (it became a hit single for several artists when lyrics were written for it and it was retitled “Somewhere, My Love”). Eventually, the film would gross an incredible $112 million domestically and over $200 million worldwide.  Critics were less enthralled with the film than the general public. Some opined that Sharif and Christie lacked chemistry; others that the romance was nice enough, but that it was basically a soap opera performed on a ludicrously elaborate scale. Most critics agreed that the film was visually stunning, but few admitted to being enchanted by its handling of character or historical incident. Unmoved by the stellar box office receipts, David Lean reportedly took the negative criticism to heart and proclaimed that he would never direct another picture; he came close to living up to his word, only directing two more features in the following 20 years."

- Joe McGasko, Biography.com

 

 

The Film Itself

 

The Story

 

During the Russian Revolution, Dr. Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) is a young doctor who has been raised by his aunt and uncle following his father's suicide. Yuri falls in love with beautiful Lara Guishar (Julie Christie), who has been having an affair with her mother's lover, Victor Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), an unscrupulous businessman. Yuri, however, ends up marrying his cousin, Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). But when he and Lara meet again years later, the spark of love reignites.

 

Critic Opinion

 

"The sweep and scope of the Russian revolution, as reflected in the personalities of those who either adapted or were crushed, has been captured by David Lean in “Doctor Zhivago,” frequently with soaring dramatic intensity. Director has accomplished one of the most meticulously designed and executed films–superior in several visual respects to his “Lawrence of Arabia.”  Some finely etched performances by an international cast illuminate the diverse characters from the novel for which Boris Pasternak won but did not accept the Nobel Prize. Carlo Ponti production is an excellent achievement in filmmaking and seems destined for good hardticket action. Word of mouth, the burgeoning b.o. appeal of younger featured players, and the Lean reputation suggest even brighter prospects for later Metro release in general situations.

 

Robert Bolt, whose screenplay is itself a 224-page book just published by Random House, faced a major challenge in adaptation. The Pasternak novel turns on an introspective medic-poet who essentially reacts to the people and events before, during and after the Bolshevik takeover. The capacity, indeed the insistence, of the human spirit to survive and retain some measure of individuality is an essential story factor which must be cleverly balanced with and related to impersonal events. Bolt’s adaptation is an effective blend."

-  Variety, 1965

 

BOT User Opinion

 

"Not as good as Lawrence, but what is anyway? Still as epic as they come and it doesn't feel as long as it is." - @darkelf

 

Factoids

 

Doctor Zhivago was directed by David Lean.  It received 54 points and 8 votes.

 

 

Countries Represented: Algeria (1), Austria (2), Belarus (1), Brazil (1), England (1), France (2), Germany (2), Israel (2), Korea (1), The Ocean (2), Poland (1), Japan (3), Russia (1), Scotland (1), Spain (1), United States (16), Vietnam (1)

 

Time Periods Represented: 16th Century (1), 17th Century (2), 18th Century (2), 19th Century (5), 1920s (2), 1930s (3), 1950s (2), 1960s (6), 1990s (1), 21st Century (2), Classical Period (2), Middle Ages (2), World War 1/1910s (2), World War 2/1940s (7)

 

Cross Section of Times and Countries: 18th Century - Austria (1), 18th Century - United States (1), 19th Century - The Ocean (1), 19th Century - United States (4), 21st Century - United States (2), 1910s-1920s - Russia (1), 1920s - United States (1), 1930s - Germany (1), 1930s - Korea (1), 1930s - United States (1), 1950s - Algeria (1), 1950s - United States (1), 1960s - Brazil (1), 1960s - United States (4), 1960s - Vietnam (1), 1990s - United States (1), Classical Period - Israel (2), Middle Ages - England (1), Middle Ages - Scotland (1), Sengoku Period - Japan (1), Tokugawa Shogunate - Japan (2), World War 1 - France (2), World War 2/1940s - Belarus (1), World War 2/1940s - Germany (1), World War 2 - The Ocean (1), World War 2/1940s - Poland (1), World War 2/1940s - Spain (1), World War 2 - Austria (1), World War 2 - United States (1)

 

Directors Represented: Park Chan-Wook (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1), Kevin Costner (1), Andrew Dominik (1), Stanley Donen (1), David Fincher (2), John Ford (1), Milos Forman (1), Bob Fosse (1), Mel Gibson (1), Anthoney Harvey (1), Terry Jones (1), Philip Kaufman (1), Gene Kelley (1), Elem Klimov (1), Masaki Kobayashi (1), Stanley Kramer (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), David Lean (1), Michael Mann (1), Penny Marshall (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Adam McKay (1), Steve McQueen (1), Theodore Melfi (1), Sam Mendes (1), Lewis Milestone (1), Wolfgang Peterson (1), Gillo Pontecorvo (1), Martin Scorsese (2), Steven Spielberg (2), Oliver Stone (1), John Sturges (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Wise (1), William Wyler (1)

 

Decades Represented: 30s (1), 40s (1), 50s (2), 60s (7), 70s (3), 80s (6), 90s (4), 00s (6), 10s (9)

 

 

 

[Plain Old Tele]

All hail Mr. Bolt, screenwriter extraordinaire. 

[The Panda]

 

 

""Treason doth never prosper," wrote an English poet, "What's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.""

 

Historical Setting: 1960s, The Aftermath of the JFK Assassination

 

Source from the Period

 

"In a solemn and sorrowful hour, with a nation mourning its dead President, Lyndon B. Johnson Friday took the oath of office as the 36th chief executive of the United States.   Following custom, the oath-taking took place quickly -- only an hour and a half after the assassination of President Kennedy.   Federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes of Dallas administrated the oath in a hurriedly arranged ceremony at 2:39 p.m. aboard Air Force 1, the presidential plane that brought Kennedy on his ill-fated Texas trip and on which his body was taken back to Washington. Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Kennedy, her stocking still flecked with blood from the assassination, flanked the vice-president as he raised his right hand in the forward compartment of the presidential jetliner at Love Field.  About 23 White House staff members and friends were present as Johnson intoned the familiar oath:

 

"I do solemnly swear that I will perform the duties of President of the United States to the best of my ability, and defend, protect and preserve the Constitution of the United States."  The 55-year-old Johnson, the first Texan ever to become President, turned and kissed his wife on the cheek, giving her shoulders a squeeze. Then he put his arm around Mrs. Kennedy, kissing her gently on her right cheek.

Mrs. Kennedy, in tears, was wearing the same bright pink suit she wore on the fatal ride, a ride in which she has been wildly acclaimed by friendly, cheering crowds in Dallas before rifle shots rang out and the President collapsed in the seat of the car beside her.   Johnson had deliberately delayed the ceremony to give Kennedy's widow time to compose herself for one of the gruelling aspects of her husband's assassination.

 

Connally spent four hours on an operating table, but his condition was reported as "quite satisfactory" at midnight.  The assassin, firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building near the Triple Underpass sent a Mauser 6.5 rifle bullet smashing into the President's head.    An hour after the President died, police hauled the 24-year-old suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, out of an Oak Cliff movie house.  He had worked for a short time at the depository, and police had encountered him while searching the building shortly after the assassination. They turned him loose when he was identified as an employe [sic] but put out a pickup order on him when he failed to report for a work roll call.  He also was accused of killing a Dallas policeman, J. D. Tippit, whose body was found during the vast manhunt for the President's assassin.  Oswald, who has an extensive pro-Communist background, four years ago renounced his American citizenship in Russia and tried to become a Russian citizen. Later, he returned to this country.

 

Shockingly, the President was shot after driving the length of Main Street, through a crowd termed the largest and friendliest of his 2-day Texas visit. It was a good-natured crowd that surged out from the curbs almost against the swiftly moving presidential car. The protective bubble had been removed from the official convertible.   Mrs. Connally, who occupied one of the two jump seats in the car, turned to the President a few moments before and remarked, "You can't say Dallas wasn't friendly to you.""

- KENNEDY SLAIN ON DALLAS STREET

By ROBERT E. BASKIN
Washington Bureau of The News

Dallas Morning News

 

Historical Context

 

"On March 1, 1967, New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw was arrested at his home on 1313 Dauphine Street on charges that he conspired to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison believed that Shaw had conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie, an affiliate of New Orleans private investigator Guy Banister, in the assassination of the president.

 

On November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination, Oswald had been formally accused of assassinating Kennedy. Garrison, along with many Americans, found it hard to believe that Oswald acted alone. In 1966, Garrison began an investigation linking Oswald to two New Orleanians, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw. Ferrie was linked to Oswald through a 1955 photo that showed Ferrie and Oswald at a social event as members of the Civil Air Patrol. A dubious eyewitness, under Garrison’s interrogation, recalled that he had heard Ferrie, Oswald, and Shaw discussing an assassination plot at a party hosted in Ferrie’s home. Additionally, Garrison believed Shaw to be the unidentified “Clay Bertrand” who, the day after the assassination, had phoned a New Orleans attorney requesting that the attorney represent Oswald. According to Garrison, Bertrand was Shaw’s alias in the New Orleans gay society. (In his investigation Garrison often exploited Shaw’s purported sexual preferences and his private life.)  On March 2, 1967, the day after his arrest, Shaw was released on a $10,000 bond. In the following two years, Shaw and Garrison dominated the headlines of New Orleans newspapers, leading to national coverage of the trial of Clay Shaw."

- The Arrest of Clay Shaw

Rebecca Poole and Connie Gentry

 

Historical Accuracy

 

"Stone's crucial question remains: Why was Kennedy assassinated? He privately acknowledges not knowing, but he presents a strong feeling in JFK that can easily be accepted as fact. The implication is that Kennedy's death came as a result of a supposed 1963 decision to end the war in Vietnam by first withdrawing 1,000 troops. This might be coupled with Kennedy's conciliatory American University speech and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, both in 1963. Hence, Kennedy's cold war "betrayal" became the supposed motive of the Establishment.   Yet the record is much less clear than presented in JFK. The 1,000-force cutback slated for the end of 1963 mostly involved a construction battalion that had completed its work; it was understood that it would be replaced by other troops. Moreover, the testimony of several contemporaries and Kennedy's own statements suggest that he intended no pullout after the 1964 election. In a 1964 oral history interview, Robert Kennedy, who knew his brother best, confirmed that the administration had not considered a withdrawal. When asked what the president would have done if the South Vietnamese appeared doomed, Robert answered in a way that truthfully expressed the ad hoc nature of the Kennedy presidency: "We'd face that when we came to it." The recently published Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume 4, Vietnam, August-December 1963, further affirms the no-pullout conclusion.

 

Regardless of his admiration for Kennedy, Stone's primary purpose is not to elevate JFK's reputation. Exposing the Establishment for betraying the people's trust most drives Stone. His targets are the Warren Commission, the intelligence agencies, the military, the media, and the other hypocritical myth perpetrators of the cold war era. He responds with a countermyth so colossal and compelling that it commands our attention. But only the knowledgeable viewer can discern Stone's qualifiers and subtleties. In the film's final message, Stone leaves the resolution of the assassination to the "young, in whose spirit the search for truth marches on."

 

Of course, JFK distorts history; of course, it is potentially dangerous to an alienated and uneducated public; and, of course, Stone and Warner Brothers stand to make millions from it. This aside, Stone's riveting drama has contributed to an unprecedented interest in the Kennedy assassination. Teachers can use the film as a teaching tool in conjunction with the innumerable scholarly works on the assassination—many of them recently heading the best-seller lists. Moreover, this frenzied publicity may also cause the government to open all of the restricted material on the assassination—the files of the CIA and the FBI, the House investigation, the Church Committee investigation on intelligence in 1975, and the Warren Commission. Senator Edward Kennedy has indicated that the Kennedy family has no objections to such a release. On ABC's Nightline, in January, Congressman Louis Stokes, chair of the 1978 House Committee investigation, and David Belin, Warren Commission counsel, both indicated that they favored opening all of the material. Perhaps as a result of such a full disclosure, we might know much more about Kennedy's assassination and the investigations themselves despite the deaths of witnesses and the destruction of evidence. Only then might this matter be put to rest."

- James N. Giglio, Professor of History at Southwest Missouri State University

 

 

The Film Itself

 

The Story

 

"On November 22, 1963, president John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested for the crime and subsequently shot by Jack Ruby, supposedly avenging the president's death. An investigation concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby acted alone in their respective crimes, but Louisiana district attorney Jim Garrison is skeptical. Assembling a trusted group of people, Garrison conducts his own investigation, bringing about backlash from powerful government and political figures."

 

Critic Review

 

"The subterfuge and corruption of JFK takes place, not in a seedy noirish milieu, but in a world so bleached out that its brightness hurts the eyes. Stone knits together the searing imagery with rapid-fire editing that simultaneously scrambles then invigorates the brain (for all its visual pyrotechnics, the director plays out his most important points — Sutherland's informant X spilling the beans to Garrison—with just two men talking on a park bench). Much of Stone's visual and aural fireworks were laid out in his screenplay. Naturally, faced with a 158-page document filled to the brim with flashbacks, execs at Warner Brothers were confused, so Stone presented them with a simpler blueprint for the film and then rebuilt the current prismatic structure in the edit suite.

 

"I wanted to do the film on two or three levels," ran Stone's erudite and convincing argument. "Sound and picture would take us back, and we'd go from one flashback to another, and then that flashback would go inside another flashback. I wanted multiple layers because reading the Warren Commission report is like drowning."  JFK — which was awarded Empire's Movie Masterpiece in 2000 — makes a mockery of the idea that courtroom dramas have to be stagey affairs. Throughout the film, different formats and film stocks offer competing versions of truths; real and recreated news footage, 8mm home movies, still photographs, diagrams, black and white drama and colour all add to the fractured nature of the storytelling. Occasionally, it looks like a pattern is emerging from the intensity — monochrome seems to be the idiom for "speculation" — but there never is a formula. The razzle-dazzle editing is meant to enliven dry testimony, but it also sits at the core of JFK's theme: what we held true about the pastwill always be just a collage of conflicting histories."

- Empire

 

BOT User Review

 

"I was taken to see this film by my Honors History teacher at the time. She took the history club, which I wasn't a part of, but since I was the only student in her class not part of the club, she let me tag along anyway.  I do enjoy the film. It is well made and acted. I am not going to get into the inaccuracies or anything as they are well documented, but that doesn't change how good the film really is. It didn't affect me as much as some as my dad was heavy into the whole thing so I had books and such all around when I was a kid. So I read up a lot before the movie was even being done. But I can definitely see how this movie could influence people. Overall, if people were influenced in the right way, then that is a testament to the movie." - @75Live

 

Factoids

 

JFK is the first conspiracy fiction movie to somehow make the historical fiction list, it was directed by Oliver Stone.  JFK received 54 points and 9 votes.

 

 

 

Countries Represented: Algeria (1), Austria (2), Belarus (1), Brazil (1), England (1), France (2), Germany (2), Israel (2), Korea (1), The Ocean (2), Poland (1), Japan (3), Russia (1), Scotland (1), Spain (1), United States (17), Vietnam (1)

 

Time Periods Represented: 16th Century (1), 17th Century (2), 18th Century (2), 19th Century (5), 1920s (2), 1930s (3), 1950s (2), 1960s (7), 1990s (1), 21st Century (2), Classical Period (2), Middle Ages (2), World War 1/1910s (2), World War 2/1940s (7)

 

Cross Section of Times and Countries: 18th Century - Austria (1), 18th Century - United States (1), 19th Century - The Ocean (1), 19th Century - United States (4), 21st Century - United States (2), 1910s-1920s - Russia (1), 1920s - United States (1), 1930s - Germany (1), 1930s - Korea (1), 1930s - United States (1), 1950s - Algeria (1), 1950s - United States (1), 1960s - Brazil (1), 1960s - United States (5), 1960s - Vietnam (1), 1990s - United States (1), Classical Period - Israel (2), Middle Ages - England (1), Middle Ages - Scotland (1), Sengoku Period - Japan (1), Tokugawa Shogunate - Japan (2), World War 1 - France (2), World War 2/1940s - Belarus (1), World War 2/1940s - Germany (1), World War 2 - The Ocean (1), World War 2/1940s - Poland (1), World War 2/1940s - Spain (1), World War 2 - Austria (1), World War 2 - United States (1)

 

Directors Represented: Park Chan-Wook (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1), Kevin Costner (1), Andrew Dominik (1), Stanley Donen (1), David Fincher (2), John Ford (1), Milos Forman (1), Bob Fosse (1), Mel Gibson (1), Anthoney Harvey (1), Terry Jones (1), Philip Kaufman (1), Gene Kelley (1), Elem Klimov (1), Masaki Kobayashi (1), Stanley Kramer (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), David Lean (1), Michael Mann (1), Penny Marshall (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Adam McKay (1), Steve McQueen (1), Theodore Melfi (1), Sam Mendes (1), Lewis Milestone (1), Wolfgang Peterson (1), Gillo Pontecorvo (1), Martin Scorsese (2), Steven Spielberg (2), Oliver Stone (2), John Sturges (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Wise (1), William Wyler (1)

 

Decades Represented: 30s (1), 40s (1), 50s (2), 60s (7), 70s (3), 80s (6), 90s (5), 00s (6), 10s (9)

 

[The Panda]

Will do today's honorable mentions tomorrow as it took me more time than expected to weed through the conspiracy shit for the JFK write-up.

 

But to tithe you over, here are some more films (in no particular order) that missed the top 100 but received votes

 

Nixon

Bahubali: The Beginning

Lost City of Z

Into the Wild

The Favourite

Road to Perdition

Gangs of New York

Once Upon a Time in America

Moneyball

Apocalypto

Cleopatra

The VVitch

If Beale Street Could Talk

The Patriot

The Prince of Egypt

Rock of Ages

Patton

The African Queen

The Elephant Man

The Irishman

Dazed and Confused

Milk

The Book Thief

House of the Flying Daggers

Hero

Brooklyn

Shakespeare in Love

Die Brucke

The Texas Chainsaw Massacure

Gangster Squad

Noah

Australia

Boogie Nights

Little Women (1994)

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

 

 

[Plain Old Tele]

I saw JFK in theaters and it felt like it was 5 minutes long, it flew by in the blink of an eye. One of the flashiest, but also best-edited movies in the last few decades. So fragmented and chaotic but it all works. Also insane that they cut that fucker on videotape and then conformed the negative cut off that... gives me a headache just thinking about dealing with it.  

Edited May 13, 2020 by Plain Old Tele

[Cap]

12 minutes ago, The Panda said:

 

Gangs of New York

 

[charlie Jatinder]

16 minutes ago, The Panda said:

Bahubali: The Beginning

What?

 

That's a fantasy. Is LoTR also a Historic?

[Fancyarcher]

18 minutes ago, Plain Old Tele said:

I saw JFK in theaters and it felt like it was 5 minutes long, it flew by in the blink of an eye. One of the flashiest, but also best-edited movies in the last few decades. So fragmented and chaotic but it all works. Also insane that they cut that fucker on videotape and then conformed the negative cut off that... gives me a headache just thinking about dealing with it.  

Also one of the best cast films ever. Everyone is used perfectly in it.

[terrestrial]

9 hours ago, CoolioD1 said:

no trust me it means "the butt". i see it says your location is Germany so i feel like you should know this.

I am bad with foreign languages (English being the best, but at the time English was my worst subject by far, including what my teacher said about my English skills in the final grade), but (as OT, I‘ll use spoiler tags)

Spoiler

 

actually rather good with German (best of the year in nearly all of my school years), also with dialects, based on my old profession, where I had contact to a lot of workers and higher ups all over my country. In my newer profession I have contact to lots of pupils, including per running a school library, teach media, discussion, technical drawing, so I am pretty sure its not a typical use for the actual teen generation neither, at least not in my region.

Never heard of that, its definitely not ‚official’ German, but it might be part of a local dialect.

 

Maybe its something like the reverse what we call ‚false friends‘ in English, like there are quite some English terms that mean something else than like we use it. E.g. here we say ‚Handy‘, meaning a mobile?

 

 

Spoiler

Quote

© Linguee Wörterbuch, 2020

 

▾

Wörterbuch (Deutsch)

Boot  Substantiv, Neutrum

boat n 

Ich machte das Boot am Steg fest. I tied the boat to the landing stage.

Wir saßen am Heck des Bootes.  We sat at the rear of the boat.

craft n 

booten (etw.Akk ~)  Verb

boot (sth.) v 

Booten Sie den Computer von der CD, um das Problem zu lösen. Boot the computer from the CD to solve the problem.

Booten  Substantiv, Neutrum

booting n 

Beispiele:

U-Boot nt [Abk.] —

U-boat n 

 ·

 

submarine n 

 ·

 

submarine boat n 

Boot fahren v —

boat v 

im gleichen Boot sitzen v [fig.]—

be in the same boat v [fig.]

 

© Linguee Wörterbuch, 2020

 

 

 

[baumer]

Forget about the conspiracy stuff, if you need to and you still have one of the best films of the decade in JFK.  IMO it should have done a lot better at the Oscars and it was easily better than that charlatan Silence of the Lambs.  As @Plain Old Tele alluded to, it's an incredibly well edited film and even to a novice like me, I remember seeing the film at the age of 19 and being truly blown away at the editing techniques they used.  

 

The cast is second to none and as mentioned @Fancyarcher every actor is perfectly cast and plays their part beautifully.  Whether it's Kevin Bacon as a prisoner who has information about Clay Bertrand or Joe Pesci who plays the manic and hyper David Ferrie to John Candy in one of his best small performances as Dean Andrews, the cast is incredible.  

 

JFK is one of my top 5 films and I'm glad to see it here.

[Jason]

6 hours ago, terrestrial said:

I am bad with foreign languages (English being the best, but at the time English was my worst subject by far, including what my teacher said about my English skills in the final grade), but (as OT, I‘ll use spoiler tags)

  Hide contents

 

actually rather good with German (best of the year in nearly all of my school years), also with dialects, based on my old profession, where I had contact to a lot of workers and higher ups all over my country. In my newer profession I have contact to lots of pupils, including per running a school library, teach media, discussion, technical drawing, so I am pretty sure its not a typical use for the actual teen generation neither, at least not in my region.

Never heard of that, its definitely not ‚official’ German, but it might be part of a local dialect.

 

Maybe its something like the reverse what we call ‚false friends‘ in English, like there are quite some English terms that mean something else than like we use it. E.g. here we say ‚Handy‘, meaning a mobile?

 

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

 

False friends between German and English are a lot of fun because of the shared Germanic roots. My favourite is "gift", originally meaning "that which is given", taking only a positive sense in English, but the negative sense in German so that German Gift means "poison" in English.

But in this case I'm pretty sure Coolio is just joking. The context makes it abundantly obvious that "Das Boot" means "the boat".

[The Panda]

 

 

"I hate the British! You are defeated but you have no shame. You are stubborn but you have no pride. You endure but you have no courage. I hate the British!"

 

Historical Setting: World War 2, Japanese Prisoner of War Camp and Construction of Burma Railway

 

Source from the Period

 

""The victim, an air force captain, was being searched by a three-star private. Standing by was a Jap commissioned officer, hand on sword hilt. These men were nothing like the toothy, bespectacled runts whose photographs are familiar to most newspaper readers. They were cruel of face, stalwart, and tall. 'The private a little squirt, was going through the captain's pockets. All at once he stopped and sucked in his breath with .a hissing sound. He had found some Jap yen.'
 
'He held these out, ducking his head and sucking in his breath to attract notice. The big Jap looked at the money. Without a word he grabbed the captain by the shoulder and shoved him down to his knees.  He pulled the sword out of the scabbard and raised it high over his head, holding it with both hands. The private skipped to one side.'  'Before we could grasp what was happening, the black-faced giant had swung his sword. I remember how the sun flashed on it. There was a swish and a kind of chopping thud, like a cleaver going through beef'. 'The captain's head seemed to jump off his 'shoulders. It hit the ground in front of him and went rolling crazily from side to side between the lines of prisoners.'  'The body fell forward. I have seen wounds, but never such a gush of. blood as this. The heart continued to pump for a few seconds and at each beat there was another great spurt of blood. The white dust around our feet was turned into crimson mud. I saw the hands were opening and closing spasmodically. Then I looked away.'  'When I looked again the big Jap had put up his sword and was strolling off. The runt who had found the yen was putting them into his pocket. He helped himself to the captain's possessions.'  This was the first murder. . ."

 

"The hours dragged by and, as we knew they must. The drop-outs began. It seemed that a great many of the prisoners reached the end of their endurance at about the same time. They went down by twos and threes. Usually, they made an effort to rise. I never can forget their groans and strangled breathing as they tried to get up. Some succeeded. Others lay lifelessly where they had fallen.
   I observed that the Jap guards paid no attention to these. I wondered why. The explanation wasn't long in coming. There was a sharp crackle of pistol and rifle fire behind us.  Skulking along, a hundred yards behind our contingent, came a 'clean-up squad' of murdering Jap buzzards. Their helpless victims, sprawled darkly against the white, of the road, were easy targets.  As members of the murder squad stooped over each huddled form, there would be an orange 'flash in the darkness and a sharp report. The bodies were left where they lay, that other prisoners coming behind us might see them.  Our Japanese guards enjoyed the spectacle in silence for a time. Eventually, one of them who spoke English felt he should add a little spice to the entertainment.  'Sleepee?' he asked. 'You want sleep? Just lie down on road. You get good long sleep!'  On through the night we were followed by orange flashes and thudding sounds.""

- The Bataan Death March, Dyess, William E., The Dyess Story (1943)

 

Historical Context

 

"In December 1941, the Japanese Army launched an offensive against the European colonial territories of south-east Asia. In their swift advance through the Malayan peninsula, the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos, and then into Burma, Japanese forces captured more than 200,000 Commonwealth, Dutch and American servicemen.  By mid-1942, Japanese troops in Burma relied on increasingly vulnerable seaborne supplies. With Commonwealth forces regrouping on the Indian-Burmese border, the Japanese began to build a 250-mile rail link between Thailand and Burma which would enable them to supply their armies by land. It was constructed by thousands of prisoners of war, along with sometimes contracted but usually coerced labourers from Burma, Thailand, Malaya and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

 

It was built in hazardous terrain, an inhospitable climate and with a punishing timetable. At the height of activity in mid-1943, more than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war – predominantly British, Australian, Dutch and American – worked on the line, alongside some 200,000 Asian labourers, known as rōmusha.  Using no more than primitive tools and human endeavour, they raised embankments, hacked cuttings through rock and built bridges from forest materials. Throughout the construction, extreme demands were made on weakened men in a merciless routine. They suffered from malnutrition, disease, mistreatment and violence at the hands of their captors.

 

Completion was originally scheduled for the end of 1943, but in February of that year the Japanese Imperial Headquarters brought the deadline forward by four months. This began what became known as the ‘speedo’ period, when labourers were forced to work around the clock through the monsoon season and the cholera epidemics which ensued. Working in a remote and difficult environment with appalling conditions and primitive medical facilities, the labourers suffered greatly.  In all, more than 12,000 prisoners of war are known to have lost their lives. As many as 92,000 rōmusha are thought to have died. By the time the first locomotive travelled the length of the track in October 1943, it is estimated that one in three of those working on its construction had perished."

- PRISONERS OF WAR AND THE BURMA RAILWAY

Common Wealth War Graves Comission

 

Historical Accuracy

 

"Although h­ailed as a fascinating portrayal of the ethical dilemmas facing Allied POWs held captive by the Japanese in World War II, "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957) was seen as a slap in the face to one esteemed, real-life British officer.  The movie centers around the character of British commander Col. Nicholson, a role that earned actor Alec Guinness a Best Actor Oscar. Nicholson arrives in a Japanese POW camp, where the Japanese are forcing the men to build a bridge that will be instrumental in their military tactics. As the highest-ranking Allied officer, Nicholson takes charge of the operation. Much to the surprise of his fellow officers and to the delight of the Japanese commander, Nicholson seeks to improve his men's morale by forcing them to build a solid, well-constructed bridge. Not until the dramatic end does the obsessive Nicholson recognize the folly of assisting the enemy in war and destroy the bridge. 

 

 Although his name wasn't Nicholson, Lt. Col. Philip Toosey was the senior British officer who commanded operations for building the Thai-Burma Railway, the inspiration for the movie. Those who knew the real story objected that it tainted Toosey's honorable reputation. Toosey's obsession was not building the bridge, but rather keeping his men alive. His admirers claim he did the best he could to keep his men safe while not giving aid to the enemy."

- Jane McGrath

 

 

The Film Itself

 

The Story

 

"During WW II, allied POWs in a Japanese internment camp are ordered to build a bridge to accommodate the Burma-Siam railway. Their instinct is to sabotage the bridge, but under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson they're persuaded the bridge should be built to help morale, spirit. At first, the prisoners admire Nicholson when he bravely endures torture rather than compromise his principles for the benefit of Japanese Commandant Colonel Saito, but soon they realise it's a monument to Nicholson, himself, as well as a form of collaboration with the enemy. "

 

Critic Review

 

"“The Bridge on the River Kwai” is a gripping drama, expertly put together and handled with skill in all departments. Its potency stems only partly from the boxoffice draw of William Holden and, to a lesser degree, Alec Guinness. What elevates “Kwai” to the rank of an artistic and financial triumph for producer Sam Spiegel is the engrossing entertainment it purveys, including some scenes which will be listed as among the best of film memorabilia.

 

From a technical standpoint, it reflects the care and competence that went into the $3 million-plus venture, filmed against the exotic background of the steaming jungles and mountains of Ceylon [repping Burma]. It’s a long picture–161 minutes of footage and without he-she angles. A story of the futility of war in general, the underlying message is never permitted to impede. The picture is loaded, but with women to be heard from.

 

Pierre Boulle scripted from his own novel, changing minor story points here and there to make better use of the cinematic medium. It is an excellent job of screenwriting (particularly since it marked Boulle’s debut in the medium), bristling with dialog that makes the characters absorbingly real and understandable. Director David Lean picked up where the script left off, guiding his performers through a series of fine portrayals. It is a superior job with fullest use of the background."

- Mike Kaplan, Variety

 

BOT User Opinion

 

"Lean on me. A+. My favorie Lean alongside Brief Encounter." - @JohnnyGossamer

 

Factoids

 

The Bridge on the River Kwai was directed by David Lean.  It received 54 points and 11 votes.

 

 

 

Countries Represented: Algeria (1), Austria (2), Belarus (1), Brazil (1), Burma (1), England (1), France (2), Germany (2), Israel (2), Korea (1), The Ocean (2), Poland (1), Japan (3), Russia (1), Scotland (1), Spain (1), United States (17), Vietnam (1)

 

Time Periods Represented: 16th Century (1), 17th Century (2), 18th Century (2), 19th Century (5), 1920s (2), 1930s (3), 1950s (2), 1960s (7), 1990s (1), 21st Century (2), Classical Period (2), Middle Ages (2), World War 1/1910s (2), World War 2/1940s (8)

 

Cross Section of Times and Countries: 18th Century - Austria (1), 18th Century - United States (1), 19th Century - The Ocean (1), 19th Century - United States (4), 21st Century - United States (2), 1910s-1920s - Russia (1), 1920s - United States (1), 1930s - Germany (1), 1930s - Korea (1), 1930s - United States (1), 1950s - Algeria (1), 1950s - United States (1), 1960s - Brazil (1), 1960s - United States (5), 1960s - Vietnam (1), 1990s - United States (1), Classical Period - Israel (2), Middle Ages - England (1), Middle Ages - Scotland (1), Sengoku Period - Japan (1), Tokugawa Shogunate - Japan (2), World War 1 - France (2), World War 2/1940s - Belarus (1), World War 2 - Burma (1), World War 2/1940s - Germany (1), World War 2 - The Ocean (1), World War 2/1940s - Poland (1), World War 2/1940s - Spain (1), World War 2 - Austria (1), World War 2 - United States (1)

 

Directors Represented: Park Chan-Wook (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1), Kevin Costner (1), Andrew Dominik (1), Stanley Donen (1), David Fincher (2), John Ford (1), Milos Forman (1), Bob Fosse (1), Mel Gibson (1), Anthoney Harvey (1), Terry Jones (1), Philip Kaufman (1), Gene Kelley (1), Elem Klimov (1), Masaki Kobayashi (1), Stanley Kramer (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), David Lean (2), Michael Mann (1), Penny Marshall (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Adam McKay (1), Steve McQueen (1), Theodore Melfi (1), Sam Mendes (1), Lewis Milestone (1), Wolfgang Peterson (1), Gillo Pontecorvo (1), Martin Scorsese (2), Steven Spielberg (2), Oliver Stone (2), John Sturges (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Wise (1), William Wyler (1)

 

Decades Represented: 30s (1), 40s (1), 50s (3), 60s (7), 70s (3), 80s (6), 90s (5), 00s (6), 10s (9)

 

 

 

[The Panda]

 

 

"This is the nature of war: By protecting others, you save yourselves. If you only think of yourself, you'll only destroy yourself."

 

Historical Setting: 1586, Feudal Japan

 

Source from the Period

 

"Decisions made in haste before your
feelings are calm can only lead to remorse.
Close your eyes and reflect carefully when
you have a difficult decision to make.
Always be calm and at one with nature and
yourself.

Mental bearing (calmness), not skill, is the
sign of a matured samurai. A Samurai
therefore should neither be pompous nor
arrogant.

You must use careful consideration when
choosing the men who will serve you. If
men under your orders, however loyal, are
not intelligent, you must not trust them with
important duties, but rely upon experienced
older men.

In dealing with subordinates do not make
an obvious distinction between good and
bad. Use the same kind of language; give
the same kind of treatment to all, and thus
you will get the best out of the worst.
When human life is at stake you must give
most careful thought to your action. Never
kill or wound a man in anger, however great
the provocation. 

 

Remember that the key to discipline is fair
treatment in rewards and in punishments.
But make allowance for minor misdeeds in
young soldiers and others, if their conduct
is usually good.

Do not be careless or negligent in the
presence of subordinates, especially of
older men. Thus do not spit or snuffle or
engage in rude behavior. This only gives
the impression that you do not care for their
good opinion. Preserve your dignity. If you
behave rudely, they will tell their families
and gossip will spread.

You must treat all servants with proper
consideration and generosity, not only your
own people but also those of your parents
and other superiors. If you don’t, they will
scorn you and say to one another: “He
thinks he is very important, but he doesn’t
amount to much.”

If the enemy thinks of the mountains, attack
like the sea; and if he thinks of the sea,
attack like the mountains.
When accusations are brought to you,
always remember that there must be
another side to the question. Do not merely
indulge in anger. To give fair decision is the
most important thing not only in
commanding soldiers but also in governing
a country."

-  "A Samurai Instructs His Son" by Hojo Shigetoki

1247 CE

 

Historical Context

 

"The bushido or shido, meaning the 'way of the warrior,' is the famous warrior code of the samurai, but it was only compiled in the late 17th century CE by the scholar Yamago Soko (1622-1685 CE), by which time the samurai were no longer active militarily but functioned more as moral guides and advisors. It is, therefore, difficult to ascertain the level of chivalry samurai actually practised throughout their history. It would seem likely that, just as any warrior in any other culture, pragmatism would have ruled the day when fighting actually took place. There was, undoubtedly, much courage and martial expertise displayed by samurai, but promises and truces were frequently violated, villages were burned, and the defeated slaughtered, as honour came from victory and nowhere else. Samurai were, above all, motivated by financial gain and advancing their social position, hence the unsavoury obsession with collecting the severed heads of their victims. It is also true that despite the chivalrous reputation of warriors superimposed in later times on Japanese medieval history, especially in terms of austerity, loyalty and self-discipline, it was not at all uncommon for mass defections to occur during battles, including generals. At the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 CE, for example, no fewer than five generals and their armies switched sides mid-battle.

 

Samurai were not always very noble when it came to the peasantry either. The warriors became infamous amongst later European visitors for beheading total strangers on the roadside just to test their swords were still sharp, a nasty habit known a tsujigiri or ‘cutting down at the crossroads.’ Still, the samurai did have the law on their side as they had been specifically granted the right by the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868 CE) to kill anyone of lower rank than themselves if they considered that person to be acting rudely - loosely defined as ‘acting in an unexpected manner.’  

 

Many heroes in Japanese mythology are samurai warriors and none is more famous than the legendary Yoshitsune (1159-1189 CE). Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune, born Ushiwakamaru, was the younger brother of the shogun and a successful general in the Gempei War (1180-1185 CE). His legendary status springs from his standing as the epitome of the loyal, honourable, and unflappable warrior. He was taught fencing as a youth, rid the countryside of several robbers, and compelled the warrior-monk Benkei to become his faithful servant. Winning many battles, notably leading a cavalry charge at Ichinotani and leaping a boat bridge at Danno-Ura, he eventually aroused his brother's jealousy. Yoshitsune, consequently, fled to northern Japan, only passing the border controls when Benkei beat him in pretence that Yoshitsune was a hapless servant. There was to be no happy end for the hero, though, for the shogun eventually found and blockaded Yoshitsune in a castle which was then burnt to the ground. In some versions of the myth, Yoshitsune escaped to become the Mongol prince Temujin, later to be known as Genghis Khan. The story of Yoshitsune became a staple theme of Kabuki and Noh theatre."

- Mark Cartwright, Samurai

Ancient History Encyclopedia

 

Historical Accuracy

 

"Kurosawa, himself descended from a samurai clan, makes no bones about this dark side of the samurai tradition. And there’s an implicit side-glance at more recent history, the period preceding and during the Second World War, when Japan’s militaristic government perpetrated a still crueler distortion of the samurai code of Bushido (the way of the warrior). But as a counterbalance, Kurosawa offers the selfless and altruistic figure of Kambei, the leader of the seven, who personifies the Bushido code at its purest and most Zen-based.

 

We’re given the measure of Kambei in his very first scene, when he has his head shaved to impersonate a priest, in order to rescue a kidnapped child. The amazement and horror of the onlookers convey the enormity of what he’s doing: he’s cutting off his own topknot, a key signifier of his samurai status. (In Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri, from 1962, the hero defeats a whole band of samurai sent against him and, rather than kill them, merely cuts off their topknots. The disgrace of this loss, he knows, will drive them to kill themselves.) But to Kambei, such an outward display is unimportant compared with his duty as a samurai to help the helpless.With Seven Samurai, Kurosawa also set out to debunk some of the more inflated myths that had attached themselves to the samurai. In jidai-geki films—especially those made under the military government—samurai had become kamikaze warriors, motivated solely by honor and blind loyalty, fighting doggedly to the death rather than admit defeat. Kurosawa undermines such false heroics in the exchange between Kambei and his old friend Shichiroji, who last he heard was on the losing side in a great battle. When Kambei asks him how he escaped, his friend replies, “I hid among the grasses in the moat until dark,” and the two men laugh. Later, Shichiroji asks another of the samurai, Heihachi, how he deals with his opponents. “There’s no cutting me off when I start cutting, so I make it a point to run away first,” responds Heihachi. “A most excellent approach,” says Shichiroji approvingly.

 

Though the warriors in Seven Samurai fight valiantly and represent the highest ideals of the samurai code, Kurosawa never presents them as enviable figures. “I may have seen my share of battle, but always on the losing side,” says Kambei. “That about sums me up.” And in the final scene, with the bandits routed and killed, the three surviving samurai watch the peasants joyfully singing as they plant their rice. “In the end, we’ve lost this battle too,” Kambei muses. “I mean, the victory belongs to those peasants, not to us.”  At the end of the strife-torn sixteenth century, soon after the period of Seven Samurai, the Tokugawa clan gained power and reestablished shogunate rule over the whole of Japan—a rule that endured for the next two hundred and fifty years. Foreigners were expelled; Japan became a closed country, cut off from the outside world. In many ways, it was an intolerant, rigid society, with little room for dissent. But trade and the arts flourished—and given the turbulence and slaughter of the preceding period, it’s understandable that most Japanese would have preferred the “great peace” of the Tokugawa shogunate."

- A Time of Honor:Seven Samurai and Sixteenth-Century Japan

Philip Kemp, The Criterion Collection

 

 

The Film Itself

 

The Story

 

"A veteran samurai, who has fallen on hard times, answers a village's request for protection from bandits. He gathers 6 other samurai to help him, and they teach the townspeople how to defend themselves, and they supply the samurai with three small meals a day. The film culminates in a giant battle when 40 bandits attack the village."

 

Critic Review

 

"Kurosawa followed Seven Samurai with other chambara pictures, including Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962), but his popularity in the West seemed to work against him in his native land, where there was a certain amount of resentment and suspicion; if Westerners found Kurosawa’s films so appealing, perhaps this meant they weren’t as authentically Japanese as quieter offerings by Mizoguchi or Ozu. Amid the artistic turbulence of the new waves and countercultures of the mid-1960s, Kurosawa’s last two films for the Toho Company flopped, and his unwillingness to downgrade from epic productions to smaller projects shut him out in the cold. In 1971 he attempted suicide, and his next three projects – Dersu Uzala (1975), Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985) – got off the ground only thanks to support from admirers in the USSR, the US and France.

 

 

But just as Kurosawa’s samurai movies were influenced by Hollywood westerns, they in their turn have been hugely influential on cinema in the West. The plot of Seven Samurai has been recycled not just in The Magnificent Seven – Hollywood made two versions, one in 1960, the other in 2016 – but in science fiction (Battle Beyond the Stars and Rogue One) and animation (A Bug's Life). The Hidden Fortress (1958) was an influence on Star Wars, and Yojimbo (itself a reworking of Dashiell Hammett’s novel Red Harvest) was rehashed by Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars, which kick-started the spaghetti western craze.

 

That unparalleled influence is a sign that Seven Samurai’s appeal lies in emotions and mythologies not only specific to feudal Japan, but which strike a universal chord. Kurosawa may, to some extent, be a prophet without honour in his own country. But, after more than six decades, his greatest film remains the gold standard for action movies that are both exciting and coherent. Its epic sweep and fierce humanity will continue to move and thrill audiences around the world for generations to come."

- "Why is Seven Samurai so good?" Anne Bilson, The BBC

 

BOT User

 

"It may be apocryphal, but I remember hearing that this is the movie where Kurosawa "invented" the now-classic shot where a bunch of riders/enemies/whoever appear on horseback on the horizon of a hill or mountain. It had never been done before.

 

He's so brilliant with his framing, but so totally pragmatic too. There's a famous story that Sidney Lumet tells: "I once asked Akira Kurosawa why he had chosen to frame a shot in Ran in a particular way. His answer was that if he he’d panned the camera one inch to the left, the Sony factory would be sitting there exposed, and if he he’d panned an inch to the right, we would see the airport."

 

C'mon, that's just awesome."

- @Plain Old Tele

 

Factoids

 

Seven Samurai was directed by Akira Kurosawa.  It received 55 points and 7 votes.

 

 

Countries Represented: Algeria (1), Austria (2), Belarus (1), Brazil (1), Burma (1), England (1), France (2), Germany (2), Israel (2), Korea (1), The Ocean (2), Poland (1), Japan (4), Russia (1), Scotland (1), Spain (1), United States (17), Vietnam (1)

 

Time Periods Represented: 16th Century (2), 17th Century (2), 18th Century (2), 19th Century (5), 1920s (2), 1930s (3), 1950s (2), 1960s (7), 1990s (1), 21st Century (2), Classical Period (2), Middle Ages (2), World War 1/1910s (2), World War 2/1940s (8)

 

Cross Section of Times and Countries: 18th Century - Austria (1), 18th Century - United States (1), 19th Century - The Ocean (1), 19th Century - United States (4), 21st Century - United States (2), 1910s-1920s - Russia (1), 1920s - United States (1), 1930s - Germany (1), 1930s - Korea (1), 1930s - United States (1), 1950s - Algeria (1), 1950s - United States (1), 1960s - Brazil (1), 1960s - United States (5), 1960s - Vietnam (1), 1990s - United States (1), Classical Period - Israel (2), Middle Ages - England (1), Middle Ages - Scotland (1), Sengoku Period - Japan (2), Tokugawa Shogunate - Japan (2), World War 1 - France (2), World War 2/1940s - Belarus (1), World War 2 - Burma (1), World War 2/1940s - Germany (1), World War 2 - The Ocean (1), World War 2/1940s - Poland (1), World War 2/1940s - Spain (1), World War 2 - Austria (1), World War 2 - United States (1)

 

Directors Represented: Park Chan-Wook (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1), Kevin Costner (1), Andrew Dominik (1), Stanley Donen (1), David Fincher (2), John Ford (1), Milos Forman (1), Bob Fosse (1), Mel Gibson (1), Anthoney Harvey (1), Terry Jones (1), Philip Kaufman (1), Gene Kelley (1), Elem Klimov (1), Masaki Kobayashi (1), Stanley Kramer (1), Akira Kurosawa (2), David Lean (2), Michael Mann (1), Penny Marshall (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Adam McKay (1), Steve McQueen (1), Theodore Melfi (1), Sam Mendes (1), Lewis Milestone (1), Wolfgang Peterson (1), Gillo Pontecorvo (1), Martin Scorsese (2), Steven Spielberg (2), Oliver Stone (2), John Sturges (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Wise (1), William Wyler (1)

 

Decades Represented: 30s (1), 40s (1), 50s (4), 60s (7), 70s (3), 80s (6), 90s (5), 00s (6), 10s (9)

 

 

 

[The Panda]

 

 

"I'll never let go, Jack. I'll never let go. I promise.

 

*Rose proceeds to in fact cruelly let Jack go and die a cruel death of drowning and hypothermia*"

 

Historical Setting: 1912, The Titanic

 

Source from the Period

 

"We could hardly believe that in two more days we would be landing in America. Originally, my husband and I planned on making the trip on board the Mauretania, but we decided to wait a few months so we could make the crossing aboard the luxury liner Titanic. Married just a few months, Pekko and I decided to leave Finland and start a new life in America. Although we were booked as third class, we still enjoyed many “extras” on board and had quite a time in our little group. After a couple of days at sea we settled into a routine: attending church services after breakfast, strolling the decks, and during the evening playing games in the third-class general room.  We would leave the game room very late in the evening, and the night of April 14th was no exception. Just after we returned to our cabin and settled in, Pekko reached to turn out the light when we heard a scraping sound and felt the ship shudder. A few moments later the throb of the engines stopped. Pekko jumped out of bed, slipped into his clothes, and said, “I’m going to see what has happened.” Not thinking too much of all this, I dozed off. But after an hour or so, the murmuring of other passengers in the hall awakened me. I noticed Pekko was still gone, and when I tried to step out of the bed, the cabin was tilted at an angle.

 

Soon there was a hard and very fast knock at the door, and one of my friends from Finland dashed in to say the ship had struck something and was sinking. “Where is Pekko?” she asked. “He went to see why the ship had stopped. I don’t know where he is now.” “How did he get out of the passageway?” she continued. “All the doors are locked!” I was confused; I didn’t know what to do next. After a few moments I grabbed my purse and life jacket and ran out to the passageway. The door was locked! All of the doors were locked.    Finally a ship’s steward came and gathered a small group of us together and guided us, “Come, there is another way to get to the upper deck.” On the upper deck, it was rather quiet — almost eerie. The deck on the ship’s bow was already under water, and the loud sound of the steam escaping from the funnels had settled down. The lifeboats were guarded by the ship’s officers standing in semicircles around each one. Soon I was motioned aboard a lifeboat, but I still was scanning the listing deck looking for my husband.

 

We rowed away quickly, watching our ship slide beneath the surface of the water. The screams of those in the water were horrible — I remember calling over and over, “Pekko, Pekko, I am here; come this way.” It was cold on the lifeboat, and I wasn’t wearing warm clothes. I didn’t know if I was falling asleep or freezing to death, but I drifted into unconsciousness.

Soon after, it was daylight, and we could see a ship in the distance — we would be rescued…and made warm. Once aboard the Carpathia, the passengers and crew did their best to console us. We were given clothes, food, and hot coffee. But with all we were given, I was still lacking. I slowly realized the last words I might ever hear from my husband were, “I’m going to see what has happened.” I remember standing at the railing for hours, looking out to the open sea and hoping upon hope that I would discover just one more lifeboat."

- Elin Hakkarainen, From “Going Down with the Titanic in Third Class,” Yankee Magazine, September 1987.

 

Historical Context

 

"As Dorothy Gibson stood on the deck of the Carpathia, the night was so black that she could hardly make out the skyline of New York. Unknown to her, thousands of people had come out that rainy night to witness the arrival of the Carpathia. Dorothy “ran crying down the ramp” into the arms of her stepfather, soon followed by her mother. Leonard Gibson ushered his stepdaughter and wife through the crowd and into a taxi and whisked them off to a New York restaurant. But there was only one thing on Dorothy’s mind—her lover, Brulatour. She realized that it would have been inappropriate for him to meet her at the pier—this would have given rise to scandal—but she desperately needed to see him. After a couple of hours, she drove to the hotel where she had arranged to meet him.  That night Brulatour presented her with an engagement ring—a cluster of diamonds worth $1,000—and a plan: to make a dramatic one-reel film of her survival. Soon, he said, she would not only be his wife, but she would be more famous than ever before. The loss of the Titanic would make both things possible.

 

The public’s appetite for information and details—accounts of suffering, bravery, self-sacrifice and selfishness—seemed insatiable, and Brulatour at first took advantage of it by employing the relatively new medium of newsreel. His footage of the docking of the Carpathia—which was spliced together with scenes of Capt. Edward J. Smith, who had been lost in the disaster, walking on the bridge of the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic, and shots of icebergs from the area where the liner sank, together with images of the launching of the liner—premiered in East Coast theaters on April 22. Not only was Brulatour’s Animated Weekly newsreel “the first on the scene with specially chartered tugboats and an extra relay of cameramen,” according to Billboard magazine, but it also showed that “the motion picture may fairly equal the press in bringing out a timely subject and one of startling interest to the public at large.”  Brulatour hyped the newsreel as “the most famous film in the whole world,” and so it proved, packing theaters across America over the following weeks. The pioneering movie mogul organized a private screening for Guglielmo Marconi—the inventor of the wireless technology that had played a central part in the Titanic story—and gave a copy of the film to President William Howard Taft, whose close friend Maj. Archie Butt had died in the sinking. Spurred on by the success of his Animated Weekly feature, Brulatour decided to go ahead with a silent film based on the disaster, starring his lover, authentic Titanic survivor Dorothy Gibson.

 

Within a few days of her arrival in New York, Dorothy had sketched out a rough outline for a story. She would play Miss Dorothy, a young woman traveling in Europe who is due to return to America on the Titanic to marry her sweetheart, Ensign Jack, in service with the U.S. Navy.  Shooting began almost immediately at the Fort Lee studio and on location on board a derelict freighter that lay in New York Harbor. She was clad in the same outfit she had worn the night she had escaped the sinking ship—a white silk evening dress, a sweater, an overcoat and black pumps.The verisimilitude of the experience was overwhelming. This wasn’t so much acting, in its conventional form at least, as replaying. Dorothy drew on her memory and shaped it into a reconstruction.  When the film was released, on May 16, 1912, just a month after the sinking, it was celebrated for its technical realism and emotional power. “The startling story of the world’s greatest sea disaster is the sensation of the country,” stated the Moving Picture News. “Miss Dorothy Gibson, a heroine of the shipwreck and one of the most talked-of survivors, tells in this motion picture masterpiece of the enthralling tragedy among the icebergs.” (The actual film no longer survives.)"

- Andrew Wilson, The Smithsonian Magazine

 

Historical Accuracy

 

"It should be noted right off the bat that, ultimately, only so much is known about what exactly happened that night. Since most of the ship's crew and passengers unfortunately sunk to their demise on that cold, devastating night, there are only a few confirmed details about what exactly happened. Meaning it was going to be difficult for the movie adaptation to convey accuracy regarding what it felt like to be on that terrible sea voyage. There are a lot of theories and an endless stream of speculation to be made about the trip, but we'll try to stick to the fact whenever we can in here. But this should be noted at the top.  It should also be noted early that Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) weren't, in fact, actual passengers on the Titanic. Instead, they were characters created by James Cameron to connect us to the real-life story, in order to get a passionate, emotional connection to this historical account. There was no steamy love affair between them, nor was there the love triangle involving Billy Zane's vindictive supporting character. It was a fabrication to give us something that will let us know what it was like to be on this ship and to suffer its grave consequences.

 

While the main characters in Titanic were concocted by the filmmaker, James Cameron's attention to accuracy can definitely be seen in some of the prominent supporting characters, many of whom follow what we know about these perished people's shortened lives. For instance, Thomas Andrews (Victor Garber), i.e. the Chief Designer for the Titanic, is seen in the First Class smoking room staring at a painting of the Titanic on the wall. By many accounts, this is accurate to how he died on the ship. Similarly, Molly Brown (Kathy Bates) did help people board lifeboats, worked to keep them calm and tried to get the lifeboats to retrieve as many passengers as possible as the historic ship kept plunging deeper into the dark recesses of the sea.  There is also a scene in Titanic where an elderly couple hold each other's hands on their beds and cry while their room fills with water. This is based on a real-life couple, Isidor Straus (i.e. the owner of Macy's) and Ida Straus, who, according to reports, refused special treatment. His wife did not want to leave him, so they went to their room together, which was their final resting place. It's a touching, quietly humane detail that James Cameron rightfully thought would add emotional tenderness to his gigantic cinematic experience. While we're primarily focused on the tale of Jack and Rose as the ship sinks into the bottom of the sea, Cameron's added touches in these moving moments help bring a fine sense of authenticity.

 

While James Cameron strived to tell a realistic account, there are some details that appear to be based more on theories pertaining to the Titanic than anything that can be confirmed as accurate and/or official. For instance, there's a noteworthy sequence where many of the third-class passengers are barricaded against their will below the deck, preventing them from reaching the lifeboats and upper deck, in a stark bit of socioeconomic commentary. However, there's very little evidence to support this claim — at least, according to historian Richard Howells (as reported by The Culture Trip). Howells claims that these gates seen in the blockbuster weren't meant for shipwreck necessarily, but rather the prevention of diseases from spreading above.  Additionally, while there were class tensions, it was highly exaggerated when James Cameron depicts a scene where passengers are shot and killed while trying not to lose their luggage during the ship's sinking. Additionally, when it came to depicting the truth or picking something more emotionally impactful, James Cameron opted for something that plucked at the viewer's heartstrings rather than stayed true to how events had actually unfolded."

- Will Ashton, Cinemablend

 

 

The Film Itself

 

The Story

 

"84 years later, a 100 year-old woman named Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story to her granddaughter Lizzy Calvert, Brock Lovett, Lewis Bodine, Bobby Buell and Anatoly Mikailavich on the Keldysh about her life set in April 10th 1912, on a ship called Titanic when young Rose boards the departing ship with the upper-class passengers and her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater, and her fiancé, Caledon Hockley. Meanwhile, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson and his best friend Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets to the ship in a game. And she explains the whole story from departure until the death of Titanic on its first and last voyage April 15th, 1912 at 2:20 in the morning."

 

Critic Opinion

 

"In each of his previous outings, Cameron has pushed the special effects envelope. In Aliens, he cloned H.R. Giger's creation dozens of times, fashioning an army of nightmarish monsters. In The Abyss, he took us deep under the sea to greet a band of benevolent space travelers. In T2, he introduced the morphing terminator (perfecting an effects process that was pioneered in The Abyss). And in True Lies, he used digital technology to choreograph an in-air battle. Now, in Titanic, Cameron's flawless re-creation of the legendary ship has blurred the line between reality and illusion to such a degree that we can't be sure what's real and what isn't. To make this movie, it's as if Cameron built an all-new Titanic, let it sail, then sunk it.  Of course, special effects alone don't make for a successful film, and Titanic would have been nothing more than an expensive piece of eye candy without a gripping story featuring interesting characters. In his previous outings, Cameron has always placed people above the technological marvels that surround them. Unlike film makers such as Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, Cameron has used visual effects to serve his plot, not the other way around. That hasn't changed with Titanic. The picture's spectacle is the ship's sinking, but its core is the affair between a pair of mismatched, star-crossed lovers.

 

Titanic is a romance, an adventure, and a thriller all rolled into one. It contains moments of exuberance, humor, pathos, and tragedy. In their own way, the characters are all larger-than- life, but they're human enough (with all of the attendant frailties) to capture our sympathy. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Titanic is that, even though Cameron carefully recreates the death of the ship in all of its terrible grandeur, the event never eclipses the protagonists. To the end, we never cease caring about Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio).

 

Titanic sank during the early morning hours of April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic, killing 1500 of the 2200 on board. The movie does not begin in 1912, however -- instead, it opens in modern times, with a salvage expedition intent on recovering some of the ship's long-buried treasure. The expedition is led by Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), a fortune hunter who is searching for the mythical "Heart of the Ocean", a majestic 56 karat diamond which reputedly went down with the ship. After seeing a TV report about the salvage mission, a 101-year old woman (Gloria Stuart) contacts Brock with information regarding the jewel. She identifies herself as Rose DeWitt Bukater, a survivor of the tragedy. Brock has her flown out to his ship. Once there, she tells him her version of the story of Titanic's ill-fated voyage."

- James Berardinelli, ReelViews

 

BOT User Opinion

 

"This film is a masterful blend of romance, drama, and disaster thriller elements. While I do have to admit to finding the romance the weakest part of the movie (mainly Rose's complete 180 on Jack before the "Flying" scene), there are still some really great character moments within that make the cheesiness forgivable, such as the dinner scene and the dialogue between Rose and her mother about their finances that hints at a more multidimensional character. And with a film with such a grim outcome for most of the characters, it's impressive how many moments of sheer exuberance Cameron is able to fit in.  And of course all the technical/visual aspects hold up very well. The 3D really shines during the disaster sequences with the water rushing in. I caught myself feeling a chill occasionally."

- @tribefan695

 

Factoids

 

Titanic was directed by James Cameron.  It received 61 points and 6 votes.

 

 

 

Countries Represented: Algeria (1), Austria (2), Belarus (1), Brazil (1), Burma (1), England (1), France (2), Germany (2), Israel (2), Korea (1), The Ocean (3), Poland (1), Japan (4), Russia (1), Scotland (1), Spain (1), United States (17), Vietnam (1)

 

Time Periods Represented: 16th Century (2), 17th Century (2), 18th Century (2), 19th Century (5), 1920s (2), 1930s (3), 1950s (2), 1960s (7), 1990s (1), 21st Century (2), Classical Period (2), Middle Ages (2), World War 1/1910s (3), World War 2/1940s (8)

 

Cross Section of Times and Countries: 18th Century - Austria (1), 18th Century - United States (1), 19th Century - The Ocean (1), 19th Century - United States (4), 21st Century - United States (2), 1910s - The Ocean (1), 1910s-1920s - Russia (1), 1920s - United States (1), 1930s - Germany (1), 1930s - Korea (1), 1930s - United States (1), 1950s - Algeria (1), 1950s - United States (1), 1960s - Brazil (1), 1960s - United States (5), 1960s - Vietnam (1), 1990s - United States (1), Classical Period - Israel (2), Middle Ages - England (1), Middle Ages - Scotland (1), Sengoku Period - Japan (2), Tokugawa Shogunate - Japan (2), World War 1 - France (2), World War 2/1940s - Belarus (1), World War 2 - Burma (1), World War 2/1940s - Germany (1), World War 2 - The Ocean (1), World War 2/1940s - Poland (1), World War 2/1940s - Spain (1), World War 2 - Austria (1), World War 2 - United States (1)

 

Directors Represented: James Cameron (1), Park Chan-Wook (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1), Kevin Costner (1), Andrew Dominik (1), Stanley Donen (1), David Fincher (2), John Ford (1), Milos Forman (1), Bob Fosse (1), Mel Gibson (1), Anthoney Harvey (1), Terry Jones (1), Philip Kaufman (1), Gene Kelley (1), Elem Klimov (1), Masaki Kobayashi (1), Stanley Kramer (1), Akira Kurosawa (2), David Lean (2), Michael Mann (1), Penny Marshall (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Adam McKay (1), Steve McQueen (1), Theodore Melfi (1), Sam Mendes (1), Lewis Milestone (1), Wolfgang Peterson (1), Gillo Pontecorvo (1), Martin Scorsese (2), Steven Spielberg (2), Oliver Stone (2), John Sturges (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Wise (1), William Wyler (1)

 

Decades Represented: 30s (1), 40s (1), 50s (4), 60s (7), 70s (3), 80s (6), 90s (6), 00s (6), 10s (9)

 

 

[The Panda]

We've had a lot of ocean movies, but will we finally get one that features, land, air and sea?

[Cap]

You left off the historic fact that while at the Titanic Museum in Halifax, James Cameron and his crew ate PCP laced lobstah chowder.

[Cap]

39 minutes ago, The Panda said:

We've had a lot of ocean movies, but will we finally get one that features, land, air and sea?

Avatar: the last Airbender being number one would certainly be a swerve.

[MrGamer]

.

Edited May 14, 2020 by MrGamer

[The Panda]

Just now, The Panda said:

We've had a lot of ocean movies, but will we finally get one that features, land, air and sea?

Not yet!  Just land!

 

 

 

"Are you not entertained?!"

 

Historical Setting: 2nd Century, Roman Empire

 

Source from the Period

 

"1. Most that he did was not characterized by anything noteworthy, but in dedicating the hunting theatre [The Amphiteatrum Flavium, later known as the Colosseum] and the baths that that bear his name he produced many remarkable spectacles. There was a battle between cranes and also between four elephants; animals both tame and wild were slain to the number of nine thousand; and women (not those of any prominence, however) took part in despatching them.

 

2. As for the men, several fought in single combat and several groups contended together both in infantry and naval battles. For Titus suddenly filled this same theatre with water and brought in horses and bulls and some other domesticated animals that had been taught to behave in the liquid element just as on land.

 

3. He also brought in people on ships, who engaged in a sea-fight there, impersonating the Corcyreans and Corinthians; and others gave a similar exhibition from outside the city in the grove of Gaius and Lucius, a place which Augustus had once excavated for this very purpose. There, too, on the first day, there was a gladiatorial exhibition and wild-beast hunt, the lake in front of the images having first been covered over with a platform of planks and wooden stands erected around it.

 

4. On the second day there was a horse-race, and on the third day a naval battle between three thousand men, followed by an infantry battle. The "Athenians" conquered the "Syracusans" (these were the names the combatants used), made a landing on the islet [i.e., Ortygia] and assaulted and captured a wall that had been constructed around the monument. These were the spectacles that were offered, and they continued for a hundred days; but Titus also furnished some things that were of practical use to the people.

 

5. He would throw down into the theatre from aloft little wooden balls variously inscribed, one designating some article of food, another clothing, another a silver vessel or perhaps a gold one, or again horses, pack-animals, cattle or slaves. Those who seized them were to carry them to the dispensers of the bounty, from whom they would receive the article named."

- Dio's Roman History, v. 8

 

Historical Context

 

"Commodus was born in 161, the son of the popular and highly respected emperor Marcus Aurelius and his wife Faustina the Younger. He was the first emperor to be ‘born in the purple’, that is, during the reign of his father.  Commodus became co-ruler with his father in 177, when he was only 15 years old. The ancient Greek historian Herodian states that during his final illness Marcus Aurelius became worried that his youthful and pleasure-seeking son might ignore public affairs and descend into debauchery once he became sole ruler.  Marcus’ fears proved well-founded. Soon after his father died in 180 Commodus discontinued his father’s war against the Germanic tribes on the Empire’s northern borders, instead coming to terms with them; Commodus returned Rome to indulge in the pleasures of the city.  He soon faced the first attempt on his life, in 182. The conspirators included his sister, Annia Lucilla, as well as several senators, including Ummidius Quadratus, with whom Lucilla was said to be having an affair. Different sources give different reasons for the conspiracy: Herodian suggests Lucilla, who had once been married to Marcus’ co-emperor Lucius Verus, became jealous of the marks of honour and the precedence enjoyed by Commodus’ wife, Crispina.

 

But the Historia Augusta suggests that it was anger at Commodus misrule which provided the impetus. He is said to have insulted senators, given them positions below their dignity, given the rule of the provinces over to his favourites, and on a personal level to have engaged in scandalous behaviour. Whatever the cause, the assassination was botched, and Commodus had many of the conspirators executed, including (at a later date) Lucilla herself, and it was after this that his rule seems to have become even more unstable.  Sources such as Cassius Dio indicate that, just as his father seems to have predicted, Commodus avoided the running of the empire on a day-to-day basis and instead delegated this to a string of favourites whom he made his chief ministers.  These men, whether freedmen like Saoterus and later, the powerful Cleander, or Praetorian Prefects like Perennis, would rise to power, manage affairs to their own benefit, and then be cut down and replaced either through intrigue at the imperial court, or by Commodus himself as a means to appease a particular group when their deeds became more widely known.  The emperor was instead concerned with pleasure and displaying his own physical prowess by fighting as a gladiator in the arena or against wild animals during the many lavish and expensive public games he organized. He was also devoted to chariot racing, as Dio tells us.

 

Commodus also alienated public opinion by having a wide range of extraordinary honours voted to him, including renaming the legions, the months of the year and even Rome itself after himself or the virtues he believed he possessed. He even referred to himself as a Roman Hercules.  His misrule extended to murdering many prominent men and courtiers for a variety of reasons, both for minor personal sleights (real or imagined), or on false charges of conspiracy which fed his paranoia. Indeed, it was Marcia’s discovery of her name, and those of Eclectus and Laetus, on a list of intended victims that moved them to have the emperor murdered on 31 December, 192, at the age of 31. With him died the Antonine dynasty.  After his death, Publius Helvius Pertinax, the city prefect, became emperor but the transition was not smooth, and the Empire quickly slipped into a civil war which persisted until Septimius Severus succeeded in eliminating his rivals and attaining the throne."

- On this day in AD 192, the Roman emperor Commodus was murdered. Will Leveritt

University of Nottingham

 

Historical Accuracy

 

"Gladiator is the story of a Roman soldier who became a slave, trained as a gladiator, and rose to challenge the empire. Which is basically Spartacus, only Gladiator is set 250 years after the death of Spartacus. Russell Crowe channelled pure manliness for two and a half hours as Maximus, the gladiator of the title. The results included five Oscars, and greenlights all over the place for swords-and-sandals flicks like Troy, Alexander and 300.Audiences may not thank it for that, but eight years after its release Gladiator remains remarkably watchable, and hotly debated. Despite Scott's legion of on-set historians, there are several websites devoted to its many supposed flaws.

 

It's 180 AD in Germania, and the nearly dead Emperor Marcus Aurelius is watching his army lay waste to the barbarians. His fictional general, Maximus (Crowe), clunks on to the screen in armour and wolfskins, growling: "On my signal, unleash hell." There is a slight twang of Bondi beach to the accent, but then again everyone is speaking modern English. A moderately credible battle follows.  After the victory, Marcus Aurelius takes Maximus aside and offers to leave him the empire, disinheriting his nasty son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). Not completely unbelievable: some sources do suggest that Marcus Aurelius had doubts about his successor. The film's claim that he wanted instead to revive the republic and make Rome democratic is more 21st century than 2nd century.  Aside from various plot-facilitating errors (his reign of 12 years is elided into what seems like a couple of weeks), the main problem with Commodus is that he's nowhere near bad enough. The real Commodus's pastimes included herding women, snogging men, killing rare animals, cross-dressing, boozing, coprophagy, being afraid of hairdressers, feeding his guards poisoned figs, and forcing people to beat themselves to death with pinecones. Despite, or perhaps because of, all this, he was popular with the people and the army alike. Phoenix's Commodus is a lightweight, indulging in little more than mild incest and the occasional bout of sneering. And patricide. A reasonable allegation: Cassius Dio, who knew Commodus personally, recorded that Marcus Aurelius was murdered by his doctors so that Commodus could become emperor.

 

Following Commodus's coup, his guards bungle an attempt to bump Maximus off. Maximus escapes and rides back to his home in Hispania to find his family crucified by Commodus's agents. Exhausted and wounded, he collapses in the dust, whence he is abducted by slave traders. Considering that around a quarter of the empire's population was enslaved at this point, why would Mauritanian slavers be wandering around rural Hispania looking for half-dead men who need to be nursed gently back to health? Oh, these must be the nice slave traders.  Maximus is sold to a gladiatorial impresario, and Scott doesn't flinch from spilling the guts of life in the arena. He allows the audience to retain its superiority about how sick the Romans must have been to watch people being stabbed with a trident, sliced in half by a scythed chariot, or socked in the face with a spiked ball flail for entertainment, while simultaneously watching exactly that for entertainment.  Finally, Commodus and Maximus come face to face in the Flavian Amphitheatre. The real Commodus fought in gladiatorial events several hundred times, but was strangled in his bath by a hired wrestler called Narcissus. Apparently that name, which appeared in early drafts of the script, seemed a bit too fey for Crowe's character.

 

Combining the stories of Spartacus and Commodus makes for an atmospheric film, so long as its implicit claims of authenticity don't lull you into, say, basing a piece of coursework on it. Scott receives a respectable C grade for getting a reasonable amount right in spirit, if not in detail. No need to beat himself to death with a pinecone over that."

- Alex von Tunzelmann, The Guardian

 

 

The Film Itself

 

The Story

 

"Maximus is a powerful Roman general, loved by the people and the aging Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Before his death, the Emperor chooses Maximus to be his heir over his own son, Commodus, and a power struggle leaves Maximus and his family condemned to death. The powerful general is unable to save his family, and his loss of will allows him to get captured and put into the Gladiator games until he dies. The only desire that fuels him now is the chance to rise to the top so that he will be able to look into the eyes of the man who will feel his revenge."

 

Critic Review

 

"It’s tough selling bloody heroism on a Homeric scale to a younger crowd raised on Luke Skywalker and Rambo. These days, the machinery of spectacle has gotten so sophisticated and so stunt-driven that emotional depth only slows a guy down. (The apotheosis of hero-dude blankness: Keanu Reeves’ Neo in The Matrix.) Yet it’s Steven Spielberg, grand wizard of stunts and special effects, who has most influentially steered contemporary notions of bravery back along older-fashioned routes. Grand and rousing, Gladiator owes its shape and scope to the splashy historical ”sword-and-sandal movies” of the 1950s and ’60s, legendary cinema circuses like Ben-Hur and Spartacus. But Maximus (Russell Crowe), the charismatic general who stands at the center of director Ridley Scott’s giant arena, is, but for the breastplate, shield, and (when goaded into it) bloodthirsty fury, a brother-in-attitude of Tom Hanks’ Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan. They’re decent men forced by circumstance to perform extraordinary feats, faithful husbands who just want to go home, but who take up arms instead to fix a broken world. (They’re also both attached to units out of DreamWorks, Spielberg’s global theater of operations.)

 

Like Private Ryan, Gladiator charges into heart-pounding battle just minutes into the first reel. Assembling his Roman legions for an assault on a barbarian horde, Maximus, the well-liked leader, circulates easily among his troops. ”At my signal—unleash hell!” he orders, whereupon Scott lets loose his own extraordinary assault. It’s a bravura sequence of flaming arrows, falling horses, and mortal combat that doesn’t copy Private Ryan‘s famous opening tour de force of carnage so much as raise a banner in admiration. It’s Scott the visual artist at his most deluxe.

 

Gladiator, though, is Crowe’s to win or lose—Caesar’s thumb up or thumb down, as it were. And he wins, colossally. The New Zealand-born, Australian-raised actor’s performances have each been so completely different from one another, his transformation so complete and self-abnegating as to erase the notion of a fundamental Russell Crowe. Previously, this disarming lack of a portable, consistent, publicity-friendly acting personality has gotten in the way of his becoming a marquee star. Not any more. The puffy, ashen whistle-blower Crowe played in The Insider (for which he jolly well deserved the Oscar) has vanished, replaced by a brawny army general used to working the land.  This Maximus, with his lovely, meaty 1950s body mass like that of a William Holden or Robert Mitchum, has a farmer’s vanity-free self-confidence; he needs to hold and smell a handful of the earth before each battle. Heartily masculine, commanding yet capable of temperance, and with a warily, wearily understanding gaze, Crowe makes Maximus’ desire to go home when his job is done the greatest aspiration a man can have. Whether or not he gets there in the end doesn’t matter. What matters for today’s hero is the good fight, and Gladiator KOs us with a doozy."

- Lisa Schwarzbaum

 

BOT User Opinion

 

"This movie is boring as fuck" - @Ethan Hunt

 

Oops, they weren't entertained, better review:

 

"Just finished watching the extended version. The score from Hans Zimmer was perfect for this, and i teared up throughout the movie during a few scenes that had his excellent score in the background. Solid performances from everyone and solid direction and script also. The end is heart breaking.

 

Probably one of my all time favorite - I regret not watching it earlier." 

- @ChD

 

Factoids

 

Gladiator was directed by Ridley Scott. It received 61 points and 12 votes.

 

 

Countries Represented: Algeria (1), Austria (2), Belarus (1), Brazil (1), Burma (1), England (1), France (2), Germany (2), Israel (2), Korea (1), The Ocean (3), Poland (1), Japan (4), Russia (1), Scotland (1), Rome (1), Spain (1), United States (17), Vietnam (1)

 

Time Periods Represented: 16th Century (2), 17th Century (2), 18th Century (2), 19th Century (5), 1920s (2), 1930s (3), 1950s (2), 1960s (7), 1990s (1), 21st Century (2), Classical Period (3), Middle Ages (2), World War 1/1910s (3), World War 2/1940s (8)

 

Cross Section of Times and Countries: 18th Century - Austria (1), 18th Century - United States (1), 19th Century - The Ocean (1), 19th Century - United States (4), 21st Century - United States (2), 1910s - The Ocean (1), 1910s-1920s - Russia (1), 1920s - United States (1), 1930s - Germany (1), 1930s - Korea (1), 1930s - United States (1), 1950s - Algeria (1), 1950s - United States (1), 1960s - Brazil (1), 1960s - United States (5), 1960s - Vietnam (1), 1990s - United States (1), Classical Period - Israel (2), Classical Period - Rome (1), Middle Ages - England (1), Middle Ages - Scotland (1), Sengoku Period - Japan (2), Tokugawa Shogunate - Japan (2), World War 1 - France (2), World War 2/1940s - Belarus (1), World War 2 - Burma (1), World War 2/1940s - Germany (1), World War 2 - The Ocean (1), World War 2/1940s - Poland (1), World War 2/1940s - Spain (1), World War 2 - Austria (1), World War 2 - United States (1)

 

Directors Represented: James Cameron (1), Park Chan-Wook (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1), Kevin Costner (1), Andrew Dominik (1), Stanley Donen (1), David Fincher (2), John Ford (1), Milos Forman (1), Bob Fosse (1), Mel Gibson (1), Anthoney Harvey (1), Terry Jones (1), Philip Kaufman (1), Gene Kelley (1), Elem Klimov (1), Masaki Kobayashi (1), Stanley Kramer (1), Akira Kurosawa (2), David Lean (2), Michael Mann (1), Penny Marshall (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Adam McKay (1), Steve McQueen (1), Theodore Melfi (1), Sam Mendes (1), Lewis Milestone (1), Wolfgang Peterson (1), Gillo Pontecorvo (1), Martin Scorsese (2), Ridley Scott (1), Steven Spielberg (2), Oliver Stone (2), John Sturges (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Wise (1), William Wyler (1)

 

Decades Represented: 30s (1), 40s (1), 50s (4), 60s (7), 70s (3), 80s (6), 90s (6), 00s (7), 10s (9)

 

 

[MrGamer]