PATRIOTIC CINEMA

Only in recent months have I caught up with two excellent films which I would term “patriotic cinema” namely Dunkirk and Darkest Hour. Both were 2017 releases – I am often well behind the pack in such matters! My definition of patriotic cinema is a stirring, inspirational production celebrating national values and national courage peppered with a discreet soupçon of flag-waving. I will return to the two recent efforts presently but would like to mention some earlier films which qualify under my definition.

The US is the leading world film-maker and the war film is a well-established genre. But even the thoughtful and moving epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) with Lew Ayres is not quite the genuine article as it carries a strong anti-war and anti-nationalist message. At the other extreme, films like The Battle of the Bulge, The Longest Day or Patton, whatever their merits, concentrate on their war narrative and do not allow the audience to draw its own conclusions.

My favourite patriotic cinema piece emanating from the US is the 1946 The Best Years of our Lives directed by William Wyler featuring Fredric March, Dana Andrews and Harold Russell as three returning servicemen facing problems in post-war civilian life. Banker March is reprimanded as being too generous in his help for veterans, cuckolded Andrews cannot progress from his dead-end soda-jerk job in a drugstore and Russell, an amateur actor who actually had prosthetic hands, fears his injuries are a handicap to his love for his girl.

Harold Russell, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy and Fredric March

 

In the end March is vindicated, Andrews finds a new wife and a good job and Russell gets his girl in a paean to the uplifting generosity of US society which so heartened the world after 1945. The film is a tribute to all the positive aspects of the American Dream.

France produced a marvellous soldierly film in La Grande Illusion (1937) directed by Jean Renoir but it was rather an examination of class solidarity and of the shared values of the dying aristocracies of France and Germany. It was more intelligently reflective than stirring.

It actually fell to the USSR to produce a pre-war patriotic cinema masterpiece to stir its audience under the expert cinematic direction of Sergei Eisenstein of The Battleship Potemkin fame. The 1938 historical drama Alexander Nevsky with Nikolai Cherkasov in the title role and rousing music from Sergei Prokofiev entranced Soviet audiences. The film was eerily prophetic as it chronicles the invasion of Kievan ‘Rus by the crusaders of the Teutonic Knights with their Estonian auxiliaries and their attacks on Pskov as a stronghold of Eastern Orthodoxy. The film’s highlight is its historically dubious version of the 1242 Battle on the Ice (Lake Piepus), carefully choreographed as the ice shatters and the Teutonic Knights drown. A parallel was drawn between the Nazis and the Teutonic Knights (whose priests are adorned with swastikas in the movie.) 

Battle on the Ice from Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky

The film was suddenly withdrawn in September 1939 on the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact but returned to Soviet screens after the Nazi invasion of Russia in June 1941. It was a great and much-needed morale-booster.

Dame May Whitty and young Miniver sing Onward Christian Soldiers

   Britain’s film industry was trying to raise morale at home too but ironically the most successful production was American, Mrs Miniver with Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon, directed in 1942 by William Wyler (again!). It pressed all the right buttons in its depiction of a Thames-side middle-class English couple with three sons, one an RAF pilot. He falls for the grand-daughter (Teresa Wright) of the formidable Lady of the Manor (Dame May Whitty). Pigeon does his bit, heroically picking up soldiers from Dunkirk in his pleasure boat, an injured German pilot is disarmed and tended by Garson, air raids kill local characters and the beloved newly-married Teresa dies from injuries. The church is open to the sky but the vicar preaches an inspirational address with the congregation singing Onward Christian Soldiers as the RAF fly overhead in a V-formation. An uplifting stiff-upper-lip tribute - they don’t make them like that anymore!

Dunkirk (2017), directed by Christopher Nolan is an Anglo-American-Dutch co-production with an ensemble cast which nevertheless includes Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance and Tom Hardy. Its episodic narrative runs together three stories on land, sea and in the air. You see no Germans nor any politicians back in London and the dialogue is sparse. Yet you understand the raw courage and discipline of the queues of soldiers on the beach awaiting evacuation, sitting ducks for dive-bombers. You see the out-numbered Spitfires challenging the enemy and persevering in their task. Most of all you admire the large and small ships under fire and delivering a miracle.

Defeated soldiers awaiting salvation at Dunkirk

The film follows the fortunes of a flight of 3 Spitfires as one is shot down, a second ditches in the Channel to be rescued by Mark Rylance, while the third flown by Farrier (Tom Hardy) destroys a bomber attacking a laden minesweeper, before running out of fuel, landing on the Dunkirk beach outside the perimeter and being captured. Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) controls ships on the mole, constantly attacked by Stuka dive-bombers striking fear and death into the soldiers. Mark Rylance (Mr Dawson) steers his pleasure boat with his son and a local lad across the Channel and rescues a shell-shocked soldier who wants only to go home. He is angered when the boat makes for France and has to be restrained, striking the local lad, who later dies. They get through to the beaches with other boats and fill up with soldiers. Rather quietly the strains of Elgar’s Nimrod are heard on the sound-track as they all make it to a proud welcome in England and read Churchill’s great Dunkirk oration. Then the boatmen get back to their usual business.

I did not think the film struck any false notes and I found it stimulating and inspirational.

Darkest Hour is a more controversial film as it takes some historical liberties and makes several omissions. The star, producing an electrifying performance as hyper-energetic, defiant and difficult Winston Churchill is Gary Oldman.

Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill

The action takes place as Churchill is appointed Prime Minister by an unenthusiastic George VI after a Commons vote against Neville Chamberlain, who remains party leader. Military disaster in Norway is followed by a deteriorating situation in France as the Blitzkrieg storms through. The inner core of the Tory party is hostile and Churchill tries to rally the outer reaches and backbenchers with some success. Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, favours a negotiated peace with the Nazis, brokered by Mussolini, but Churchill is adamantly opposed. He goes on a Tube journey to fathom what ordinary people feel – they favour resistance (this is a ludicrous scene). Encouraged, Winston fails to rally the French but sees his army safely evacuated at Dunkirk. Supported by the King, the Labour Party and finally by Chamberlain, Churchill delivers in the Commons his famous Dunkirk oration.

“…..we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender” 

Churchill moved his audience and this film has moved millions of others including me. The film carries a powerfully positive message today for the supporters of this country. That is what makes it “patriotic cinema”.

SMD

25.07.18

Text copyright ©Sidney Donald 2018