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Re: Movie Madness



I've always been one to critically look at the historical accuracy of films.  However, I've done this in a much broader sense then what the discussion in this thread implies. Meaning, I question whether story lines are likely or possible, if a movie makes chronological sense etc... When you go so far as to list models of planes, guns and whatever else you are "exports" at, don't you think the game has gone too far?  I feel sorry for you that you can't enjoy a movie without all those important questions circling around in your mind.

Just a thought on this lovely Friday afternoon.

Jonathon Thorpe  

>>> rwebb@LIBRARY.UTAH.EDU 06/30/00 01:41PM >>>
> Me too, me too! For me though it is the aircraft and armored vehicles that
> are being used.
>
Me three; my wife won't even watch movies with me anymore that
have historical themes because I can't resist picking the
inaccuracies out.  It started when I was a little kid, watching
westerns with my family.  The hero always rode across a hundred
miles of burning desert without so much as a canteen; when I
would point that out my mother would say "Shut up Roy Dale, and
watch the movie!"  But the worst are war films; I'm a buff for
equipment and uniforms as well.  My favorite was from an aircraft
carrier movie, might have been FLAT TOP, that was mentioned
earlier; the hero takes off in an F4U Corsair, shoots down about
forty Japanese planes in an F6F Hellcat, somehow switches to a P-
51 Mustang and shoots down a German Messerschmit, and finally--
and this is the best part--when he has a deck crash upon landing
he's flying an F9F Panther.  So somehow in mid-air he switched
from a propellor plane to a jet.  Now that was a trick.  As Peter
said, though, it drives me nuts to see Germans driving M-48s;
Germans driving M-3 halftracks I could almost see, if they were
captured, but M-48s weren't built until well after the war.  The sorry
BATTLE OF THE BULGE was the worst for this.  I mean, if they
can create whole cities on a back lot, how hard would it be to build
some plywood Mark IVs or Panthers?  And that thing about the
recoil; I've often thought I would volunteer to be out of camera range
with a rope around the tail of the cannon, just to give it a jerk at the
right time and make it look like it's actually fired.  Didn't that movie
GETTYSBURG try to do this?

I just read in a magazine, however, about the new movie PEARL
HARBOR, which apparently has gone to great pains to have the
correct aircraft for the film.  So we can keep on hoping.

Roy (awfully glad it's Friday) Webb




Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu 

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