When I was a kid I was glued to the TV set every Saturday at 12:30 watching Victory at Sea, with its grand opening theme composed by Richard Rodgers (of Rogers and Hammerstein), performed by the NBC Symphony Orchestra. No doubt I saw the episode about the Battle of Midway. Here’s the opening narration:
And now Midway is East. Yesterday it was Pearl Harbor. Today it is the whole Southeast Pacific. Hardened by the campaigns in China, fired by the sacred mission of extending Hirohito's dominion over 12 million square miles of the Pacific, the hordes of Imperial Japan surge south and east in a deluge of destruction. Glory is their goal; glory and oil and rubber and rice, mysterious haunting names of the Far East are the notes of an Allied dirge. Manila, Mindoro, Mindanao, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Mandalay, Malaya, Batan, Bangkok, Borneo, Cambodia, Kaviti, Corgador, Batavia, Bali, Singapore, Shanghai, Sumatra... Banzai!
At about 11 minutes into the show, which is only a half-hour, we get to the Battle of Midway, the subject of two feature films, Midway (1976), and Midway (2019). I made it through each of them in a single sitting, which is a bit unusual for me these days, especially for movies that clocked in at over two hours each. I’m not sure why, but I just can’t pay attention to a movie for that long. Perhaps it’s because I’m pre-occupied with my own thoughts.
Whatever.
But I made it through these. Perhaps it was the sheer adventure of it all, dog fights in the air, dive bombers, guns blazing, ships exploding, the wait, the plotting, the relief, but also the death and mangled bodies, and of course, the final victory. If you’re in a mood for it, both of these movies deliver it. The 1976 is a bit slicker, with a roster of stars from here to the moon, while the 2019 – no remake, but its own production – is grittier. And I preferred it. But not for the grit.
For some reason the 1976 had a romance plot woven into it. A young naval aviator is in love with the daughter of Japanese immigrants. When the war breaks out, the Japanese are herded into internment camps. The aviator asks his father, a Navy captain played by Charlton Heston (they don’t make them like that these days), to intervene. Here’s how Erik Lundegaard puts it:
Unfortunately, the movie also includes is a fictional subplot that is the stuff of soap opera. Charlton Heston plays Capt. Matt Garth, the estranged father of fighter pilot Tom Garth (Edward Albert), who is looking to reconnect with his son. The fact that Matt is divorced feels out of time—that was a ’70s conversation, less a ’30s one. And then there’s Tom’s dilemma. He has to tell his old man: 1) his girlfriend, Hakuro (Christina Kokubo), is Japanese; 2) she and her parents are being held as subversives; and 3) can he help free them? When Matt objects, Tom accuses him of racism. Matt, in that Heston way, says he’s not racist, it’s just that his son’s timing is lousy; then he spends most of the rest of the movie trying to free them. I can’t even remember if he does, to be honest, and none of this is helped by the acting from Heston and Kokubo. Oh, and it turns out that her parents object to the union anyway since they don’t want Hakuro marrying outside her race. So who’s the racist now, huh? That’s the vibe.
Like Lundegaard said, it’s unfortunate.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about the 2019 film:
While the film takes some artistic license, Emmerich and Tooke were both adamant about being historically accurate, and Midway received praise from some combat veterans and historians for being a more accurate portrayal of events than Midway (1976) and Pearl Harbor (2001). Naval History and Heritage Command director and retired Navy Rear Admiral Sam Cox said: "Despite some of the 'Hollywood' aspects, this is still the most realistic movie about naval combat ever made."
If you want to see a WWII naval battle movie, see that one, not the 1976 one.
And you might dig out that Victory at Sea episode. Perhaps some of the news-reel footage in that shows up in these movies.
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