This WW2 documentary centers on the crew of the American B-17 Flying Fortress Memphis Belle as it prepares to execute a strategic bombing raid on Nazi submarine pens in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
Vince Evans Jacob L. Devers Ira C. Eaker Haywood Hansell Technical Sergeant Robert J. Hanson Eugene Kern King George VI of the United Kingdom Captain Charles B. Leighton Technical Sergeant Harold P. Loch Staff Sergeant Casimer A. Nastal Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Staff Sergeant John P. Quinlan Staff Sergeant Cecil H. Scott Captain James A. Verinis Staff Sergeant Clarence E. Winchell Stanley Wray Arthur Kennedy Robert Morgan
Le Memphis Belle, l’histoire d’une forteresse volante, La bella di Memphis, Die Memphis Belle - Die Geschichte einer fliegenden Festung, Memphis Belle: A Fortaleza Voadora
USANR
USA
Astonishing work, not just for the real 16mm Technicolor footage shot inside the planes, but for the kind sorrow that Wyler brings to it that one wouldn't expect from "propaganda." The B-17 might spur to mind Hawks's Air Force but the tone is closer to The Dawn Patrol, a sense that these men are all in some way ready for death more than the battle, and that so much of the plan depends on the use of essentially decoys to be destroyed so the main targets can be hit. So much of Wyler's focus is on this sort of morbid undertone and the sacrifice. This makes everything that happens in the air have an intense feeling of death, from simply…
We’re seeing real soldiers on real fighting missions really getting shot down over Germany. One soldier we don’t see is the multiple Academy Award winning director William Wyler who was lying on his stomach in a B-17 Flying Fortress to get those shots straight down.
What if this plane had been hit (as was the one that killed one of his three cinematographers Harold J. Tannenbaum)? And what if one of Hollywood’s directors — William Wyler a German-born Jew who emigrated to the US — had to bail out and parachute into Nazi Germany? If they’d said this in the voiceover, it would have really made it propaganda. Real stakes in a documentary.
When viewed as prequel to The Best Years of Our Lives, a new realism and poignancy is added to the scene where Fred wanders into a vast aircraft boneyard and climbs inside the nose of a the bomber.
This is the film that William Wyler deafened himself filming and honestly it wasn’t worth it.
This classic documentary exemplifies something that happened between the time America entered World War II and the latter stages of that effort. The earliest American war films from 1941 till about 1943 -- both documentaries and the fictional dramas from Hollywood -- were largely flagwavers, unabashed propaganda geared to steel the country's will and attitude to the cause, to demonize the enemies and their perceived ideals, and to heroicize the home boys. Frank Capra's Why We Fight films do this with an urgent gusto, instilling the proper fear in the populace. Actioners like Gung Ho, and Bataan did the same. They are entirely artificial and unsubtle and contain no second thoughts or contemplation about the reality of death.
But as…
I can now add documentary to the list of genres William Wyler does brilliantly. Some of the footage captured in this WWII propaganda doc is quite astounding; they literally stuck a 16mm camera in the middle of an air battle, how could that not be impressive? To think that some of these shots were captured in the 1940s, showing real air formations and combat, makes this a truly memorable picture of what the war was like. Wyler never loses track of the story of it all though, both the mission that must be carried out, and the real people at the heart of it all. On the one hand, it's a fascinating insight into warfare in the sky, a concept…
The real deal. These guys had guts. I'd be terrified to even get in these planes. Having recently read Masters of the Air, I am excited to see what Spielberg does with the air war.
A legitimately engaging narrative to accompany some wild footage shot in a REAL air combat zone??? Now THIS is what I call propaganda.
Of course I love this. I have a love hate relationship with bombers because I think they’re kind of dumb and not as elegant as wonderful fighter aircraft, but of course so important to the Second World War. The B-17 is of course a beautiful aircraft and it’s just a treat being able to hear those wonderful engines churning along.
What would Memorial Day weekend be without a little good ol’ wartime propaganda!
Wartime Propoganda/Documentary that manages to have a rah-rah spirit and quasi-triumphal tone (the plane became a celebrity and still can be seen at the US Air Force Museum in Ohio) even though it doesn't shy away from the the darkness, destruction and death the surround the crew and their colleagues in the Army Air Corps.
The US government was always concerned with the public perception of the war, from the long dance FDR did to support the UK while being tied to official neutrality, to the various films that try to explain what the war was about in their view, who the allies were, and how the American forces actually get the job done.
This is that third category, while…
Solid war documentary. While most combat documentaries made that year focused on techniques and mastering ones vehicle, The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944) focused on attack strategies and how to distract, fooling the enemy. They must have felt very confident by this point of the war going at it so openly, not hiding the way they trash the Nazis. Interesting in that respect. Otherwise a rather ordinary war documentary made as battles were continuing.
