Audience Member
Propaganda of course, but still moving to see a large piece of our history
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/17/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Superb, stirring documentary. 9/10
1943 and the allied bombing campaign is at its peak. The Memphis Belle is a B-17 "Flying Fortress" bomber in the US 8th Air Force. Its crew have completed 24 missions - one more and they go home. A documentary film crew captured their 25th mission, from preparation on the ground onwards.
Superb documentary, directed by William Wyler. Captures very accurately the day-to-day lives of US bomber crews in Europe, including the dangers and sacrifices made. Good detail of the mission itself.
Great footage, shot specifically for the documentary. The lives of the documentary crew were also in danger...
Narration is stirring and brings home the importance of the bombers' roles, as well as how endangered the crews' lives were. Very sobering and emotional.
The documentary inspired the great 1990 feature film, Memphis Belle.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
01/20/23
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Audience Member
MEMPHIS BELLE (1944)
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/14/23
Full Review
dwayne r
It's like sitting in a 1940's theater watching news reels.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
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Audience Member
Fantastic archive footage ~ the real deal
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Starts off a bit over dramatic. Simply explains a day in the life of the crew during Englands fifth year of war. An American 30 ton bomber crew's live combat experience are noteworthy. This stuff is great at showing how a mission was run over Nazi run Europe.
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/51/MemphisBelleDVD.jpg[/img]
In May 1943 it became the first U.S. Army Air Forces heavy bomber to complete 25 missions over Europe and return to the United States.
[img]http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS6kMDa9zwYeuRZjdjMPSKNFnaT7klJ0VgeLWJXCWIm61DjBm0Ttw[/img]
For a clip of 10 minutes see here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQhP7HcOmko
[img]http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT_wF5TOH0sRj-ZKsjz8avroMYQ_SPA2lm0xFpgnvESjmxscbed[/img]
SEE it all here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMDSFAYDV-Y
or here:
http://www.archive.org/details/MemphisBelle
[img]http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTEDKUvuuegqRM-e9N1IYCn_rea5JFurA0fEAoVICbTviMgvkoxsA[/img]
Color, is narrated, so no dialog. Instrumental soundtrack. Engine noise. Documents a real fighter bomber crew, mission, and has actual aerial combat footage. Good take off shots. Made by the U.S. Air Force during WWII flights from England to Germany.
[img]http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQI4nebtETpfE0rmy09zRjNI4lfYIBTlQVJGX2sZ4FsPKcqMLDlZg[/img]
"The Memphis Belle," * directed by William Wyler, is a tribute to the crew of the United States Air Force's 324th Squadron, 91st Heavy Bomber Unit, an airplane more familiarly known as the Memphis Belle. At the beginning of the film, the Belle's crew had successfully completed twenty-four missions in the toughest theater of the air war in Europe, flying bombing raids deep into Nazi territory.--- www.archive.org
At 40 minutes long, this is great to watch and highly informative. You feel you are in with the crew on a mission.
*A fictionalized version of the story, Memphis Belle, was produced in 1990 by David Puttnam in England.
NOTES:
1 The Flying Fortress bombers shown here fly 5 miles up and without oxygen, in five minutes your dead.
2 The guns on these birds, or aircraft, blanket an area of 10 football fields, 1000 yards. Surely they fly apart further than that for obvious reasons.
3 The crew wears steel helmets, just like the infantry below. I never ever knew that and never saw it on screen.
4 The bomb sight crew member controls the plane while over the target. This is the most vulnerable time for the plane. I never knew that either.
5 The film actually depicted the NEXT to last(not the last) mission of the crew on May 15, 1943, and was made as a morale-building inspiration for the Home Front by showing the everyday courage of the men who manned these planes.
6 The first mission flown in filming, ironically, was not aboard the Memphis Belle, but aboard the B-17 Jersey Bounce on a February 26, 1943 mission to Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
7 In 2001 the United States Library of Congress deemed the original version "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
8 The Memphis Belle aircraft is now preserved at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, near Dayton, Ohio.
[img]http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTSwM0SuLhT69mHNQFO4qWTPTJOBvUMszSj-JX7rbsczPSqcWTGjg[/img]
REVIEWS:
1 The film provides a first-person perspective of a World War II bombing raid, showing how it feels to be threatened by "flak [enemy fire] so thick you can get out and walk on it." Much of the film salutes those less fortunate than the crew of the Memphis Belle, who wear the weight of their experience in "faces [that] have watched their comrades die."
2 After having seen 'memphis belle, the movie' a lot of times and read the book on it, i'm glad to have stumbled upon this documentary. I never knew the belle really did exist and the crew of the movie were fictional -as was their last flight-.
3 You can really feel the tension watching this footage. After seeing movies and reading stories of the war, its amazing to be there with those guys in the planes. I admire them.
4 I rate this one a big fat 5 because of the truly frightening tale it tells about a war that was REAL, not the phony and contrived "conflicts" that America wastes its time and its youth on these days. My dad's war was real.
5 In the New York Times review of the documentary critic Bosley Crowther praised the film as "A thorough and vivid comprehension of what a daylight bombing is actually like for the young men who wing our heavy bombers from English bases into the heart of Germany..."
Cast
The crew on the missions filmed included:
[img]http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSAxSSSjK98_EBq6L_pGA-Je_f4CHDVJ5cKOAom-2wLhzJVxmQTPA[/img]
Captain Robert K. Morgan (pilot)
Captain James A. Verinis (co-pilot)
Captain Vincent B. Evans (bombardier)
Captain Charles B. Leighton (navigator)
Technical Sergeant Robert J. Hanson (radio operator)
Technical Sergeant Harold P. Loch (engineer and top turret gunner)
Staff Sergeant Casimer A. Nastal (waist gunner)
Staff Sergeant Clarence E. Winchell (waist gunner)
Staff Sergeant Cecil H. Scott (ball turret gunner)
Staff Sergeant John P. Quinlan (tail gunner)
Morgan's crew had not flown all of its missions together.
[/img]http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRfcPT6LnnXfgY_PMEgxrGxIs45eG4tPNyGwz9wXsSDhP5EzMDI[/img]
Directed by William Wyler
[img]http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQSjbBg6x_IjDHhIuG2MU-ijIhkgC84WUcifMMALDOq3j-hLtc5[/img]
Produced by First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces
Written by Jerome Chodorov and William Wyler
Starring The crew of the Memphis Belle
Music by Gail Kubik
Cinematography Harold J. Tannenbaum and William H. Clothier
Distributed by Paramount Pictures Inc
Release date(s) 1944
Running time 45 min
[img]http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRo9ev6X1v_YRt0uwIKqC3KutZr-1og1VHCx1X9B73J8NJpsgdAsw[/img]
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/19/23
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