I am always opened for jokes :lol:
Top 10 World War II action films of all time
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@CWO:
One of the best Lutjens/Lindemann exchanges in the film occurs after the Bismarck’s rudder is damaged. Lutjens asks Lindemann when he’ll be able to put divers over the side to inspect the damage. Lindemann answers, “At first light, if the sea isn’t too rough.” Lutjens says dismissively, “I do not care about the sea.” Lindemann replies, “I was thinking about the men.”
Admittedly, this was a 1950s-era British film in which the Germans are portrayed in a somewhat cartoonish way (especially Lutjens, whose lines and their delivery are sometimes quite over-the-top), but in fairness the real Lutjens wasn’t very likeable (he was regarded as cold and distant) and the real Lindemann was greatly respected by his men as a fatherly figure to whom they could bring their problems.
I also don’t understand why Luntjens wouldn’t go after the cruisers and the Prince of Whales. I understand the importance of sinking merchant ships, but losing additional warship would have been a big blow for the Royal Navy.
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I also don’t understand why Luntjens wouldn’t go after the cruisers and the Prince of Whales. I understand the importance of sinking merchant ships, but losing additional warship would have been a big blow for the Royal Navy.
In the actual Bismark operation (not the movie), Lindemann likewise strongly disagreed with the decision by Lutjens not to go after the crippled Prince of Wales after Hood was sunk. This is one of those cases where both men had a valid point, and in which the Germans didn’t possess information which might have been decisive, but in which, on the whole, Lutjens did made the wrong call.
Lutjens was right about the fact that his primary mission was convoy-raiding, and about the fact that Hitler was skittish about risking his prize battleship in a major sea battle. That being said, one gets the feeling that Lutjens wasn’t the kind of admiral who was prepared to take full advantage of an unexpected target-of-opportunity situation. (And he was certainly not a William Halsey-type admiral who was inclined to charge in battle first and think later.) Lutjens sat in silence for a long time when he heard that two major British warships – they turnd out to be Hood and PoW – were approaching, and as I recall he continued to do so even when the British ships started shooting, to the point where Captain Lindemann made the comment that he wasn’t about to let his ship get shot out from under him. Not exactly the kind of aggressiveness that Nelson would have approved of.
Blowing Hood out of the water in just six minutes should have given Lutjens a large morale boost (it certainly did so to the Bismarck crew in general), and so should have the fact that Bismarck damaged PoW sufficiently to cause her to disengage and retreat. Lindemann was quite correct in thinking that Bismarck had a golden opportunity to finish off a second British capital ship right after sinking Hood, and that this would have shocked Britain (and caused elation in Germany) even more than the sinking of Hood did, and he was quite correct that it was lame for Lutjens to dismiss that opportunity on the grounds that this wasn’t his mission. On the other hand, neither men knew the full extent of PoW’s condition. Critically, they had no way of knowing that the almost-brand-new PoW was having teething problems with the anti-flash shutters on its main guns, which tended to jam in combat. And in fairness, the stark reality was that the Royal Navy could afford to lose two capital ships to a far greater extent than Germany could afford to lose the Bismarck. Lutjens, in the end, may simply have been operating under the same principle that kept British and German capital ships in port for most of WWI: given how hugely expensive these ships were, it was considered more important for them to stay afloat than to sink the enemy.
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And in fairness, the stark reality was that the Royal Navy could afford to lose two capital ships to a far greater extent than Germany could afford to lose the Bismarck.
I’m not sure if I agree with you there. I guess an argument could be made that keeping the Bismarck alive (for sure) and the disruption this creates is a larger advantage than the possibility of killing another capitol ship and surviving.
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I think the obvious is missing here… Lutjens, as the overall commander of the entire operation, was actually given direct orders by the Fuhrer himself not to engage enemy capital ships in direct combat if at all possible (and as everyone knows, his main mission was the sinking of convoys, not capital ships). This direct order from the Fuhrer goes a long way in explaining why he sat doing nothing when PoW and Hood initially opened fire on the Bismarck, and why after Hood was destroyed and PoW was laying smoke and escaping why Lutjens refused to pursue… he was, quite literally, following Hitler’s orders to the letter.
I don’t recall if Lindemann was aware of Hitler’s specific instructions, but certainly Lutjens was, and this explains all the questions people have of Lutjen’s actions (or lack-there-of).
The actor portrayals of Lutjens and Lindemann in the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck should be the last thing anyone uses as a reference to anything that actually took place during Operation Rheinübung. It’s like taking Bruce Willis’ advice on how to conduct NASA spacefaring operations because he stared in Armageddon.
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Sink the Bismarck?
Oh, and I forgot to mention… GOD NO… Sink the Bismarck is a terrible movie… at least as far as the acting by the “Germans” in the movie. It was 1960, and they still had to make movies where Germans either looked evil, stupid, clownish or all of the above (aka: Naughty Nazis). Movies hadn’t evolved yet where they portrayed soldiers and sailors from both sides as human beings yet, and Sink the Bismarck was definitely before that time.
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Yes, the Germans in Sink the Bismarck are quite caricatured, a good example being the rousing speech that Lutjens makes to the crew (over the Bridge microphone) at the start of the mission (“Never forget that you are Germans! Never forget that you are Nazis!”) Movies made during a war and, for a variable amount of time, afterwards tend to portray the enemy side as clowns or demons or both; then there’s a stage in which the treatment of the two sides is more even-handed (as in All Quiet on the Western Front or The Enemy Below); and then there’s sometimes even a later stage of cynicism and ethical questioning in which movies portray the people on one’s own side as psychologically conflicted or morally murky.
I agree that Sink the Bismarck has got its share of problems: the depiction of the Germans, the technical errors (like the way in which main gun salvos are ordered to be fired by telephone from the Bridge), the romantic subplot (which I didn’t care for), and the dramatically debatable plot device of making the film’s lead character – the Royal Navy Director of Operations portrayed by Kenneth Moore – as an insufferable S.O.B. to whom the audience takes an immediate dislike. That being said, I’ve watched my DVD of the film dozens of times (though I do fast-forward past some of the annoying stuff) because, despite its flaws, it does depict in (what is to me) an enjoyable way one of the great sea chases of all times. And on an A&A-related note, it has the second-best map-table-with-model-ships prop I’ve ever seen in a dramatic film, surpassed only by the two tables seen in Midway.
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@CWO:
Yes, the Germans in Sink the Bismarck are quite caricatured, a good example being the rousing speech that Lutjens makes to the crew (over the Bridge microphone) at the start of the mission (“Never forget that you are Germans! Never forget that you are Nazis!”)
Don’t make me break out this characterization of Nazis in bad movies…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t7zOs5oFJ8@CWO:
I agree that Sink the Bismarck has got its share of problems… That being said, I’ve watched my DVD of the film dozens of times (though I do fast-forward past some of the annoying stuff) because, despite its flaws, it does depict in (what is to me) an enjoyable way one of the great sea chases of all times.
I also own this movie on DVD and have watched it more than once… but… meh… the topic and response was “Top 10 WWII action films of all time”… without even thinking, I can rattle-off at least a dozen films more deserving than Sink the Bismarck.
@CWO:
the romantic subplot…
Still a better love story than Twilight…
@CWO:
And on an A&A-related note, it has the second-best map-table-with-model-ships prop I’ve ever seen in a dramatic film, surpassed only by the two tables seen in Midway.
But have you seen the map-table-with-model-ships prop in “The Admiral” that I linked in the other thread Marc?!?!?
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Great action finale to this one:
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Great action finale to this one:
Oh… we were supposed to watch Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS for the great WWII action sequences? Man, I totally watched that film for the wrong reasons!
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If you can ever get your hands on some classic Finnish WWII movies, I can warmly recommend the 1955 version of The Unknown Soldier (Tuntematon Sotilas) and Winter War (Talvisota) from 1989. Great action and great dialogue. Both can be found subtitled in English, though you might have to do some digging :-D
The Unknown Soldier tells a story of machine gun Company in a Finno-Russian Continuation War through 1941-1944. Väinö Linna, the author of the book, actually fought in the said war. The movie has a nice flow to it, and the characters become more and more lovable. Another version of the movie was made in 1985, and the newest is just making it’s way out. I wouldn’t recommend the 1985 version, especially if you haven’t watched the original first.
The Winter War is still a bit more factual and relies mostly on the action sequences, and less on characters. The book was written basing on diaries and interviews of those who fought in the Winter War.
Anyway, if you ever come across these movies, be sure to check them out!
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The Great Raid
https://www.miramax.com/movie/the-great-raid/
Not perhaps the Top 10. But it was a well made movie. Gets right to the point, follows history; doesn’t get political. Textbook raid which is still studied in some US Army courses for combat arms officers.
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The Great Raid
https://www.miramax.com/movie/the-great-raid/
Not perhaps the Top 10. But it was a well made movie. Gets right to the point, follows history; doesn’t get political. Textbook raid which is still studied in some US Army courses for combat arms officers.
It’s interesting to see that this 2005 movie, which is about the raid on the prisoner-of-war camp at Cabanatuan in the Philippines, has a poster which is headed by the caption “The most daring rescue mission of our time is a story that has never been told.” Actually, the 1945 John Wayne movie Back to Bataan starts off with a recreation (albeit heavily fictionalized) of the same raid. The National Geographic DVD “Untold Stories of WWII” uses the same kind of hyperbole, and in that case the term “untold” is even more inexplicable because the section of the documentary dealing with the Norwegian sabotage of Germany’s efforts to obtain heavy water for its atomic bomb program contains several extracts from the 1948 Norwegian film “Kampen om tungtvannet” (whose cast included some of the original saboteurs). The extracts are in black and white, and are credited as being from the earlier film, so they’re kind of hard to miss. And the story was also told in the 1965 British film The Heroes of Telemark, and in the 1975 book “Assault in Norway: Sabotaging the Nazi Nuclear Program” (which I’ve read) by Thomas Gallagher.
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Read CWO Marc’s post in a story that’s never been told before…
@CWO:
It’s interesting to see that this 2005 movie, which is about the raid on the prisoner-of-war camp at Cabanatuan in the Philippines, has a poster which is headed by the caption “The most daring rescue mission of our time is a story that has never been told.” Actually, the 1945 John Wayne movie Back to Bataan starts off with a recreation (albeit heavily fictionalized) of the same raid. The National Geographic DVD “Untold Stories of WWII” uses the same kind of hyperbole, and in that case the term “untold” is even more inexplicable because the section of the documentary dealing with the Norwegian sabotage of Germany’s efforts to obtain heavy water for its atomic bomb program contains several extracts from the 1948 Norwegian film “Kampen om tungtvannet” (whose cast included some of the original saboteurs). The extracts are in black and white, and are credited as being from the earlier film, so they’re kind of hard to miss. And the story was also told in the 1965 British film The Heroes of Telemark, and in the 1975 book “Assault in Norway: Sabotaging the Nazi Nuclear Program” (which I’ve read) by Thomas Gallagher.
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We armchair historians love to hear the line “We call Korea the forgotten war…” “the little-known battle of Khalkin Gol…” etc. and shiver.
Forgotten? By whom? Little known? Says WHO!
The lesser known, the better.
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We armchair historians love to hear the line “We call Korea the forgotten war…” “the little-known battle of Khalkin Gol…” etc. and shiver.
Forgotten? By whom? Little known? Says WHO!
The lesser known, the better.
Well said.
“A story never before told” is right up there with the kinds of phrases that, to pick just one studio and one decade as an example, were used routinely in Warner Bros. movie trailers of the 1940s – phrases (typically printed in all-capitals in a large font) along the lines as “The most dramatic story ever presented!” or “The greatest film role of his career!” or “The most startling adventure of all time!” I wonder if these phrases ended up losing their effect on contemporaty audiences, given that Warners – which typically produced 50 movies a year – seems to have used them in an awful lot of its trailers, regardless of what the story was about or how good the star’s previous films were compared to the new one. (I recently watched the trailer for the John Wayne WWII movie “Operation Pacific,” and if you go by the narration of the trailer you’d have reason to think that this was a reality-based epic-scale movie about one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War. It isn’t any of those things.)
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“My Way” is a great film and after this weekend we may be adding Dunkirk?
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“My Way” is a great film and after this weekend we may be adding Dunkirk?
I have this movie on Blue-Ray… mixed feelings about it… I can certainly say its NOT one of the greatest war movies of all time, and despite being the most expensive film in Korean history with great CGI effects, the stretches taken with the story (the entire “marathon runners” angle was completely fictional, which was like half the movie), and the laughable “battle tactics” in the movie, along with the German soldiers with hair going down the back of their necks… there were so many cringe-worthy moments that kept me from enjoying the movie when they played so loose with battles, historical facts and attention to detail.
While the story of serving in three armies across Asia and Europe was interesting, every time I would get into the story, something that just screamed “hokey” took me out of the moment. I think My Way got a 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason.
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Greetings. New to the forums. Great discussion so far. I would like to add the following for consideration:
“Winds of War”
“War and Remembrance”These were made-for-TV films from the 1980s based on the incredible novels by Herman Wouk.
Heading off to see Dunkirk tonight. Anxious to see their depiction.
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@retrohobbyist:
Greetings. New to the forums. Great discussion so far. I would like to add the following for consideration:
“Winds of War”
“War and Remembrance”These were made-for-TV films from the 1980s based on the incredible novels by Herman Wouk.
I have both those series on DVD as well… very entertaining and fun to watch.
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War and Remembrance got such poor ratings they had to pay compensation to the advertisers. It lost about $40 million.
Won a lot of awards, mind.
I found it thoroughly boring.
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