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181-459: Red Tails is a 2012 American war film directed by Anthony Hemingway in his feature directorial debut , and starring Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. The film is about the Tuskegee Airmen , a group of African-American United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) servicemen during World War II . The characters in the film are fictional, although based on real individuals. The film

362-493: A military objective of some sort. They take place in the actual combat zones of World War II, against the established enemies, on the ground, the sea, or in the air. They contain many repeated events, such as mail call, all presented visually with appropriate uniforms , equipment, and iconography of battle. Further, Basinger considers Bataan to provide a definition-by-example of "the World War II combat film", in which

543-491: A "technical center" so that the production could quickly move between locations. Red Tails was the first film to use Barco 's Auro-3D 11.1 surround sound system. In March 2010, Lucas took over direction of reshoots, as Hemingway was busy working on episodes of the HBO series, Treme . The Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder was brought in late in production, after Hemingway's principal photography, to provide re-writes for

724-576: A "war propaganda film ". A 1978 Mondadori poll placed Alexander Nevsky among the world's 100 best motion pictures. Kriegsmarine The Kriegsmarine ( German pronunciation: [ˈkʁiːksmaˌʁiːnə] , lit.   ' War Navy ' ) was the navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war Reichsmarine (1919–1935) of

905-531: A British family on the home front; Edge of Darkness (1943) showed Norwegian resistance fighters, and The North Star (1943) showed the Soviet Union and its Communist Party . Towards the end of the war popular books provided higher quality and more serious stories for films such as Guadalcanal Diary (1943), Mervyn LeRoy 's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), and John Ford 's They Were Expendable (1945). The Soviet Union, too, appreciated

1086-644: A Japanese perspective. These "generally fail to explain the cause of the war". In the decades immediately after the Second World War, Japanese films often focused on human tragedy rather than combat, such as The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959). From the late 1990s, films started to take a positive view of the war and of Japanese actions. These nationalistic films, including Pride (1998), Merdeka 17805 (2001), and The Truth about Nanjing (2007), have emphasized positive traits of

1267-424: A Japanese soldier beheads an American: the victim shows pain and his lips freeze in a scream, yet no blood spurts and his head does not fall off. Basinger points out that while this is physically unrealistic, psychologically it may not have been. The wartime audience was, she points out, well aware of friends and relatives who had been killed or who had come home wounded. The Axis powers similarly made films during

1448-423: A Western like Sam Peckinpah 's The Wild Bunch and "war-movie escapades" like The Dirty Dozen . The film historian Jeanine Basinger states that she began with a preconception of what the war film genre would be, namely that: What I knew in advance was what presumably every member of our culture would know about World War II combat films—that they contained a hero , a group of mixed types [of people], and

1629-482: A close second. The costliest war in U.S. history in terms of American life, this war has been the subject of, or the backdrop to, numerous films, documentaries and mini-series. One of the earliest films using the Civil War as its subject was D.W. Griffith 's 1910 silent picture, The Fugitive . Films that have the war as its main subject, or about a certain aspect of the war, include the 1989 film Glory , about

1810-465: A companion documentary to the film that debuted on January 13, 2012 on H2 . It details the full real-life story of the Tuskegee Airmen, and includes interviews with many of the surviving members. Additionally, both home video releases of the film are THX certified. The Blu-ray/DVD combo also includes several featurettes that focus on the film's cast and crew. The only bonus feature included on

1991-571: A deal with Easy: he will fly less recklessly as long as Easy remains sober. Meanwhile, attitudes against the Tuskegee Airmen begin to change as they earn the bomber crews' respect. Lightning proposes to Sofia, who accepts as long as he stays in Italy. Ray Gun and his group of POWs escape, but German guards spot several POWs; Ray Gun draws the Germans' attention while the others escape. One of the POWs reaches

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2172-414: A diverse and apparently unsuited group of "hastily assembled volunteers" hold off a much larger group of the enemy through their "bravery and tenacity". She argues that the combat film is not a subgenre but the only genuine kind of war film. Since she notes that there were in fact only five true combat films made during the Second World War, in her view these few films, central to the genre, are outweighed by

2353-581: A dozen destroyers were operational) were divided among the victors by the Tripartite Naval Commission . The US used the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll in 1946 as a target ship for the Operation Crossroads . Some (like the unfinished aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin ) were used for target practice with conventional weapons, while others (mostly destroyers and torpedo boats) were put into

2534-568: A green screen, rocked back and forth by production crew members. In order to achieve a realistic reaction, actors were flown in actual P-51 Mustangs at the Planes of Fame in Chino, California , to experience the forces involved in dogfighting. Editing began while the production was in Prague. Avid editing systems were used simultaneously in a Prague studio and at Lucasfilm. A vehicle was fitted with

2715-661: A heavy ship suitable for offensive warfare on the high seas while still abiding by the letter of the treaty. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Hitler soon began to more brazenly ignore many of the Treaty restrictions and accelerated German naval rearmament. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 18 June 1935 allowed Germany to build a navy equivalent to 35% of the British surface ship tonnage and 45% of British submarine tonnage; battleships were to be limited to 35,000 tons. That same year

2896-554: A legitimate military target, resulting in the deaths of 117 civilians. Germany did not admit responsibility for the incident until after the war. Lemp was killed in action in 1941. U-247 was alleged to have shot at sunken ship survivors, but as the vessel was lost at sea with its crew, there was no investigation. In 1945, U-boat Commander Heinz-Wilhelm Eck of U-852 was tried along with four of his crewmen for shooting at survivors. All were found guilty, with three of them, including Eck, being executed. In 1946, Hellmuth von Ruckteschell

3077-484: A major re-armament of the navy (Plan Z) was planned, and initially begun, the start of the war in 1939 meant that the vast amounts of material required for the project were diverted to other areas. The sheer disparity in size when compared to the other European powers navies prompted Raeder to write of his own navy once the war began "The surface forces can do no more than show that they know how to die gallantly." A number of captured ships from occupied countries were added to

3258-543: A new navy was established and was referred to as the Bundesmarine (Federal Navy). Some Kriegsmarine commanders like Erich Topp and Otto Kretschmer went on to serve in the Bundesmarine . In East Germany the Volksmarine (People's Navy) was established in 1956. With the reunification of Germany in 1990, it was decided to use the name Deutsche Marine ( German Navy ). By the start of World War II, much of

3439-477: A powerful emotional impact. It was watched by some 20 million people in Britain in its six weeks of exhibition, making it what the critic Francine Stock called "one of the most successful films of all time". The 1925 American film The Big Parade depicted unglamorous elements of war: the protagonist loses his leg, and his friends are killed. William A. Wellman 's Wings (1927) showed aerial combat during

3620-456: A presence at 2011's New York Comic Con ; Lucasfilm sponsored a panel featuring many of the cast and crew, as well as a P-51 flight simulator . The P-51 Mustang flown in Red Tails also became a free add-on for Microsoft Flight , as of 2012, and can be downloaded from Microsoft's Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Rotten Tomatoes , a review aggregator reports that 40% of 135 surveyed critics gave

3801-528: A quiet Russian and an extrovert southerner from Odessa, singing in his dugout. The many Soviet films about the Second World War include both large-scale epics such as Yury Ozerov 's Battle of Moscow (1985) and Mikhail Kalatozov 's more psychological The Cranes are Flying (1957) on the cruel effects of war; it won the 1958 Palme d'Or at Cannes. Japanese directors have made popular films such as Submarine I-57 Will Not Surrender (1959), Battle of Okinawa (1971) and Japan's Longest Day (1967) from

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3982-821: A result, the submarines had much success for few losses (this period was dubbed the First Happy Time by the Germans). Italy entered the war in June 1940, and the Battle of the Mediterranean began: from September 1941 to May 1944 some 62 German submarines were transferred there, sneaking past the British naval base at Gibraltar . The Mediterranean submarines sank 24 major Allied warships (including 12 destroyers, 4 cruisers, 2 aircraft carriers, and 1 battleship) and 94 merchant ships (449,206 tons of shipping). None of

4163-467: A single bomber due to enemy fire, a statement made by a bomber pilot in the film. However, this claim has been proven inaccurate, and an Air Force report from 2006 showed that at least 25 bombers were lost to enemy fire. As depicted in the film's climactic scene, the Luftwaffe Me 262 interception of a Tuskegee Airmen escort mission did not result in the first victory over the vaunted jet fighters; this

4344-691: A small number of targets in the area throughout the conflict. (By comparison the Italian Regia Marina operated 58 submarines in the area as part of the Sottomarini Legionari .) The Kriegsmarine saw as her main tasks the controlling of the Baltic Sea and winning a war against France in connection with the German army, because France was seen as the most likely enemy in the event of war. But in 1938 Hitler wanted to have

4525-784: A telegram to the German Navy's Baltic Command in Kiel , which stated that he wanted 100 SS and fifty Schutzpolizei (protective police) men sent to Liepāja for "quick implementation Jewish problem". Kawelmacher hoped to accelerate the killings, complaining: "Here about 8,000 Jews... with present SS-personnel, this would take one year, which is untenable for [the] pacification of Liepāja." Kawelmacher telegram on 27 July 1941 read: "Jewish problem Libau largely solved by execution of about 1,100 male Jews by Riga SS commando on 24 and 25.7." In September 1939, U-boat commander Fritz-Julius Lemp of U-30 sank SS Athenia (1922) after mistaking it for

4706-593: A torpedo research program in Sweden where the G7e torpedo was developed. Even before the Nazi seizure of power on 30 January 1933 the German government decided on 15 November 1932 to launch a prohibited naval re-armament program that included U-boats, airplanes, and an aircraft carrier. The launching of the first pocket battleship , Deutschland in 1931 (as a replacement for the old pre-dreadnought battleship Preussen )

4887-505: A traditional war film should have a hero, a group, and an objective, and that the group should contain "an Italian, a Jew, a cynical complainer from Brooklyn, a sharpshooter from the mountains, a midwesterner (nicknamed by his state, 'Iowa' or 'Dakota'), and a character who must be initiated in some way". Films based on real commando missions, like The Gift Horse (1952) based on the St. Nazaire Raid , and Ill Met by Moonlight (1956) based on

5068-530: A version of this that doesn't have to be Saving Private Ryan . We can be Star Wars , as crazy as it is." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, stating, " Red Tails (is) entertaining. Audiences are likely to enjoy it. The scenes of aerial combat are skillfully done and exciting." In a similar vein, aviation historian Budd Davison, in agreement with fellow historian Barrett Tillman, although cognizant of

5249-412: Is a hotheaded and reckless pilot, while Easy is an alcoholic prone to self-doubt. After returning to base, Lightning becomes infatuated with Sofia, an Italian woman, and starts a relationship. When Lightning punches a white man who uses a racial slur at a "whites only" officer's club, he is sent to the brig and reprimanded by Colonel Bullard. Meanwhile, Bullard secures a chance to "light up the board" when

5430-501: Is argument, this has been noted. The main combat ships of the Kriegsmarine (excluding U-boats): Construction of Graf Zeppelin was started in 1936 and construction of an unnamed sister ship was started two years later in 1938, but neither ship was completed. In 1942 conversion of three German passenger ships ( Europa , Potsdam , Gneisenau ) and two unfinished cruisers, the captured French light cruiser De Grasse and

5611-494: Is injured by anti-aircraft fire and suffers impaired vision in one eye. Easy reluctantly allows Ray Gun to continue flying. Impressed with the Tuskegee Airmen's performance, the USAAF Bomber Command asks Bullard's group to escort Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers because of unacceptably high casualties. Bullard accepts on the condition his unit be supplied with the new North American P-51 Mustang . The tails of

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5792-640: Is leading a flight of the revolutionary new Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters. Despite being outclassed, the Tuskegee Airmen shoot down several of the jets, and escort a damaged B-17 back to Allied airspace. Pretty Boy nearly shoots down Easy, but at the last moment, Lightning attacks Pretty Boy head-on, shooting him down and killing him. Although victorious, Lightning is mortally wounded and his Mustang crashes. Easy informs Sofia about Lightning's death, and consequently overcomes his alcoholism. At Lightning's funeral, Ray Gun returns, having survived his escape from German captivity, invoking Lightning's memory. Ultimately,

5973-505: Is shot down and captured by a Wehrmacht patrol, while Deke crash-lands and nearly dies, but is rescued from his burning Mustang before the fuel tank explodes. As a result of his injuries, Deke is medically discharged . Ray Gun is taken to Stalag 18, a German POW camp. A group of POWs recruit him, as they believe that being African American, he cannot be mistaken for a German spy. Easy blames himself for Ray Gun's apparent departure, and spirals deeper into alcoholism. Worried, Lightning makes

6154-519: Is significant understatement of both the obstacles the Tuskegee airmen faced and their actual accomplishments by rendering them as backdrop for a blackface , slapped-together remake of Top Gun ". Red Tails received a nomination at the 2012 Teen Choice Awards for " Choice Action Movie ", and was also nominated at the 2012 BET Awards for " Best Movie ". Later, in February 2013, Red Tails won

6335-501: Is still in dispute. At the end of webinars, host Brad Lang, the CAF Red Tail Squadron Leader, described the interaction as important to reconciling the historical record with the Red Tails film's essentially dramatic retelling of the Tuskegee Airmen saga. Both colonels also agreed that the discussions were important to resolving the controversy over the film. The movie has also been criticized for portraying

6516-664: The Algerian War (1954–1956). It was shot on location as an Italo-Algerian co-production. It had the black and white newsreel style of Italian neorealism , and even-handedly depicts violence on both sides. It won various awards including Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival . It was attacked by French critics and was for five years banned in France as well as Jamila, the Algerian (1958). Few films before

6697-411: The Battle of Stalingrad . Feature films made in the west during the war were subject to censorship and were not always realistic in nature. One of the first to attempt to represent violence, and which was praised at the time for "gritty realism", was Tay Garnett 's Bataan (1943). The depiction actually remained stylised. Jeanine Basinger gives as an example the "worst image for stark violence" when

6878-700: The German Mine Sweeping Administration (GMSA), which consisted of 27,000 members of the former Kriegsmarine and 300 vessels. The destroyers and the Soviet share light cruiser Nürnberg were all retired by the end of the 1950s, but five escort destroyers were returned from the French to the new West German Navy in the 1950s and three 1945 scuttled type XXI and XXIII U-boats were raised by West Germany and integrated into their new navy. In 1956, with West Germany's accession to NATO ,

7059-697: The Gneisenau was heavily damaged by a British air raid in 1942 and the Scharnhorst was sunk in the Battle of the North Cape in late 1943. The second pair were the 15-inch gun Bismarck class , consisting of the Bismarck and Tirpitz . The Bismarck was sunk on her first sortie into the Atlantic in 1941 ( Operation Rheinübung ) although she did sink the battlecruiser Hood and severely damaged

7240-658: The Indonesian war of independence (1945–1949). Two other films about the same period portray the Indonesian equivalent of the Chinese Long March : Usmar Ismail 's Darah dan Doa ( The Long March , literally "Blood and Prayer", 1950) and Mereka Kembali ( They Return , 1975). Each of these films interprets the past from the perspective of its own time. The more recent Merdeka (Freedom) trilogy (2009–2011), starting with Merah Putih ("Red and White",

7421-515: The Kriegsmarine in Norway were seldom involved in these attacks, because of the inferiority of German radar technology, and because Hitler and the leadership of the Kriegsmarine feared losses of these precious ships. The most effective of these attacks was the near destruction of Convoy PQ 17 in July 1942. Later in the war German attacks on these convoys were mostly reduced to U-boat activities and

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7602-414: The Kriegsmarine were modern ships: fast, well-armed, and well-armoured. This had been achieved by concealment but also by deliberately flouting World War I peace terms and those of various naval treaties. However, the war started with the German Navy still at a distinct disadvantage in terms of sheer size with what were expected to be its primary adversaries – the navies of France and Great Britain. Although

7783-705: The Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. The film cuts to an (American) "helicopter-eye view", contrasting painfully with the human tenderness seen earlier. Dino Mustafić's Remake (2003), written by Zlatko Topčić , tells the parallel coming-of-age stories of a father living in Sarajevo during World War II and his son living through the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War . According to Topčić,

7964-533: The NAACP Image Award in the categories of " Outstanding Motion Picture " and " Outstanding Independent Motion Picture " at the 44th NAACP Image Awards . In addition, George Lucas was honoured with the "Vanguard Award". The film was also nominated for " Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture " and " Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture ", while Ne-Yo was nominated for " Outstanding Duo or Group ". Red Tails portrays largely fictional events based on

8145-612: The Reichsmarine was renamed as the Kriegsmarine . In April 1939, as tensions escalated between the United Kingdom and Germany over Poland , Hitler unilaterally rescinded the restrictions of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. The building-up of the German fleet in the time period of 1935–1939 was slowed by problems with marshaling enough manpower and material for ship building. This was because of

8326-638: The Second World War came from Britain and combined the functions of documentary and propaganda. Films such as The Lion Has Wings and Target for Tonight were made under the control of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information. The British film industry began to combine documentary techniques with fictional stories in films like Noël Coward and David Lean 's In Which We Serve (1942)—"the most successful British film of

8507-729: The Weimar Republic . The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches , along with the Heer and the Luftwaffe , of the Wehrmacht , the German armed forces from 1935 to 1945. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles , the Kriegsmarine grew rapidly during German naval rearmament in the 1930s. The 1919 treaty had limited the size of the German navy and prohibited

8688-857: The Western Desert of North Africa and the Pacific in the Second World War, Vietnam , or the Soviet–Afghan War ; and films set in specific domains of war, such as the infantry, the air, at sea, in submarines or at prisoner of war camps. The war film genre is not necessarily tightly defined: the American Film Institute , for example, speaks of "films to grapple with the Great War" without attempting to classify these. However, some directors and critics have offered at least tentative definitions. The director Sam Fuller defined

8869-441: The battle of the Atlantic . Others, like The Dam Busters (1954), with its exciting tale of the inventor Barnes Wallis 's unorthodox bouncing bomb and its distinctive theme music , were true stories. The Dam Busters became the most popular film in Britain in 1955, and remained a favourite as of 2015 with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes , though, partly because it celebrated an "exclusively British [victory]", it failed in

9050-414: The evacuation of East Prussia and Danzig from January to May 1945. It was during this activity that the catastrophic sinking of several large passenger ships occurred: Wilhelm Gustloff and Goya were sunk by Soviet submarines, while Cap Arcona was sunk by British bombers, each sinking claiming thousands of civilian lives. The Kriegsmarine also provided important assistance in the evacuation of

9231-480: The genre by saying that "a war film's objective, no matter how personal or emotional, is to make a viewer feel war." John Belton identified four narrative elements of the war film within the context of Hollywood production: a) the suspension of civilian morality during times of war, b) primacy of collective goals over individual motivations, c) rivalry between men in predominantly male groups as well as marginalization and objectification of women, and d) depiction of

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9412-416: The "Hollywood treatment", had a caution to aviation enthusiasts looking for a faithful reenactment of the Tuskegee legend, "... buy some popcorn, lean back and enjoy, this is Hollywood telling a story, not making a documentary. Save your guffaws until afterward with your friends." Ina Diane Archer, daughter of Lee Archer (Tuskegee airman and advisor for Red Tails ), in writing for Film Comment , criticizes

9593-409: The 1950s and 1960s. War film production in the United Kingdom and United States reached its zenith in the mid-1950s. Its popularity in the United Kingdom was brought on by the critical and commercial success of Charles Frend 's The Cruel Sea (1953). Like others of the period, The Cruel Sea was based on a bestselling novel, in this case the former naval commander Nicholas Monsarrat 's story of

9774-436: The 332nd's base and, assuming Ray Gun to be dead, informs them about his sacrifice. The Tuskegee Airmen are tasked with escorting the first American bombers to attack Berlin, though for propaganda reasons they are only asked to escort the bombers on the first leg of their journey. When the fighter squadron meant to relieve them never arrives, Easy and his group choose to stay with the bombers. They are attacked by Pretty Boy, who

9955-483: The African Americans who followed the squadron's adventures." In the face of media criticism of the portrayals of the Tuskegee Airmen in Red Tails , a number of activists took to social media to protest against what was thought to be a racially tinged effort to denigrate the contribution of the wartime fighting unit. Beginning with statements to support the film made by surviving Tuskegee Airmen who had seen

10136-663: The American Indian Wars of the 19th century were called war films in the time before the First World War. The critic Julian Smith argues, on the contrary, that the war film lacks the formal boundaries of a genre like the Western , but that in practice, "successful and influential" war films are about modern wars, in particular World War II, with the combination of mobile forces and mass killing. The film scholar Kathryn Kane points out some similarities between

10317-733: The American market. A large number of war films were made in the 1955–1958 period in particular. In 1957 alone, Bitter Victory , Count Five and Die , The Enemy Below , Ill Met by Moonlight , Men in War , The One That Got Away , and Seven Thunders , and the highly successful, critically acclaimed pictures The Bridge on the River Kwai (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year ) and Paths of Glory were released. Some, such as Bitter Victory , focused more on

10498-755: The Americans. Similarly, the country's films about the Korean War show victory without help from the Chinese. The film scholar Johannes Schönherr concludes that the purpose of these films is "to portray North Korea as a country under siege", and that since the U.S. and its "puppet" South Korea invaded the North once, they would do so again. Gillo Pontecorvo 's dramatic The Battle of Algiers (( Italian : La battaglia di Algeri ; Arabic : معركة الجزائر ; French : La Bataille d'Alger ), 1966) portrayed events in

10679-530: The Atlantic coast at Brest were evacuated back to German ports for deployment to Norway. The ships had been repeatedly damaged by air attacks by the RAF , the supply ships to support Atlantic sorties had been destroyed by the Royal Navy, and Hitler now felt that Norway was the "zone of destiny" for these ships. The two battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen passed through

10860-411: The Battle of the Barents Sea, which convinced Hitler that large warships were useless. All engineering of the aircraft carriers like catapults, arresting gears and so on were tested and developed at the Erprobungsstelle See Travemünde (Experimental Agency Sea in Travemünde) including the airplanes for the aircraft carriers, the Fieseler Fi 167 ship-borne biplane torpedo and reconnaissance bomber and

11041-536: The Central Powers and the Allies produced war documentaries. The films were also used as propaganda in neutral countries like the United States. Among these was a film shot on the Eastern Front by official war photographer to the Central Powers, Albert K. Dawson : The Battle and Fall of Przemysl (1915), depicting the Siege of Przemyśl , disastrous for the Austrians, with incidents reenacted using soldiers as extras. The 1915 Australian film Within Our Gates (also known as Deeds that Won Gallipoli ) by Frank Harvey

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11222-440: The Czech Republic, Italy, Croatia and England over a period from August to December. While shooting in the Czech Republic, the actors also underwent a "boot camp" program, during which they lived in similar conditions to the actual Tuskegee Airmen. Harkening back to his early work on Star Wars where he had studied World War II aerial footage to create the space aerobatics performed by Rebel X-wings and TIE fighters , Lucas

11403-641: The English Channel ( Channel Dash ) on their way to Norway despite British efforts to stop them. Not since the Spanish Armada in 1588 had any warships in wartime done this. It was a tactical victory for the Kriegsmarine and a blow to British morale, but the withdrawal removed the possibility of attacking allied convoys in the Atlantic with heavy surface ships. With the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 Britain started to send Arctic convoys with military goods around Norway to support their new ally. In 1942 German forces began heavily attacking these convoys, mostly with bombers and U-boats. The big ships of

11584-412: The German Navy was heavily involved in the invasion of Norway , where it suffered significant losses, which included the heavy cruiser Blücher sunk by artillery and torpedoes from Norwegian shore batteries at the Oscarsborg Fortress in the Oslofjord . Ten destroyers were lost in the Battles of Narvik (half of German destroyer strength at the time), and two light cruisers, the Königsberg which

11765-427: The German fleet as the war progressed. Though six major units of the Kriegsmarine were sunk during the war (both Bismarck -class battleships and both Scharnhorst -class battleships, as well as two heavy cruisers), there were still many ships afloat (including four heavy cruisers and four light cruisers) as late as March 1945. Some ship types do not fit clearly into the commonly used ship classifications. Where there

11946-465: The German fleet at the beginning of the war was not even 20% of Plan Z. On 1 September 1939, the navy still had a total personnel strength of only 78,000, and it was not at all ready for a major role in the war. Because of the long time it would take to get the Plan Z fleet ready for action and shortage in workers and material in wartime, Plan Z was essentially shelved in September 1939 and the resources allocated for its realisation were largely redirected to

12127-399: The German heavy cruiser Seydlitz , to auxiliary carriers was begun. In November 1942 the conversion of the passenger ships was stopped because these ships were now seen as too slow for operations with the fleet. But conversion of one of these ships, the Potsdam , to a training carrier was begun instead. In February 1943 all the work on carriers was halted because of the German failure during

12308-487: The Golden Mulberry at the Udine Far East Film Festival, but was criticised for its nationalistic sympathy with kamikaze pilots. The wartime authorities in both Britain and America produced a wide variety of documentary films. Their purposes included military training, advice to civilians, and encouragement to maintain security. Since these films often carried messages, they grade into propaganda. Similarly, commercially produced films often combined information, support for

12489-407: The Japanese military and contended that the Japanese were victims of post-war vindictiveness and viciousness. Such films have, however, been subject to protest for revisionism . The Eternal Zero (2013) narrates the tale of a Zero fighter pilot who is considered a coward by his comrades, as he returns alive from his missions. It broke the record takings for a Japanese live action film, and won

12670-431: The Japanese state as one great family and the Japanese people as an "innocent, suffering, self-sacrificing people". Dower comments that the perversity of this image "is obvious: it is devoid of any recognition that, at every level, the Japanese also victimized others." According to Andrew Pulver of The Guardian , the public fascination with war films became an "obsession", with over 200 war films produced in each decade of

12851-425: The Lucas-directed reshoots. In April 2009, Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. Lee A. Archer, Jr. was appointed an advisor for Red Tails . He died in 2010 while the film was in post-production, and the final credits bear a tribute to him. Lucas covered the cost of production with his own money, and provided a further US$ 35 million for distribution. In an interview on The Daily Show on January 9, 2012, Lucas stated that

13032-603: The Maine Victims , Blanket-Tossing of a New Recruit , and Soldiers Washing Dishes . These non-combat films were accompanied by "reenactments" of fighting, such as of Theodore Roosevelt 's "Rough Riders" in action against the Spanish, staged in the United States. During the First World War, many films were made about life in the war. Topics included prisoners of war, covert operations, and military training. Both

13213-427: The Mediterranean submarines made it back to their home bases, as they were all either sunk in battle or scuttled by their crews at the end of the war. In 1941, one of the four modern German battleships, Bismarck sank HMS  Hood while breaking out into the Atlantic for commerce raiding. The Bismarck was in turn hunted down by much superior British forces after being crippled by an air-launched torpedo. She

13394-461: The Navy'). Among the Kriegsmarine 's most significant ships were its U-boats, most of which were constructed after Plan Z was abandoned at the beginning of World War II. Wolfpacks were rapidly assembled groups of submarines which attacked British convoys during the first half of the Battle of the Atlantic , but this tactic was largely abandoned by May 1943 , when U-boat losses mounted. Along with

13575-780: The Republican attack were 31 dead and 110 wounded, 71 seriously, mostly burn victims. In retaliation the Admiral Scheer shelled Almeria on 31 May killing 19–20 civilians, wounding 50 and destroying 35 buildings. Following further attacks by Republican submarines against the Leipzig off the port of Oran between 15 and 18 June 1937 Germany withdrew from the Non-Intervention Patrol. U-boats also participated in covert action against Republican shipping as part of Operation Ursula . At least eight U-boats engaged

13756-615: The Russian people to battle, actual fighting, Germans surrendering and dead, and atrocities including murdered children and hanged civilians. It won an Academy Award in 1943 for best documentary. Newsreel cameras were similarly rushed to Stalingrad early in 1943 to record "the spectacle which greeted the Russian soldiers"—the starvation of Russian prisoners of war in the Voropovono camp by the German Sixth Army , defeated in

13937-629: The Second Sino–Japanese War from 1937 onwards did war film become a serious genre in China, with nationalistic films such as Shi Dongshan 's Protect Our Land (1938). The Chinese Civil War, too, attracted films such as Cheng Yin 's From Victory to Victory (1952). A more humanistic film set in the same period is Xie Jin 's The Cradle (1979), while more recent large-scale commercial films include Lu Chuan 's City of Life and Death (2009). Chinese directors have repeatedly attempted to cover

14118-458: The Second World War, for propaganda and other purposes. In Germany, the army high command brought out Sieg im Westen ("Victory in the West", 1941). Other Nazi propaganda films had varied subjects, as with Kolberg (1945), which depicts stubborn Prussian resistance in the Siege of Kolberg (1807) to the invading French troops under Napoleon . The propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels chose

14299-487: The Tuskegee Airmen are awarded the Presidential Unit Citation in honor of their achievements. When I first started working with George he told me about the story and the initial plan was to make this epic three- or four-hour movie. We wanted to start in the United States and show the full racism these guys had to go through, then go to the heroic story that we're telling now and then come back and do

14480-455: The Tuskegee Airmen are chosen to support the Allied landings at Anzio , Italy known as Operation Shingle . There, they battle Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters led by a German ace pilot they nickname "Pretty Boy." They manage to damage Pretty Boy's plane and raze the base that he retreats back to; he is stunned to see that his opponents were African-Americans. During their first victory, Ray Gun

14661-612: The Tuskegee Airmen fear they may never fight the Luftwaffe . The tight-knit group of Captain Martin "Easy" Julian, 1st Lt. Joe "Lightning" Little, 2nd Lt. Ray "Ray Gun" Gannon, 2nd Lt. Andrew "Smokey" Salem, and 2nd Lt. Samuel "Joker" George under the guidance of Major Emanuel Stance and Col. A.J. Bullard, face a white military bureaucracy still resistant to accepting black flyers as equals. Strife develops between friends Easy and Lightning, each of whom battles his own inner demons: Lightning

14842-485: The U-boats, surface commerce raiders (including auxiliary cruisers ) were used to disrupt Allied shipping in the early years of the war, the most famous of these being the heavy cruisers Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer and the battleship Bismarck . However, the adoption of convoy escorts , especially in the Atlantic, greatly reduced the effectiveness of surface commerce raiders against convoys. Following

15023-478: The United Kingdom ( Operation Sea Lion ) in the summer of 1940. There were serious doubts that the invasion sea routes could have been protected against British naval interference. The Fall of France and the conquest of Norway gave German submarines greatly improved access to British shipping routes in the Atlantic . At first, British convoys lacked escorts that were adequate either in numbers or equipment and, as

15204-663: The United States in December 1941 led to another phase of the Battle of the Atlantic. In Operation Drumbeat and subsequent operations until August 1942, a large number of Allied merchant ships were sunk by submarines off the US coast as the Americans had not prepared for submarine warfare, despite clear warnings (this was the so-called Second Happy Time for the German Navy). The situation became so serious that military leaders feared for

15385-443: The aircraft are painted bright red and become the unofficial name of the outfit. Noting the reckless aggression of previous escort pilots, Bullard orders his pilots to stay with the bombers at all costs. Their first escort mission is a success, and the 332nd downs multiple Luftwaffe aircraft without the loss of a single bomber. Lightning even takes his chances to attack a Kriegsmarine destroyer before returning to base. However, Ray Gun

15566-588: The atrocities committed by the Japanese during the Nanjing Massacre (1937–1938), with films such as the political melodrama Massacre in Nanjing , Mou Tun Fei 's docudrama Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre , and the "contrived Sino–Japanese romance" Don't Cry, Nanking . Zhang Yimou 's epic Chinese film Flowers of War (2011), based on Geling Yan 's novel, portrays the violent events through

15747-664: The attempted invasion of the Russian city of Novgorod by the Teutonic Knights . By April 1939 the film had been seen by 23,000,000 people. In 1941 the director and three others were awarded the Stalin Prize for their contributions. The film features a musical score by the classical composer Sergei Prokofiev , considered by artists such as the composer André Previn the best ever written for cinema. Russell Merritt, writing in Film Quarterly , describes it as

15928-652: The battleship Tirpitz , was stationed in Norway as a threat to Allied shipping and also as a defence against a potential Allied invasion. When she was sunk, after several attempts, by British bombers in November 1944 ( Operation Catechism ), several British capital ships could be moved to the Far East. From late 1944 until the end of the war, the surviving surface fleet of the Kriegsmarine (heavy cruisers: Admiral Scheer , Lützow , Admiral Hipper , Prinz Eugen , light cruisers: Nürnberg , Köln , Emden )

16109-743: The battleship Prince of Wales , while the Tirpitz was based in Norwegian ports during most of the war as a fleet in being, tying up Allied naval forces, and subject to a number of attacks by British aircraft and submarines. More battleships were planned (the H-class), but construction was abandoned in September 1939. The World War I-era pre-dreadnought battleships Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein were used mainly as training ships, although they also participated in several military operations, with

16290-569: The beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. But it was just so unwieldy and also at that time, there was no way to have a roadshow three-hour movie in American cinemas. Every epic film had been a financial disaster, and we felt there just wasn't an audience we could get the film out to. Then we got heavily into Young Indiana Jones , which ran for three or four years, then the Star Wars Special Editions and

16471-497: The best of popular Indonesian cinema". It was the first Indonesian film to become well known internationally. War has been the Soviet Union's cinema's major genre, becoming known indeed as the "cinema front", and its war films ranged from grim portrayals of atrocities to sentimental and even quietly subversive accounts. Leonid Lukov 's popular and "beautiful" Two Warriors (1943) depicted two stereotypical Soviet soldiers,

16652-640: The brokering of the International Non-Intervention Patrol to enforce an international arms embargo, the Kriegsmarine was allotted the patrol area between Cabo de Gata (Almeria) and Cabo de Oropesa . Numerous vessels served as part of these duties including Admiral Graf Spee . On 29 May 1937 the Deutschland was attacked off Ibiza by two bombers from the Republican Air Force . Total casualties from

16833-740: The building of submarines . Kriegsmarine ships were deployed to the waters around Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) under the guise of enforcing non-intervention , but in reality supporting the Nationalists against the Spanish Republicans . In January 1939, Plan Z , a massive shipbuilding programme, was ordered, calling for surface naval parity with the British Royal Navy by 1944. When World War II broke out in September 1939, Plan Z

17014-470: The capture of the German commander of Crete, inspired fictional adventure films such as The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Train (1964), and Where Eagles Dare (1968). These used the war as a backdrop for spectacular action. Darryl F. Zanuck produced the 178 minute documentary drama The Longest Day (1962), based on the first day of the D-Day landings , achieving commercial success and Oscars. It

17195-562: The colours of the flag of the new Indonesia), revisits the campaign for independence through the lives of a diverse group of cadets who become guerillas. Karya's November 1828 (1979) looks at Indonesia's struggle for independence through historical drama about the Java or Diponegoro War (1825–1830), though the colonial enemy was the same, the Dutch . Deanne Schultz considered it "a valuable interpretation" of Indonesian history that "embodies

17376-494: The comment that "for all its epic pretensions (as if epic were a matter of running time, tumescent music and earnest voice-over pronouncements), the movie works best as a bang-and-boom action picture". Steven Spielberg 's Saving Private Ryan (1998) uses hand-held camera, sound design, staging, and increased audio-visual detail to defamiliarise viewers accustomed to conventional combat films, so as to create what film historian Stuart Bender calls "reported realism", whether or not

17557-804: The common Japanese soldier as an individual and as a family man, and even enemy Chinese soldiers are presented as individuals, sometimes fighting bravely. Once war with the United States was declared, the Japanese conflict became known as the Pacific War . Japanese film critics worried that even with Western film techniques, their film output failed to represent native Japanese values. The historian John Dower found that Japanese wartime films had been largely forgotten, as "losers do not get reruns", yet they were so subtle and skilful that Frank Capra thought Chocolate and Soldiers unbeatable. Heroes were typically low-ranking officers, not samurai , calmly devoted to his men and his country. These films did not personalise

17738-461: The construction of U-boats, which would be ready for war against the United Kingdom more quickly. The Kriegsmarine took part in the Battle of Westerplatte and the Battle of the Danzig Bay during the invasion of Poland . In 1939, major events for the Kriegsmarine were the sinking of the British aircraft carrier HMS  Courageous and the British battleship HMS  Royal Oak and

17919-670: The cost of authenticity. Although the 1918 Finnish Civil War between Whites and Reds remained a controversial topic a century later in Finland , many Finnish filmmakers have taken up the subject, often basing their work on a book. In 1957, Toivo Särkkä 's 1918 , based on Jarl Hemmer 's play and novel, was screened at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival . Recent films include Lauri Törhönen 's 2007 The Border , and Aku Louhimies 's 2008 Tears of April , based on Leena Lander 's novel. Perhaps

18100-492: The destructive impact of American military presence on village life. The violent action films Shiri (1999) and Joint Security Area (2000) presented North Korea in a favourable light. Films in North Korea were made by government film studios and had clear political messages. The first was My Home Village (1949), on the liberation of Korea from the Japanese, presented as the work of Kim Il Sung without help from

18281-688: The development and deployment of midget submarines like the Molch and Seehund . In the last stage of the war, the Kriegsmarine also organised a number of divisions of infantry from its personnel. Between 1943 and 1945, a group of U-boats known as the Monsun Boats ( Monsun Gruppe ) operated in the Indian Ocean from Japanese bases in the occupied Dutch East Indies and Malaya . Allied convoys had not yet been organised in those waters, so initially many ships were sunk. However, this situation

18462-591: The end of World War II in 1945, the Kriegsmarine 's remaining ships were divided up among the Allied powers and were used for various purposes including minesweeping . Some were loaded with superfluous chemical weapons and scuttled. Under the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, Germany was only allowed a minimal navy of 15,000 personnel, six capital ships of no more than 10,000 tons, six cruisers , twelve destroyers , twelve torpedo boats , and no submarines or aircraft carriers . Military aircraft were also banned, so Germany could have no naval aviation . Under

18643-401: The enemy and therefore lacked hatred, though Great Britain could figure as the "cultural enemy". For Japanese film-makers, war was not a cause but more like a natural disaster, and "what mattered was not whom one fought but how well". Asian enemies, especially the Chinese, were often portrayed as redeemable and even possible marriage partners. Japanese wartime films do not glorify war, but present

18824-503: The entire breadth of the war. Some films deal with the human aspects of the war, such as The Red Badge of Courage (1951), or Shenandoah (1965), on the tragedy that the war inflicted on the civilian population. Ken Burns 's The Civil War is the most-watched documentary in the history of PBS . The first war films come from the Spanish–American War of 1898. Short "actualities"—documentary film-clips—included Burial of

19005-554: The exploits of the Tuskegee airmen, although many viewers were left with the impression that the film was entirely historically accurate. Through a series of three webinars , entitled: "Tuskegee Airman Webinars – 'Was the Movie Accurate'?" sponsored by the Commemorative Air Force 's Red Tail Squadron , surviving Tuskegee Airmen Colonel Charles McGee and Colonel Harold Brown provided perspectives related to

19186-513: The eyes of a 13-year-old girl. Many Indonesian films deal with the occupation of the archipelago by the Japanese during the Second World War. Teguh Karya 's Doea Tanda Mata ( Mementos , literally "Two Eye Marks", 1985) covers the limited nationalist resistance to Dutch colonial rule in the 1930s. A third group of films such as Enam Djam di Jogja ( Six Hours in Yogyakarta , 1951) and Serangan Fajar ( Attack at Dawn , 1983) covers

19367-463: The facts", yet imply that "their version is as good as the truth". For example, he calls the 2000 American film U-571 a "shameless deception" for pretending that a US warship had helped to win the Battle of the Atlantic—seven months before America entered the war. He is equally critical of Christopher Nolan 's 2017 film Dunkirk with its unhistorically empty beaches, low-level air combat over

19548-848: The fate of the principal characters". This in turn pushes combat scenes to the climactic ends of war films. Not all critics agree, either, that war films must be about 20th-century wars. James Clarke includes Edward Zwick 's Oscar-winning Glory (1990) among the war films he discusses in detail; it is set in the American Civil War , and he lists six other films about that war which he considers "notable". The screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies war films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy , claiming that all feature-length narrative films can be classified as belonging to one of them. The British military historian Antony Beevor "despair[s]" at how film-makers from America and Britain "play fast and loose with

19729-512: The fighting, the successful South Korean action film Piagol about leftist guerrilla atrocities encouraged other film-makers. The 1960s military government punished pro-communist film-makers and gave Grand Bell Awards to films with the strongest anti-communist message. The Taebaek Mountains (1994) dealt with leftists from the south who fought for the communists, while Silver Stallion (1991) and Spring in My Hometown (1998) showed

19910-765: The film Pearl Harbor 's US-biased portrayal of events is a compensation for technical assistance received from the US armed forces, noting that the premiere was held on board a U.S. Navy carrier. In another case, the U.S. Navy objected to elements of Crimson Tide , especially mutiny on board an American naval vessel, so the film was produced without their assistance. The film historian Jonathan Rayner observes that such films "have also clearly been intended to serve vital propagandist, recruitment and public relations functions". The first Chinese war films were newsreels like Battle of Wuhan (1911) and Battle of Shanghai (1913). Still in films such as Xu Xinfu 's Battle Exploits (1925), war featured mainly as background. Only with

20091-405: The film a positive review; the average rating was 5.2/10. The site's consensus reads: "Despite a worthy fact-based story and obvious good intentions, Red Tails suffers from one-dimensional characters, corny dialogue, and heaps of clichés." On Metacritic , the film also holds a score of 46 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave

20272-589: The film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. The main criticism was directed to the tone of the film; Stephen Holden in The New York Times review, noted, "In structure and tone, Red Tails proudly harks back to the 1940s and '50s, when good guys were good, and bad guys bad." In rebuttal, co-writer Aaron McGruder commented on the film's tone: "Some people are going to like this tonal choice and some people are going to say, 'Oh it should've been heavier and it should've been more dramatic.' But there's

20453-715: The film in previews, and spurred by the comments made by Lucas in a candid interview on The Daily Show where the producer openly discussed the difficulties of trying to get Red Tails made over the past 23 years, a Facebook campaign was started. In the Oakland, California premiere, two sold-out screenings were a testament to the success of the campaign. Effie Tesfahun, one of the organizers, explained, "When [Lucas] said Hollywood does not want to touch black films, it really hit me ... I thought we should get together and all go and support [this film]. Regardless of what Hollywood thinks, we all want to see positive messages of black people in

20634-407: The film's disconnect between aerial scenes and the rest of the film, saying, "One longs for more scenes between the ensemble on the ground, but the emphasis on aerial (and digital) technology leaves the characters without context. There's a particularly troubling absence of black women (but for a painting on Lightning's plane) who go unmentioned—no gal back home? no sisters, no Mamas?—nor do we ever see

20815-405: The film's interpretation. Although discussions as to use of equipment and dates were mentioned, three claims made in the film were the most contentious: the number of losses suffered by bomber crews under escort, the encounters with Luftwaffe jet fighters and the overall record established by the Tuskegee Airmen. According to period records, it was long believed that the Tuskegee Airmen did not lose

20996-556: The first formal unit of the Union Army during the American Civil War to be made up entirely of Black volunteers. Some films such as Gettysburg focused on a single battle during the war, or even on a single incident, like the French short film La Rivière du Hibou ( An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ) and Disney 's The Great Locomotive Chase (1956). Others like the 1993 miniseries North and South spanned

21177-602: The fleeing German civilians of Pomerania and Stettin in March and April 1945. A desperate measure of the Kriegsmarine to fight the superior strength of the Western Allies from 1944 was the formation of the Kleinkampfverbände (Small Battle Units). These were special naval units with frogmen , manned torpedoes, motorboats laden with explosives and so on. The more effective of these weapons and units were

21358-463: The futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and the moral and human issues raised by war. War films are often categorized by their milieu, such as the Korean War ; the most popular subjects are the Second World War and the American Civil War . The stories told may be fiction , historical drama , or biographical . Critics have noted similarities between the Western and

21539-508: The greatest screenplay ever written for the motion-picture medium"; Richard Attenborough 's satirical anti-war musical comedy based on Joan Littlewood 's play of the same name, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969); Spielberg's 2011 war drama War Horse was based on Michael Morpurgo 's children's novel of the same name . Many of the films promoted as "documentaries" added context to authentic battlefield scenes by staging critical events, and invented episodes and dialog to enhance excitement at

21720-407: The historical subject as suitable for the worsening situation facing Nazi Germany when it was filmed from October 1943 to August 1944. At over eight million marks, using thousands of soldiers as extras and 100 railway wagonloads of salt to simulate snow, it was the most costly German film made during the war. The actual siege ended with the surrender of the town; in the film, the French generals abandon

21901-464: The last of the traditional war films, while the controversy around the help given by the U.S. Army and Zanuck's "disregard for Pentagon relations" changed the way that Hollywood and the Army collaborated. Zanuck, by then an executive at 20th Century Fox , set up an American–Japanese co-production for Richard Fleischer 's Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) to depict what "really happened on December 7, 1941" in

22082-460: The late 1970s about the Vietnam War actually depicted combat; exceptions include The Green Berets (1968). Critics such as Basinger explain that Hollywood avoided the subject because of opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War , making the subject divisive; in addition, the film industry was in crisis, and the army did not wish to assist in making anti-war films. From

22263-798: The late 1970s, independently financed and produced films showed Hollywood that Vietnam could be treated in film. Successful but very different portrayals of the war in which America had been defeated included Michael Cimino 's The Deer Hunter (1978), and Francis Ford Coppola 's Apocalypse Now (1979). With the shift in American politics to the right in the 1980s, military success could again be shown in films such as Oliver Stone 's Platoon (1986), Stanley Kubrick 's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and John Irvin 's Hamburger Hill (1987). The Vietnamese director Nguyễn Hồng Sến  [ vi ] 's The Abandoned Field: Free Fire Zone ( Cánh đồng hoang , 1979) gives an "unnerving and compelling .. subjective-camera-eye-view" of life under helicopter fire in

22444-455: The latter bearing the distinction of firing the opening shots of World War II. Zähringen and Hessen were converted into radio-guided target ships in 1928 and 1930 respectively. Hannover was decommissioned in 1931 and struck from the naval register in 1936. Plans to convert her into a radio-controlled target ship for aircraft was cancelled because of the outbreak of war in 1939. Three O-class battlecruisers were ordered in 1939, but with

22625-472: The long delay in the production of the film was because major film studios balked at financing and marketing a film with an "all-black" cast and "no major white roles." He went on to explain that studios receive "60% of their profit" from overseas, and the studios feel there is no market there for films with all-black casts. Red Tails is the last film Lucasfilm made independently before being acquired by The Walt Disney Company on October 30, 2012. The film had

22806-558: The loss of Admiral Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate . Submarine attacks on Britain's vital maritime supply routes ( Battle of the Atlantic ) started immediately at the outbreak of war, although they were hampered by the lack of well placed ports from which to operate. Throughout the war the Kriegsmarine was responsible for coastal artillery protecting major ports and important coastal areas. It also operated anti-aircraft batteries protecting major ports. In April 1940,

22987-535: The many other films that are only just war films. However, other critics such as Russell Earl Shain propose a far broader definition of war film, to include films that deal "with the roles of civilians, espionage agents, and soldiers in any of the aspects of war (i.e. preparation, cause, prevention, conduct, daily life, and consequences or aftermath.)" Neale points out that genres overlap, with combat scenes for different purposes in other types of film, and suggests that war films are characterised by combat which "determines

23168-517: The mass of the allied freighters reached their destination in Soviet ports. The Battle of the Barents Sea in December 1942 was an attempt by a German naval surface force to attack an Allied Arctic convoy. However, the advantage was not pressed home and they returned to base. There were serious implications: this failure infuriated Hitler, who nearly enforced a decision to scrap the surface fleet. Instead, resources were diverted to new U-boats, and

23349-534: The metaphor of hunting to criticise the aggressiveness of Spanish fascism . It won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival in 1966. Ken Loach 's Land and Freedom ( Tierra y Libertad , 1995), loosely based on George Orwell 's Homage to Catalonia , follows a British communist through the war to reveal the painful contradictions within the anti-fascist Republican side. Samuel Fuller 's The Steel Helmet (1951)

23530-665: The most famous film about the Finnish Civil War is Edvin Laine 's 1968 Here, Beneath the North Star , based on the first two books of Väinö Linna 's Under the North Star trilogy; it describing the civil war from the losing side, Finland's Red Guards . The Spanish Civil War has attracted directors from different countries. Sam Wood 's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), based on Ernest Hemingway 's book of

23711-501: The movies ... We need to speak, and speak loud, and speak with our dollars, because that's where people pay attention, when you start talking with your money," Tesfahun said. "We are sending a message that this is what we want." Adolph Reed , professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, said the film "trivializes segregation in the military by reducing it to a matter of bad or outmoded attitudes. The ironic effect

23892-595: The naval versions of two key early war Luftwaffe aircraft: the Messerschmitt Bf 109 T fighter and the Junkers Ju 87 C Stuka dive bomber. The Kriegsmarine completed four battleships during its existence. The first pair were the 11-inch gun Scharnhorst class , consisting of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , which participated in the invasion of Norway in 1940, and then in commerce raiding until

24073-495: The number of Allied ships sunk started to decrease. Radar, longer range air cover, sonar , improved tactics, and new weapons all contributed. German technical developments, such as the Schnorchel , attempted to counter these. Near the end of the war a small number of the new Elektroboot U-boats (types XXI and XXIII ) became operational, the first submarines designed to operate submerged at all times. The Elektroboote had

24254-465: The popular Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) starring John Wayne . U.S. Marines considered Sands of Iwo Jima visually authentic, but found Lewis Milestone's Battle Cry (1955), with its attention to the lives of the men, the more realistic film. The formula for a successful war film consisted, according to Lawrence Suid, of a small group of ethnically diverse men; an unreasonable senior officer; cowards became heroic, or died. Jeanine Basinger suggests that

24435-514: The portrayal is genuinely more realistic. Jeanine Basinger notes that critics experienced it as "groundbreaking and anti-generic", with, in James Wolcott's words, a "desire to bury the cornball, recruiting poster legend of John Wayne: to get it right this time"; and that combat films have always been "grounded in the need to help an audience understand and accept war". Its success revived interest in World War II films. Others tried to portray

24616-544: The possibility of winning a war against Great Britain at sea in the coming years. Therefore, he ordered plans for such a fleet from the Kriegsmarine . From the three proposed plans (X, Y and Z) he approved Plan Z in January 1939. This blueprint for the new German naval construction program envisaged building a navy of approximately 800 ships during the period 1939–1947. Hitler demanded that the program be completed by 1945. The main force of Plan Z were six H-class battleships . In

24797-530: The potential to negate the Allied technological and tactical advantage, although they were deployed too late to see combat in the war. Following the capture of Liepāja in Latvia by the Germans on 29 June 1941, the town came under the command of the Kriegsmarine . On 1 July 1941, the town commandant Korvettenkapitän Stein ordered that ten hostages be shot for every act of sabotage, and further put civilians in

24978-487: The prequels, but throughout we did continue talking. However, once we finished Episode III we decided to go and meet people in the black community. Interview with Rick McCallum , June 9, 2012 George Lucas began developing Red Tails around 1988, after hearing of the Tuskegee Airmen from his friend George Hall, a photographer. At the time, the film was scheduled for release in 1992, with Kevin Sullivan writing

25159-480: The propaganda value of film, to publicise both victories and German atrocities. Ilya Kopalin's documentary Moscow Strikes Back ( Russian : Разгром немецких войск под Москвой , literally "The rout of the German troops near Moscow"), was made during the Battle of Moscow between October 1941 and January 1942. It depicted civilians helping to defend the city, the parade in Red Square and Stalin 's speech rousing

25340-456: The psychological battle between officers and egotism rather than events during the war. The Bridge on the River Kwai brought a new complexity to the war picture, with a sense of moral uncertainty surrounding war. By the end of the decade the "sense of shared achievement" which had been common in war films "began to evaporate", according to Pulver. Hollywood films in the 1950s and 1960s could display spectacular heroics or self-sacrifice, as in

25521-783: The reality of the war, as in Joseph Vilsmaier 's Stalingrad (1993), which The New York Times said "goes about as far as a movie can go in depicting modern warfare as a stomach-turning form of mass slaughter". Many war films have been produced with the cooperation of a nation's military forces. Since the Second World War, the United States Navy has provided ships and technical guidance for films such as Top Gun . The U.S. Air Force assisted with The Big Lift , Strategic Air Command and A Gathering of Eagles , which were filmed on Air Force bases; Air Force personnel appeared in many roles. Critics have argued that

25702-515: The region. The heavy cruisers Deutschland and Admiral Scheer , and the light cruiser Köln were the first to be sent in July 1936. These large ships were accompanied by the 2nd Torpedo-boat Flotilla. The German presence was used to covertly support Francisco Franco's Nationalists although the immediate involvement of the Deutschland was humanitarian relief operations and evacuating 9,300 refugees, including 4,550 German citizens. Following

25883-475: The regular DVD edition is a series of "highlights" from Double Victory . War film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare , typically about naval , air , or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. Themes explored include combat , survival and escape, camaraderie between soldiers , sacrifice,

26064-399: The reintegration of veterans. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. The film critic Stephen Neale suggests that the genre is for the most part well defined and uncontentious, since war films are simply those about war being waged in the 20th century, with combat scenes central to the drama. However, Neale notes, films set in the American Civil War or

26245-683: The reshoots. It was filmed in March and July 2009. Red Tails was a personal project for Lucas, one that he had originally conceived in 1988. It is the first Lucasfilm production since the 1994 film Radioland Murders that is not associated with the Indiana Jones or Star Wars franchises. Terrence Howard had previously portrayed a Tuskegee pilot in Hart's War (2002), and Cuba Gooding Jr. had previously starred in The Tuskegee Airmen (1995), an HBO made-for-television film about

26426-516: The same group of pilots. In 1944, as the air war over Europe enters a deadly phase with increasing losses of Allied bombers, the 332d Fighter Group (the Tuskegee Airmen ) consisting of young African-American USAAF fighter pilots, after enduring racism throughout their recruitment and training in the Tuskegee training program , are sent into combat in Italy. Flying worn-out Curtiss P-40 Warhawk aircraft and chafing at their ground attack missions,

26607-599: The same name , portrays the fated romance between an American played by Gary Cooper and a partisan played by Ingrid Bergman against the backdrop of the civil war. The epic 168-minute film with its landscapes shot in Technicolor and a "beautiful" orchestral score was a success both with audiences and with critics. Alain Resnais 's Guernica (1950) uses Picasso 's 1937 painting of the same name to protest against war. Carlos Saura 's La Caza (The Hunt, 1966) uses

26788-531: The screenplay and Thomas Carter directing. Lucas originally conceived of the film as a long, detailed narrative similar to Lawrence of Arabia , and as a trilogy, but after multiple script drafts, he decided to focus on the combat portion of the story. He compared it to Tucker: The Man and His Dream as "a story too good to be true". In researching the film, Lucasfilm invited some of the surviving Tuskegee Airmen to Skywalker Ranch , where they were interviewed about their experiences during World War II. Lucasfilm

26969-460: The sea, and rescues mainly by the "little ships". Beevor feels, however, that Continental European film-makers are often "far more scrupulous"; for example, in his view the 2004 German film Downfall accurately depicted the historical events of Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker, and he considers the 1965 French film The 317th Platoon , set in Vietnam, "the greatest war movie ever made". The 1966 film The Battle of Algiers is, he argues,

27150-491: The service of Allied navies that lacked surface ships after the war. The training barque SSS Horst Wessel was recommissioned USCGC Eagle and remains in active service, assigned to the United States Coast Guard Academy . The British, French, and Soviet navies received the destroyers, and some torpedo boats went to the Danish and Norwegian navies. For the purpose of mine clearing, the Royal Navy employed German crews and minesweepers from June 1945 to January 1948, organised in

27331-471: The siege. For Japan, the war began with the undeclared war and invasion of China in 1937 , which the Japanese authorities called "The China Incident". The government dispatched a "pen brigade" to write and film the action in China with "humanist values". Tomotaka Tasaka 's Mud and Soldiers (1939) for instance, shot on location in China, Kōzaburō Yoshimura 's Legend of Tank Commander Nishizumi , and Sato Takeshi 's Chocolate and Soldiers (1938) show

27512-413: The simultaneous and rapid build-up of the German Army and Air Force which demanded substantial effort and resources. Some projects, like the D-class cruisers and the P-class cruisers , had to be cancelled. The first military action of the Kriegsmarine came during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Following the outbreak of hostilities in July 1936 several large warships of the German fleet were sent to

27693-401: The story is based on incidents from his own life. The Iraq War served as the background story of U.S. movies, like The Hurt Locker from 2008, Green Zone from 2010, and American Sniper from 2014. The War in Afghanistan since 2001 was depicted in various movies, among them Restrepo in 2010 and Lone Survivor from 2013. The first popular Allied war films made during

27874-424: The surface fleet became a lesser threat to the Allies. After December 1943 when Scharnhorst had been sunk in an attack on an Arctic convoy in the Battle of North Cape by HMS  Duke of York , most German surface ships in bases at the Atlantic were blockaded in, or close to, their ports as a fleet in being , for fear of losing them in action and to tie up British naval forces. The largest of these ships,

28055-430: The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor . The film, panned by Roger Ebert and The New York Times , was a major success in Japan. Its realistic-looking attack footage was reused in later films such as Midway (1976), The Final Countdown (1980), and Australia (2008). The story was revisited in Pearl Harbor (2001), described by The New York Times as a "noisy, expensive and very long new blockbuster", with

28236-437: The treaty Germany could only build new ships to replace old ones. All the ships allowed and personnel were taken over from the Kaiserliche Marine , which was renamed the Reichsmarine . From the outset, Germany worked to circumvent the military restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. The Germans continued to develop U-boats through a submarine design office in the Netherlands ( NV Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw ) and

28417-456: The unit's commander as only having a desk job when the actual commander, Lt. Col. (later Gen. ) Benjamin O. Davis Jr. flew many combat missions (because both black and white commanders needed such on-the-job training). Red Tails was released on DVD and Blu-ray /DVD combo, as well as via digital download, on May 22, 2012. It topped DVD and Blu-ray sale charts during its first week of release. The Blu-ray/DVD combo includes Double Victory ,

28598-453: The version of Plan Z drawn up in August 1939, the German fleet was planned to consist of the following ships by 1945: Personnel strength was planned to rise to over 200,000. The planned naval program was not very far advanced by the time World War II began. In 1939 two M-class cruisers and two H-class battleships were laid down and parts for two further H-class battleships and three O-class battlecruisers were in production. The strength of

28779-452: The war and was made in cooperation with the Army Air Corps. It proved a powerful recruiting tool. It became the first film (in any genre) to be awarded an Oscar for best picture. Later films of varied genres that deal with the First World War include David Lean 's "colossal epic", both war film and biopic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), shot in the then unfamiliar and exciting 70mm Technicolor , and described by Steven Spielberg as "maybe

28960-438: The war effort, and a degree of propaganda. Newsreels , ostensibly simply for information, were made in both Allied and Axis countries, and were often dramatised. More recently, in the Iran–Iraq War , Morteza Avini 's Ravayat-e Fath (Chronicles of Victory) television series combined front-line footage with commentary. Sergei Eisenstein 's 1938 historical drama Alexander Nevsky depicts Prince Alexander 's defeat of

29141-399: The war film genre and the Western. Both genres use opposing concepts like war and peace, civilization and savagery. War films usually frame World War II as a conflict between "good" and "evil" as represented by the Allied forces and Nazi Germany whereas the Western portrays the conflict between civilized settlers and the savage indigenous peoples. James Clarke notes the similarity between

29322-403: The war film. Nations such as China, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia have their own traditions of war film, centred on their own revolutionary wars but taking varied forms, from action and historical drama to wartime romance. Subgenres, not necessarily distinct, include anti-war , comedy , propaganda , and documentary . There are similarly subgenres of the war film in specific theatres such as

29503-576: The war years" — Millions Like Us (1943), and The Way Ahead (1944). In America, documentaries were produced in various ways: General Marshall commissioned the Why We Fight propaganda series from Frank Capra; the War Department's Information-Education Division started out making training films for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy; the Army made its own through the U.S. Signal Corps, including John Huston 's The Battle of San Pietro . Hollywood made films with propaganda messages about America's allies, such as Mrs. Miniver (1942), which portrayed

29684-436: The whole Allied strategy. The vast American ship building capabilities and naval forces were however now brought into the war and soon more than offset any losses inflicted by the German submariners. In 1942, the submarine warfare continued on all fronts, and when German forces in the Soviet Union reached the Black Sea , a few submarines were eventually transferred there. In February 1942, the three large warships stationed on

29865-454: The zone of targeting by declaring that Red Army soldiers were hiding among them in civilian attire. On 5 July 1941 Korvettenkapitän Brückner, who had taken over from Stein, issued a set of anti-Jewish regulations in the local newspaper, Kurzemes Vārds . Summarized, the regulations were as follows: On 16 July 1941, Fregattenkapitän Dr. Hans Kawelmacher was appointed the German naval commandant in Liepāja. On 22 July, Kawelmacher sent

30046-407: Was a step in the formation of a modern German fleet. The building of the Deutschland caused consternation among the French and the British as they had expected that the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles would limit the replacement of the pre-dreadnought battleships to coastal defence ships , suitable only for defensive warfare. By using innovative construction techniques, the Germans had built

30227-479: Was also given access to the original mission logbooks used by some of the pilots. A number of writers worked on the project until John Ridley was hired in 2007 to write the screenplay. Lucas held discussions with Samuel L. Jackson regarding Jackson possibly directing and acting in the film. Although Jackson praised the script, he did not commit to either role. Anthony Hemingway , a former production assistant for Lucas' The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series,

30408-425: Was bombed and sunk by Royal Navy aircraft in Bergen, and the Karlsruhe which was sunk off the coast of Kristiansand by a British submarine. The Kriegsmarine did in return sink some British warships during this campaign, including the aircraft carrier HMS  Glorious . The losses in the Norwegian Campaign left only a handful of undamaged heavy ships available for the planned, but never executed, invasion of

30589-440: Was credited to another U.S. unit much earlier in the war. The film also states in the epilogue that the Tuskegee Airmen established one of the best fighter records in the U.S. Air Force. The film notes, correctly, that 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses were awarded to the unit and 66 Tuskegee Airmen were killed in action. Officially, however, the Tuskegee Airmen did not produce a single fighter pilot ace, although Lee Archer 's record

30770-409: Was described by the Motion Picture News as "a really good war story, which is exceptional". The 1916 British film The Battle of the Somme , by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, combined documentary and propaganda, seeking to give the public an impression of what trench warfare was like. Much of the film was shot on location at the Western Front in France; it had

30951-421: Was familiar with World War II aerial combat. The Lucas template for photographing computer-generated imagery (CGI) dogfighting "involved lots of action, continuous motion, moving camera, streaks, loops and rolls, and all of the things aerial photography allows you to do in live action." Aerial scenes in Red Tails involved actors sitting in a gimbal-mounted cockpits (and mock-up fuselages and wings), in front of

31132-452: Was followed by large-scale but thoughtful films like Andrei Tarkovsky 's Ivan's Childhood (1962), and quasi- documentary all-star epics filmed in Europe such as Battle of the Bulge (1965), Battle of Britain (1969), The Battle of Neretva (1969), Midway (1976), and A Bridge Too Far (1977). In Lawrence Suid's view, The Longest Day "served as the model for all subsequent combat spectaculars". However, its cost also made it

31313-501: Was heavily engaged in providing artillery support to the retreating German land forces along the Baltic coast and in ferrying civilian refugees to the western Baltic Sea parts of Germany ( Mecklenburg , Schleswig-Holstein ) in large rescue operations. Large parts of the population of eastern Germany fled the approaching Red Army out of fear for Soviet retaliation (mass rapes, killings, and looting by Soviet troops did occur ). The Kriegsmarine evacuated two million civilians and troops in

31494-451: Was made during the Korean War (1950–1953). The critic Guy Westwell notes that it questioned the conduct of the war, as did later films like The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) and Pork Chop Hill (1959). Fuller agreed that all his films were anti-war. No Hollywood films about the Korean War did well at the box office; the historian Lary May suggested in 2001 that they reminded American viewers of "the only war we have lost". In 1955, after

31675-406: Was not formally declared, leading to the sinking of the USS  Reuben James . This course of events were the result of the American decision to support Britain with its Lend-Lease program and the subsequent decision to escort Lend-Lease convoys with US war ships through the western part of the Atlantic. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent German declaration of war against

31856-485: Was produced by Lucasfilm Ltd. and released by 20th Century Fox , and would be the last film Lucasfilm released before being purchased by The Walt Disney Company nine months later. This was Cuba Gooding Jr.'s first theatrically released film in five years since his starring role in 2007's Daddy Day Camp . John Ridley wrote the screenplay. Additional material was shot the following year with executive producer George Lucas as director and Aaron McGruder as writer of

32037-399: Was sentenced to 10 years in prison, reduced to 7 years on appeal, for the illegal sinking of ships and criminal negligence for failing to protect the downed crew of the SS Anglo Saxon . Ruckteschell died in prison in 1948. After the war, the German surface ships that remained afloat (only the cruisers Prinz Eugen and [Nürnberg] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |4= ( help ) , and

32218-427: Was shelved in favour of a crash building programme for submarines ( U-boats ) instead of capital surface warships, and land and air forces were given priority of strategic resources. The Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine (as for all branches of the armed forces during the period of absolute Nazi power) was Adolf Hitler , who exercised his authority through the Oberkommando der Marine ('High Command of

32399-408: Was soon remedied. During the later war years, the Monsun Boats were also used as a means of exchanging vital war supplies with Japan. During 1943 and 1944, due to Allied anti-submarine tactics and better equipment, the U-boat fleet started to suffer heavy losses. The turning point of the Battle of the Atlantic was during Black May in 1943, when the U-boat fleet started suffering heavy losses and

32580-423: Was subsequently scuttled after being rendered a burning wreck by two British battleships. In November 1941 during the Battle of the Mediterranean, German submarine U-331 sank the British battleship Barham , which had a magazine explosion and sank in minutes, with the loss of 862, or 2/3 of her crew. During 1941, the Kriegsmarine and the United States Navy became de facto belligerents , although war

32761-441: Was ultimately chosen to direct in 2008. Pre-production began in January 2009, with location scouting having taken place in June 2008 in Prague , Czech Republic , Italy and Croatia . Lucas invited storyboard artist David Russell (son of Tuskegee Airman James C. Russell) to design key aerial combat sequences. Production began in March 2009 with high-definition Sony F35 cameras used for principal photography, which took place in

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