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127-396: The Monuments Men is a 2014 war film directed by George Clooney and written and produced by Clooney and Grant Heslov . The film stars an ensemble cast including Clooney, Matt Damon , Bill Murray , John Goodman , Jean Dujardin , Bob Balaban , Hugh Bonneville and Cate Blanchett . The film is based on the 2007 non-fiction book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and

254-578: A "war propaganda film ". A 1978 Mondadori poll placed Alexander Nevsky among the world's 100 best motion pictures. Altaussee#Nazi repository for stolen art The municipality is located in the small Ausseerland-Region within the Styrian part of the Salzkammergut in the district of Liezen in Styria . Altaussee covers an area of 92.11 km ² and is located at 712 m above sea level on

381-677: A $ 70 million budget. In 1943, the Allies are making good progress driving back the Axis powers in Italy. Frank Stokes convinces President Roosevelt that victory will have little meaning if the artistic treasures of Western civilization are lost. Stokes is directed to assemble an Army unit nicknamed the "Monuments Men", comprising museum directors, curators, art historians, and an architect, to both guide Allied units and search for stolen art to return it to its rightful owners. In July 1944, Claire Simone,

508-531: 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

635-644: 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

762-424: 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

889-514: A carbonate rock. The age of these rocks are Triassic and Jurassic . The mountains themselves did not form until the Cenozoic , when immense forces between the colliding African and Eurasian plates caused the mountains to be uplifted. The limestones which make up the mountains are white to pale grey in colour, and formed relatively deep in the ancient Tethys Ocean . Because the rocks formed so deep, fossils are rare. However, corals are reported from

1016-482: 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

1143-495: A comprehensive ledger she has compiled, with valuable information on the stolen art and the rightful owners. Even as the team learns that the artwork is being stored in various mines and castles, it also learns that it must now compete against the Soviet Union, which is seizing artwork from its occupation zone of Germany as war reparations . Meanwhile, Colonel Wegner is systematically destroying whole art caches. Eventually,

1270-519: 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 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

1397-466: A curator in occupied France, is forced to assist Nazi officer Viktor Stahl in the theft of art , either for Adolf Hitler 's Führermuseum or as personal property of senior commanders such as Hermann Göring . All seems lost when she discovers that Stahl is taking her gallery's contents to Germany as the Allies approach Paris. She runs to the railyard to confront him, but can only watch as he departs aboard

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1524-493: A few minutes later, unusually high waves. Evaporites: Large evaporite reserves are present in the Sandling mountain, formed as a result of a major period of marine lowstand, when the sea level was low and the sea dried out. Panning and surface-level drift mining of the deposits dates back to Roman times, thanks to evidence from archaeological excavations in the 1990s, followed by similar local works from 200-400 AD. By 1147

1651-437: A kernel of history there, but The Monuments Men plays fast and loose with it in ways that are probably necessary to make the story work as a film, but the viewer ends up with a fairly confused notion of what the organisation Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA) was, and what it achieved. The real organisation was never a big one (a few dozen officers at most), but the film reduces it to just seven men to personalise

1778-631: A last refuge for Nazi party, government and army staffs. Also entire pro-fascist governments that had been used by the Nazis in the Balkans took refuge in the region. As of the end of the war, nine pro-Nazi governments in exile from Eastern Europe stayed in Altaussee. Günther Altenburg for example served as head the Department of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria and Romania in Altaussee, where he oversaw

1905-477: 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

2032-411: 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 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

2159-528: 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

2286-421: A satisfying plot. A TV series might have been a better vehicle for the "monuments men" stories than a feature film... The story is fascinating, but this film's good intentions are hampered by its lack of pace, direction, tone and properly fleshed-out characters." War film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare , typically about naval , air , or land battles, with combat scenes central to

2413-505: 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

2540-446: A workshop deep in the chambers. Post-war after recovery of the art, brine production resumed. The mines are still operational today, and brine is pumped to the market town of Ebensee . In 2008, 61 employees produced 1,506,000m³ of brine, with a salt content of 450,000 tons. It is for this reason that Altaussee, and other local towns and villages such as Hallstatt , are now part of the Salzkammergut region. The oldest settlement on

2667-419: Is based on real events, but the names of all characters were changed, and a number of further adjustments were made to the historical facts in the interests of drama. According to Clooney, "80 percent of the story is still completely true and accurate, and almost all of the scenes happened". The accounts of some events were altered to serve the film's dramatic portrayal of the retrieval of these treasures. During

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2794-559: Is killed in the attempt. Richard Campbell and Preston Savitz learn that Van Eyck 's Ghent Altarpiece was removed by the priests of Ghent Cathedral for safekeeping, but their truck was stopped and the panels taken. Eventually, they find and arrest Viktor Stahl, who is hiding as a farmer, when they identify the paintings in his house as masterpieces, at least one stolen from the Rothschild Collection . In December 1944, Walter Garfield and Jean Claude Clermont get lost in

2921-492: The Chicago Sun-Times called the film an "...engaging, shamelessly corny and entertaining World War II adventure inspired by true events"; he gave it 3 out of 4. Richard Corliss from Time stated that "...[r]ather than juicing each element to blockbuster volume, Clooney has delivered it in the tone of a memorial lecture, warm and ambling, given by one of the distinguished academics he put in his movie." The film

3048-664: 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

3175-463: 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

3302-753: The German Third Reich in 1938 the entire Ausseerland region (a small region in Styria consisting of Bad Aussee , Grundlsee and Altaussee) was incorporated into the new administrative unit Reichsgau Oberdonau ( Upper Austria ). The autonomy of the municipalities Bad Aussee, Grundlsee and Altaussee was dissolved and one single Bürgermeisterei (mayoralty) was established in Bad Aussee. The municipal offices of Altaussee and Grundlsee were henceforth field offices of Bad Aussee. The 29 country residences in possession of Jewish families were aryanized . In

3429-731: The Harz . The mines around Bad Grund , particularly the Wiemannsbucht and the Grube Hilfe Gottes, were used in the filming of outdoor scenes. Other outdoor locations were the towns of Lautenthal , Clausthal-Zellerfeld , Goslar , Halberstadt , Merseburg and Osterwieck . Some of the scenes, including flights and American war base footage, were filmed at Imperial War Museum Duxford , Cambridgeshire , UK. A farm in Ashford in Kent

3556-658: 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",

3683-838: 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 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

3810-705: 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,

3937-527: The Salzkammergut region. Production volumes in the following years quadruple, and employees double to 238. By 1938, the salt mine had come to the attention of Adolf Hitler . Located close to his intended museum complex in Linz , inside the mine the conditions were constant: between 40 and 47 degrees; about 65 percent humidity; with the deepest tunnels more than a mile inside the mountain, safe from enemy bombs. The Nazi's built floors, walls, and shelving as well as

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4064-572: 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

4191-518: The Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps ) and Anton Burger (Commandant of Theresienstadt concentration camp ), tried to go into hiding in the village. On 8 May 1945 a reconnaissance squadron of the U.S. Seventh Army reached the Ausseerland region followed by the main force of the U.S. Army on the next day. Previously to the arrival of the U.S. Army, a self-employed civilian government

4318-497: 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

4445-475: The cisleithanian part of the Austrian Empire and Altaussee became an autonomous political municipality. In the 19th century Altaussee evolved into a popular summer-resort. Especially writers and intellectuals, for example Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Jakob Wassermann , Theodor Herzl and Friedrich Torberg , spent their summer holidays in the small alpine village. After the annexation of Austria into

4572-473: 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

4699-493: The Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943." Historian Alex von Tunzelmann , noted several historical faults and said of the plot: "If you're getting the sense that the film is episodic and poorly structured, unfortunately you'd be right", and "There are far too many characters, so the screenplay splits them up into little groups and sends them off on various errands. Some of these are more exciting than others – but they do not add up to

4826-733: 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

4953-755: 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

5080-840: 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

5207-803: The Germany-impaired exiled governments of Bulgaria and Romania (see also: Bulgarian government-in-exile ). Ernst Kaltenbrunner , head of the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt , moved his headquarters from Berlin to the Villa Kerry in Altaussee in late April 1945. From here, with the help of Wilhelm Höttl , he was trying to contact the Western Allies to reach a separate peace. At the end of the war several high Nazi and SS officials, like August Eigruber , Hugo Jury , Adolf Eichmann , Franz Stangl (commandant of

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5334-635: 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

5461-460: The Great War" without attempting to classify these. However, some directors and critics have offered at least tentative definitions. The director Sam Fuller defined 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)

5588-712: The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter. It follows an Allied group from the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program that is given the task of finding and saving pieces of art and other culturally important items before Nazis destroy or steal them during World War II . The Monuments Men was co-produced by Columbia Pictures (in association with 20th Century Fox ) and Babelsberg Studio . It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $ 156.4 million worldwide against

5715-463: 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

5842-431: 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

5969-542: The Literatur museum inside, is in German. A saltmine tour through the Altaussee saltmine and the former Nazi Stolen Art Repository is available every hour in the summer. Hiking trails abound, with various gradings. They are marked with green and white signs. The lower ones are easy to follow while the more difficult routes are sometimes less well-marked. A paradise for outdoor enthusiasts and hikers. Flora and waterfalls make

6096-605: 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

6223-506: The Nazi period, a huge number of European art treasures pillaged by the Germans had been stored in the Altaussee salt mine near the town of Bad Aussee . In the film, it is stated that 'local miners' had blown up the mine to prevent the contents being destroyed. In 1945 a British Special Operations Executive mission, codenamed Bonzos and led by Albrecht Gaiswinkler , was responsible for saving

6350-700: The Nazis from destroying the contents, the team evacuates as much artwork as possible, including sculptures, the Ghent Altarpiece , and the Madonna and Child , before the Soviets arrive. Afterwards, Stokes reports back to President Truman that the team has recovered vast quantities of artwork and various other culturally significant items. As he requests to stay in Europe to oversee further searching and restoration, Truman asks Stokes if his efforts were worth

6477-410: The Nazis. These artworks were accumulated under the alias Sonderauftrag Linz (Special Commission: Linz) by Adolf Hitler and were intended for the planned Führermuseum in Linz , Austria. At the end of the war the entire depot included around 6,500 paintings, as well as many statues, furniture, weapons, coins, and libraries. After the occupation of Altaussee on 8 May 1945 by an American infantry unit,

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6604-615: 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

6731-629: 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

6858-458: 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

6985-504: 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 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

7112-448: The art depot was seized by the U.S. Army ( Monuments Men , events portrayed in the 2014 film The Monuments Men . A 7.5 km trail goes around the clear Lake Altaussee surrounded by 1838 m high Loser mountain the Trisslwand, the Tressenstein and other mountain ranges. Brown and white alpine-style houses with a beautiful church are in the center of town. The tourist bureau has a few English pamphlets, but most information, including

7239-411: 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

7366-475: 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

7493-436: 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,

7620-400: The border with Upper Austria . Due to the alpine location and the strong share of the Totes Gebirge about half of the municipal area consists of alpine wasteland, the rest are forests, grasslands and other land forms. Nearby towns are Bad Aussee , Hallstatt , Bad Goisern , Bad Ischl and Gmunden . The characteristic pale grey mountains which surround Altaussee are made of limestone ,

7747-419: 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

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7874-704: 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

8001-461: 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

8128-424: 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 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

8255-494: 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

8382-745: 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

8509-535: 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

8636-421: The countryside and blunder into a firefight. Clermont is mortally wounded and dies when Garfield is unable to find medical help. Meanwhile, Simone reconsiders her refusal after Granger shows her the Nero Decree , which orders the destruction of all German possessions if Hitler dies or Germany falls, and she sees him return a painting looted from a Jewish family to its rightful place in their empty home. She provides

8763-415: The coverage of his claim to power he built the small Pflindsberg castle on a hill east of the Altaussee village. He had to withdraw in 1254 and the region returned to Styria . In the following centuries the Pflindsberg castle developed into a regional seignory with the right to hold high justice . It was administered by an official of the styrian Landesfürst . In 1848 manorialism was abolished in

8890-411: The destruction of the artworks held there, and were able to hand over "a number of Nazi treasure hoards, including a good copy of the Mona Lisa (which is subject of debate) and the Austrian Imperial Crown Jewels ". Other artworks rescued included Hubert and Jan van Eyck 's Ghent Altarpiece . Nigel Pollard of Swansea University was critical of the lack of historical accuracy, and wrote: "There's

9017-433: 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

9144-416: 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, 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

9271-401: 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

9398-503: 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

9525-513: 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

9652-516: 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

9779-512: 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

9906-813: 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

10033-526: The film a grade "B+" on scale of A to F. Peter Travers in Rolling Stone gave it three out of four stars, noting that while some of the dialogue and emotions seemed inauthentic, the physical production and cinematography were "exquisite," with shooting done on locations in Germany and England. In comparing the film with contemporary ones, he considered it a "proudly untrendy, uncynical movie," where

10160-487: The film has a 31% approval rating, based on 257 reviews, with an average score of 5.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Its intentions are noble and its cast is impressive, but neither can compensate for The Monuments Men ' s stiffly nostalgic tone and curiously slack narrative." On Metacritic , the film has a weighted average score of 52 out of 100, based on reviews from 43 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave

10287-754: The film was funded by the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) with €8.5 million, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg as well as Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg . Casting was held in February 2013 for thousands of extras for the military scenes. Principal photography began in early March 2013, at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam , Germany, in the Berlin-Brandenburg region, and

10414-609: 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

10541-482: The following time the community attracted many top Nazis who inhabited these aryanized country estates. For example, three Nazi Gauleiter regularly spent their holidays in Altaussee: August Eigruber , Konrad Henlein and Hugo Jury . The Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels spent his holidays in an "aryanized" country residence at the neighbouring Grundlsee. As of spring 1944, there

10668-478: 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 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

10795-508: 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

10922-640: The ground of the modern village of Altaussee dates back to the Roman rule (200-400 AD). However, there is no historical continuity of a settlement before the Middle Ages. The salt mine on the ground of the modern village was first documented in 1147 AD, the village itself in 1265. Around 1250 Philipp of Spanheim , the Archbishop-elect of Salzburg , occupied the Ausseerland and the Ennstal . For

11049-407: 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

11176-582: The hunt for the looted art: five Americans, one British officer, the first to be killed off (Hugh Bonneville), and a Free French officer, marginalising the British role in the establishment of the organisation. This is presented as set up at Clooney's [Stokes'] initiative after the bombing of Monte Cassino (so, after February 1944). In fact, its origins actually went back to British efforts in Libya in 1942, and it already existed (albeit with teething troubles) when

11303-464: 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

11430-460: 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

11557-798: 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

11684-412: The lives of the men he lost. He says they were. Truman then asks if, thirty years from then, anyone will remember that these men died for a piece of art. In the final scene, set in 1977, the elderly Stokes replies "Yeah", while he takes his grandson to see Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna . A co-production between Columbia Pictures (in association with 20th Century Fox ) and Germany's Studio Babelsberg ,

11811-532: The looted art stored in Austrian salt mines. These personnel had been parachuted into the Aussee area, where Gaiswinkler raised a force of around 300 men, armed them with captured German weapons, and spent the last weeks and months of the war harassing local German forces. When the Americans arrived, his information helped them capture several prominent Nazis. He and his colleagues had captured the salt mine, prevented

11938-573: The lower slopes of Loser mountain. Tectonics: a major tectonic fault line runs directly beneath the Lake Altaussee, approximately east–west, and terminates in the valley west of the Seewiese. The fault is seismically active, with small earthquakes common. On a hot, clear day in August 1998, a small earthquake on the fault (M=3) caught summer bathers by surprise with a low, rumbling sound and,

12065-615: 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)

12192-521: The mines had become a commercial venture, controlled by the Rein Abbey near Graz . In 1211 the mines were nationalised by Leopold VI, Duke of Austria , who transferred control to Unterlupitsch . With operations later transferred to Bad Aussee, investment in 1319 allowed the opening of the Steinberg tunnel. Followed by further periods on investment, by 1334, the mines were operated under license by

12319-665: 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

12446-465: 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

12573-514: 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

12700-619: The private Hallinger Union who employed 120 people, producing about 10,000 tonnes of product per annum. Renationalised by Frederick III in 1445, 120 people produced circa 10,00 tonnes of product per annum until the early 20th century. In 1906, a new brine pipeline through the Rettenbach Valley to Bad Ischl to supply the Solvay Works located in the market town of Ebensee . It is for this reason that Altaussee, and other local towns and villages such as Hallstatt , are now part of

12827-480: 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

12954-456: 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

13081-783: 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

13208-430: 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 the fate of the principal characters". This in turn pushes combat scenes to

13335-599: 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

13462-515: 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,

13589-471: 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

13716-428: The story involved people seeking something more valuable than money. He added, "Clooney [as director] feels there's much to be learned from these unsung art warriors... The Monuments Men is a movie about aspiration, about culture at risk, about things worth fighting for. I'd call that timely and well worth a salute." He also wrote that "a tone shift that may leave escapism junkies feeling betrayed." Richard Roeper from

13843-461: 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

13970-541: 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

14097-402: 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 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

14224-580: The team has some success, as it discovers at least one mine hiding over 16,000 art pieces. In addition, the team captures the entire gold reserves of the Nazi German national treasury. Finally, as the war ends in May 1945, the team finds a mine in Austria that appears to have been demolished, and the Soviets will be there in hours. Discovering that the entrances were actually blocked by the locals to prevent

14351-496: The train carrying the cargo. In the field, Stokes' unit finds its work frustrated by Allied officers who refuse to endanger their troops for the sake of his mission. The unit splits up to cover more ground, with varying degrees of success. James Granger meets Simone, but she refuses to cooperate, suspecting the Americans want to confiscate the stolen art for themselves. British officer Donald Jeffries sneaks into occupied Bruges at night to save Michelangelo 's Madonna of Bruges , but

14478-596: The two great wars of the 20th Century, a total of 162 citizens of Altaussee fell as soldiers (44 in World War I and 118 in World War II ). On 1 July 1948 the village became part of the Austrian state Styria again. Until 1955 Altaussee was part of the American occupation zone in Austria . During World War II (1943–1945) the extensive complex of salt mines in Altaussee served as a huge repository for art stolen by

14605-516: 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

14732-493: 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

14859-675: The war film in specific theatres such as 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

14986-467: 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 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

15113-699: 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

15240-689: The western shore of Lake Altaussee on the southwestern edge of the Totes Gebirge . The community center is located in a valley, which is encircled by mountains. The most noticeable of these peaks are the Loser (1838 m) to the north, the Trisselwand (1755 m) to the east and the Sandling (1717 m) to the west. The highest mountain within the community area is the Schoenberg (2093 m) close to

15367-480: Was a permanent shelter for Wehrmacht deserters, draft dodgers and resisters hidden in the rough terrain of the Totes Gebirge north of the village. This hideout called Igel (hedgehog), was provided with food by trusted third parties in the population. At the end of the war the Igel sheltered 35 people. The Ausseerland region was part of the so-called Alpine fortress . It is for this reason, why 1944/45 it became

15494-455: Was also used. Filming was scheduled to last until the end of June 2013, wrapping up in Rye, East Sussex . The film was originally set to be released on December 18, 2013, and a trailer was released on August 8, 2013. The release was pushed back to February 2014, because issues balancing humor with the serious nature of the subject matter caused post-production to take longer than expected. The film

15621-594: 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

15748-504: 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

15875-461: Was formed in Bad Aussee which preserved the order and ensured the supply of the population. Ernst Kaltenbrunner fled to the Wildensee alp nearby Altaussee where he was captured by a U.S. patrol on 12 May 1945. At the end of the war a box of 60 kg Nazi gold was found near the mansion in which Kaltenbrunner had lived. Much of it has been lost since the turmoil of the early post-war days. In

16002-451: 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

16129-439: Was screened on February 7, 2014, at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival . It was also screened at UNESCO , on 27 March 2014, on the occasion of the panel discussion "Modern Day Monuments Men and Women" on the preservation of heritage in times of conflict and the fight against the illicit trafficking of cultural property . The Monuments Men received mixed reviews from film critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes ,

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