Passchendaele

Lost Skeleton

Lost Skeleton

Well-known member
I saw the Paul Gross film at the Niagara Square Odeon during its opening weekend. Less than a dozen patrons attended the matinee screening (mostly elderly ladies).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1092082/

Though I don't regret having seen Passchendaele, my impression somewhat echoes that of "cosmogirl 185" the Canadian 10th grader who rated it 4 out of 10 stars. When the battle finally commences in the last quarter of the narrative, the actions, objectives, and movements are about as comprehensive as a skirmish between opposing platoons in no man's land. All Quiet on the Western Front it ain't.

Even the emphasis on "Sergeant Dunne's" battle fatigue (post traumatic stress disorder) was explored in an extremely juvenile and melodramatic fashion. For a truly disturbing and realistic treatment of this subject, Regeneration, aka, Behind the Lines is vastly superior (the U.S. cut, which is 18 minutes shorter, is to be avoided whenever possible).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120001/

However great or mediocre, I'm grateful for any producer willing to tackle the Great War on Celluloid. Recent efforts (post 1998) include:

The Trench (1999)
The Lost Battalion (2001) TV
La Chambre des Officiers (2001)
Deathwatch (2002)
Company K (2004)
Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (2004)
Joyeux Noël (2005)
Flyboys (2006)
Der Rote Baron (2008)

and, of course,

Passchendaele (2008)

I've seen 'em all with the exception of The Red Baron. Please let me know what I may have missed.

Chas.
 
Hi James:

What did you order? If economic conditions don't brighten soon, I'll be collecting DVDs exclusively. Another title that came to mind, for the kiddies young and old is:

A Bear Called Winnie (2004) TV

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437088/

I neglected to mention previously that J. Victor Taboika was named in the credits of Passchendaele. Consequently, the uniforms and equipment were superior to those in a lot of current war movies.

I thoroughly recommend Victor's book, which is available through Service Publications:

http://www.servicepub.com/collectables.htm

Chas.
 
Another good one:

All the King’s Men (1999), BBC, also aired on PBS

This is what I said about it in my Military Trader WWI movie round-up:
"This BBC presentation is available on DVD from WGBH Boston, the producers of the PBS series Masterpiece Theater. While light on action, it is a well-acted costume drama that looks at the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the Sandringham Company, a unit made up of servants, grooms and gardeners from King George V’s Norfolk Estate. The unit went into action on August 12, 1915 during the Gallipoli campaign and was never seen again. This made-for-TV docudrama makes for a good companion to the film Gallipoli, and too presents the early pro-war idealism that swept through Europe."


And I know you said post-1998, but there was also the very well done Capitaine Conan (1996), about the French forces in the Balkans.
 
Chas, thank you for warning us about Passchendaele the movie.

"Der Rote Baron" really sucks. :twisted: I have seen it some months ago. It will prove a disappointment to all fellows here, I am afraid. The comparable Flyboys, be it mediocre, was much better! Even the Blue Max of the seventies, with the same theme and with the guy from the A-team (what's his name again?) in a leading role, is much better than the over romanticized "Rote Baron"!!! :ANGRY:

The rest of the list I have seen also. Deathwatch, the horrorfilm I understand, was the lowest level a movie can ever get. :x

Stanley Kubrick made in the fifties a recommendable movie, called "Paths of Glory".

I missed in your list, Chas, the classic "Lawrence of Arabia", of which I am a fan since my youth, loooong ago.

Best of these movies is to my modest opinion the French "Un Long Dimanche des Fiancailles". The best ww1-movie, I have ever seen so far.
 
Pierre Grande Guerre said:
//the guy from the A-team (what's his name again?)//
Click to expand...
George Peppard, aka Leutnant Bruno Stachel

Hi Pierre:

Your description of Der Rote Baron confirms the impression I had from watching the preview on the official website. Something that annoyed me tremendously was the spectacle of Matthias Schweighöfer (as von Richtofen) wearing his visor cap sideways in the "fashion" of a rap hoodlum. Thus far, the movie has received no distribution in the USA. Who would have thought von Richtofen and Brown (1971) would look good by comparison?

I regard Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, based on the novel by Humphrey Cobb, as one of the all time classics of the cinema. Lawrence of Arabia is missing only because my little list was intended as a filmography of the most recent World War I films (1998-2008).

Hi Peter:

Thanks for mentioning All the Kings's Men. In addition to Tavernier's Capitaine Conan, Nick Willing's, Photographing Fairies (1997) also falls just outside the "stricture."

Though I haven't seen it yet, My Boy Jack (2007) (TV), is another candidate for inclusion.

Would it be possible for you to post the titles in your MT round-up here?

Chas.
 
Chas,

The film begins with the adolescent Von Richthofen, who goes hunting, and is crazy about flying. Everything should be suspended from the leitmotiv that hunting and flying belonged with Von Richthofen from an early age, according to the filmmakers. This should have lead in one Freudian way or another to Von Richtohofen's opinions about the air war as gentleman sports hunting game, at least and again according to the suggestions of the film maker..

The air battles are messy filmed. Unlike, for example, "Flyboys" it is difficult to follow, how the battle developpes for the main characters. Naturally I was annoyed at the unnecessary story about the love of the Red Baron for the nurse, Kate Otersdorf, played by Lena Heady.

There are other scenes where my hair went right up to. A scene in which his opponent, Canadian Ace, Arthur Roy Brown, and the Red Baron meet after a forced landing in No Mans land, while they are having a rather dreamed up conversation among gentlemen. I still think the worst thing is that the filmmakers decided not to shoot a scene of last aerial combat the dead of the Red Baron. You'll see a frozen shot of the head of the still living Red Baron, before ascending for the last time on April 21, 1918 from the airport of Cappy. Then you see a few seconds black image, and then you see that his later alleged fiancée visiting his first grave at Bertangles. No final word of the Red Baron in this movie, "kaputt", but on the othr hand an explicit role for the respectable Arthur Roy Brown. The film wrongly still suggests that Brown has shot down the Red Baron. The most important death scene of the Red Baron is missing, nor the filmmakers found it necessary to film and re-enact the funeral with military honor for the Red Baron by the Australians.
For the historical facts, you do not have to look, and the confused air battles are still relatively scarce in this film fly to find.

What I did like though the casting, the reproductions en computer graphics of the aircraft, such as the Albatros DII and the Fokker D1, and for me a rather proper display of uniforms and awards. But I am not a uniform specialist like you guys, here! Apparently, the filmmakers in this respect should have listened better, and be better guided by their historical advisors. Ladislav Frey, who plays the Kaiser, was the best actor casted for his role.
A movie made only for money and the large public, but, I am afraid, not to my Dutch cup of tea.
 
Hello to all

Here two other "must have" movies:

1-Capitaine Conan, (1997), is about the french "corps franc" (french Stoßtruppen).
The story is located on the Macedonian front.

http://www.youtube.com/v/vlu2YgXBjis&hl=en&fs=1

Sorry I don't have found a trailer in English!

2-The fragments of Antonin, (2006), is about a french soldier coming home from the war with his memory lost.

http://www.youtube.com/v/r_FK1zANCgY&hl=en&fs=1

Best regards

Ludwig
 
Another recommendable movie is "Regeneration" of 1997. Not so much an action film, but a movie about the first steps to seek an alternative way in psychotherapy to treat shell shock. So, Therapy by conversation and not by electrical shock therapy.
The British soldier poet, Siegfried Sassoon, gets his then still experimental therapy in 1917 in Scotland in the Craiglockhart War Hospital.
Quote of Wikipedia:
At Craiglockhart, Sassoon meets with Dr. William Rivers, a former anthropologist turned psychiatrist who encourages his patients to express their war memories so that they can “heal their nerves”. Though Rivers can sympathize with Sassoon’s strong dislike of the horrors of war, he believes it is his duty to encourage him to return to France to fight.
Click to expand...

Though there might not be much action, to my opinion it is an impressive movie.
 
Just received and watched Aces High, an ok WWI aerial movie.

But in the English officers cantina, many Pickelhauben are shown, including what appears to be a rather nice Prussian Pioneer officer helm.

James
 
I watched the old Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles on the weekend and there is a saloon dance scene in the movie where there are chorus boy dancers wearing some very realistic Prussian M91 hauben. Brian
 
LudwigIII said:
Hello to all



2-The fragments of Antonin, (2006), is about a french soldier coming home from the war with his memory lost.

http://www.youtube.com/v/r_FK1zANCgY&hl=en&fs=1

Best regards

Ludwig
Click to expand...


This movie looks AMAZING!!! Anyone seen the whole movie?
 
Lost Skeleton said:
Though I don't regret having seen Passchendaele, my impression somewhat echoes that of "cosmogirl 185" the Canadian 10th grader who rated it 4 out of 10 stars. When the battle finally commences in the last quarter of the narrative, the actions, objectives, and movements are about as comprehensive as a skirmish between opposing platoons in no man's land. All Quiet on the Western Front it ain't.
Click to expand...

Chas-
I finally saw the film on Blu-ray disc. It looks fantastic. But I almost think you are a bit too kind about this movie. I'm not saying it is terrible. And maybe it deserves better than four out of 10 stars. But this is up there with Legends of the Fall, a story set in the rural west where some nicely dressed young men go off to WWI. And Legends of the Fall is another film that has about the same amount of scenes at the front lines, etc.

I think the problem is that Passchendaele is akin to The English Patient or Australia. The trailers are just so much better than the movie. Skip the movie in other words, and watch the trailer. All three movies have trailers that make them look like action-packed war films, with a love story side plot.

What annoys me so much about this one is that the title could have been anything else. But once you name the movie after a battle... come on let's focus on the battle!
 
I finally received Company K. Watched maybe half of it and threw it away. It depicts the American soldier in the worst possible light: As a southern buffoon psychologically damaged as a child with no conscience, as an idiot Yale officer, as cold blooded killers &tc. and &tc. A mediocre production and an awful screenplay. A terrible film.

On a positive note I caught by accident about 30 minutes of the 1937 Erich Von Stroheim "Grand Illusion" on satelite the other night. It had some excellent equipment with haubes and tschakos. Wonderfully filmed in black and white. I'd like to see all of that picture.
 
Did you see:

The blue max (with G. Pepper: Hanibal from the A-team.)

there is a really nice movie which i have seen twice on tv never found it (exept in french with no subtitles) La tranchee des espoirs. 2003
 
Yes i Have seen it many years ago. I see it is for sale on Amazon.com for $7.99.
I don't know if the US format will work for you but it is in English.

Here's the Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Max-George-Peppard/dp/B00008AOTN/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1244655947&sr=8-1
 
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