I watched the old flick “WAKE ISLAND” yesterday-starring William Bendix and a bunch of actors from days long bye. Anyway, the acting was pretty stereotypes-the dipiction of the Japanese ambassador (who stopped at WI on his way to Washington) was hilarious. Anyway, the combat sequences (in the air) showed the Japanese flying biplanes! In addition, the “japanese” bombers were not correct-they were aircrafy with very strange wings. Was it common to make movies then by just patching together newsreel-type films? And the depictions of the Japanese-they all had round totoise shell eyeglasses, and buck teeth.
I suppose such a film would not pass muster today-was this a “B” grade flick?
Given that it was rushed out in 1942, yes. There wasn’t what you would call a whole lot of stock footage of Japanese planes available then. It was nothing more than Hollywood propaganda, right down to the stereotypical Japanese.
Hmmm, can’t believe I haven’t seen Wake Island but I can’t recall ever seeing the Japanese portrayed as flying biplanes, heh. As for your questions about stereotyping the Japanese in WWII-era movies and the same passing muster today, different times guy, can’t really analyze historical attitudes against current ones, cripes we were interning Americans of Japanese descent back then, think that would pass muster today?
WI is in my TiFaux now; I’ve watched the first 20 minutes or so. So my response is more general than specific. But in any case, there were a great many pro-war propaganda films churned out by Hollywood during the war years. Many of them were true masterpieces, but an awful lot of them suffered from oversimplifications.
Having seen a fair number of WWII movies:
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They didn’t have much budget for special effects, so they did tend to use footage from the vaults for planes. Hence, one would expect a certain lack of accuracy, to say nothing of an obvious look to the back-projection. Most of the film directors had not been out to the Pacific in person, had no idea what the Japanese were flying, and figured (correctly) that the audience wouldn’t know either.
Also, it was a simpler era. People didn’t look for accuracy in movies the way we do today; people didn’t watch movies several times or scan closely on a DVD. So, filmmakers could get away with a fair amount of sleight of hand. -
Stereotyping Japanese and German villains was pretty much par for the course. The great film directors didn’t – Hitchcock’s spies (SABOTAGE, NOTORIOUS) were never German stereotypes, for instance, and his German sailor (LIFEBOAT) was far from stereotyped – in fact, it was played against stereotype deliberately. However, for a run-of-the-mill film, the stereotype let you know who was the good guy and who was the bad guy right away, and didn’t allow any sympathy for the bad guys.
BTW, the use of stereotype looks wasn’t limited to racial/national stereotypes. Think of the bad-guy bankers or cowboys: there were actors who made a career out of playing a character type, immediately identified when they came on screen as a villain because of their looks. (The technique is still used today, although the character actors are less notable.)
My standout was an old flick about the Battle of The Bulge (maybe that was the title; I can’t remember). If you remember history, the battle took place in the Ardennes forest around Christmas 1944. Lots of snow, and thick vegetation…
Oddly enough, the background scenery looked a hell of a lot like the southern California hills, complete with scrub brush, in the middle of summer…
IIRC, Battle Of The Bulge was filmed in Spain.
All that matters is that it wasn’t filmed in a thick forest full of snowdrifts up to the actor’s butts. I could not suspend my disbelief over that.
You want to see a more realistic Battle of the Bulge movie ? Watch this one.
According to IMDB, the movie was rushed into production while the battle was still in progress, and erred in using the absurd biplane footage and in depicting the Americans fighting to the last man; in reality, some surrendered.
OTOH, sometimes the truth depicted in war movies is stranger than fiction. For example, the Germans were short on trucks and really did use horse-drawn carts to transport some materiel to the Eastern Front, but it still looks odd when depicted in film. There was a nice moment acknowledging this absurdity in the Band of Brothers episode “Why We Fight”: David Webster (the future writer who enlisted while still a Harvard literature major) taunts a column of German POWs for their historical overreach, epitomized by the horses (“What were you thinking?!”…etc.
A lot of the simplification and stereotyping had roots not in film, but in the theatre. My grandmother could tell stories about how in a large theatre, the audience in the back might not be able to hear or see very well. And in an age where hearing aids were non-existent, and eyeglasses expensive, actors and directors compensated by exagerated movements, dress, and expressions - all of which loaned themselves very well to cliche and stereotypes. That worked well (and still does to a degree) in a theate today; actors on stage act “bigger” than when on film - your head is a size 7 on stage, but about a 700 on an Imax screen. As for the props, how often do you forget that it is a stage set in a live theatre performance - you simply accept it and enjoy the show. If your anticipated audience was born prior to WWI, they would not be put off at all by the stereotypes and cheap staging/props of these movies, they would have been used to it from the theatre and early motion pictures - which were shot simply as plays on film. We have more than sixty years progress since then, and most of us grew up going to see the movies as opposed to going to the theatre.
They didn’t have DVDs, but if the movie was good, it would usually get more than one viewing. My father and his friends killed a couple Saturdays in the movie theater. I don’t think this was one of the movies they saw more than once, though.
For the record, here’s the IMDB entry for Wake Island and it indicates it was clearly not a “B” pic. In fact, it was nominated for four Academy Awards–including Best Supporting Actor (William Bendix) and Best Picture. Although I would agree that it certainly hasn’t dated well.
Trivia: **Wake Island ** was directed by Mia Farrow’s father, John Farrow.
I’ve always been partial to the classic WWII films of the 60s and 70s:
The Great Escape
Patton
The Dirty Dozen
Where Eagles Dare
Kelly’s Heroes
A Bridge Too Far
The Longest Day
Guns of Navarone
Most of these films have a number of things in common, including epic scale, decent production values (all things considered) and all star ensamble casts with the likes of Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen and Sean Connery.
Obviously they lack the digitally enhanced realism of your modern Saving Private Ryans but most of these films have held up well over the years.
Although the directors of these films were concerned with realism, and wanted to get things right, to the extent that they could.
:dubious: for truly laughable japanese villians! Who played the buck-tothed Japanese general? I heard thhat WWII at least gave chinese-american actors a break-they had lots of work portraying japanese boogeymen!