Thursday, May 23, 2013
6:00 pm – 7:45 pm Film Screening – The Counterfeiters (2007)
The Solomon Victory Theater
Winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, The Counterfeiters is the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936.
Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters. Arrested and imprisoned, Salomon and a group of professionals are forced to produce fake foreign currency under the program Operation Bernhard.
Faced with a moral dilemma, Salomon must decide whether his actions, which could prolong the war and risk the lives of fellow prisoners, are ultimately the right ones.
Free and open to the public. For more information, call 504-528-1944 x 229.
The response was so overwhelming that we decided to share them with you in a series of blog posts. Feel free to share your favorites in the comments section or on our Facebook wall.
Action
We could hazard a guess that the bulk of films about WWII fall into the category of the “Action movie.” Here are just a few that our staff shared with us. Spoiler alert: The Great Escape was a very popular choice!
The Big Red One starring Mark Hamill and Lee Marvin – It’s a movie I saw when it first came out when I was a kid and I remember watching it with my grandfather who was a WWII vet and asking him questions about the war while we were watching it. It was because of him that I always had an interest in the war.
Bryan Smith, Museum Store, Warehouse Coordinator
This is no easy challenge; there are so many. I’m tempted to choose Biloxi Blues because of how it captures a back-chapter of the war experience – the side dramas of preparing (on the Mississippi coast) to go to war, then never joining the real action before it ends. But my vote has to go with The Great Escape, the 1963 classic about a mass escape of Allied POWs from a German camp, starring the super-cool Steve McQueen. One can sense that it’s based on a real episode, a life-and-death struggle with many tragic consequences, but still leaving the viewer with the sense that we prevailed in tests of spirit and courage and ingenuity. For much of my life I’ve had a recurring dream that I escaped, against all odds, from a prison camp, and I’m certain that they started with my viewing of The Great Escape, starting before I had reached the age of 10.
Coleman Warner, President’s Office, Special Assistant for Internal and CEO Communications
The Great Escape, because Steve McQueen is the most beautiful man ever made. And we have a German Motorcycle just like the one he uses in our collection.
Toni M. Kiser, Assistant Director of Collections & Exhibits/Registrar
The Great Escape with Steve McQueen!!!! It is based on fact and is an entertaining and informative movie!!!
Ruth Katz , Director of Group Sales
The Enemy Below (1957) starring Robert Mitchum and Curd Jurgens – It was filmed on the type of ship that I used to work on, and it is an excellent presentation both of life on a small ship and on how submarines and destroyer escorts fought in WWII. It also doesn’t portray the Germans as evil, but rather as men doing a job they didn’t necessarily want to do, which is refreshing.
The best part to me is that because it was filmed on an active duty ship (the USS Whitehurst DE-634), most of the men on the ship are the actual crew, many of whom were given speaking roles. So you’re watching real sailors doing their real jobs. And when the depth charges explode, they’re really exploding depth charges. (The Enemy Below won the Academy Award for special effects for just this reason).
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm Dinner with a Curator – Larry Decuers presents “WWII in the Movies”
Stage Door Canteen
From factual to fantastic, Museum Curator Larry Decuers will highlight examples of the diverse array of WWII films. Covering what many consider the best of the genre, the presentation will include 1940s propaganda pieces, gritty combat films from the ‘50s and ‘60s and some of the more reverent works of the past two decades. Clips from Air Force, The Sands of Iwo Jima, 12 O’Clock High, Kelly’s Heroes and many others will be shown and discussed
Dinner with a Curator is a seasonal series where Museum staff and guests discuss a featured topic related to World War II while enjoying a delicious three-course dinner. All dinners catered by Chef John Besh at the Museum’s American Sector restaurant. Space is limited. Reservations are required.
The response was so overwhelming that we decided to share them with you in a series of blog posts. Feel free to share your favorites in the comments section or on our Facebook wall.
Musicals
South Pacific (1958)
My dad and I actually starred in a community theater production of the play together. He played Emile de Becque and I played his daughter. I can still sing all the lines to the little song in French! I was in middle school at the time and taking French, so I taught the lines to my “brother” in the play. I had the biggest crush on the guy who played Lt. Cable! My dad and I watched the movie at home (on a VCR, remember those?!) and studied our characters and lines together. I loved the movie and remember being very intrigued by how the colors changed to evoke the mood of the scene. At first, I didn’t understand why it was doing that and told my dad something was wrong with the tape! I also didn’t understand why Nellie and Emile couldn’t be together, and especially why she was so upset that he had children. I distinctly remember the concept of racism being hard to understand, because it just seemed mean and sad. So, I learned a lot of life lessons and experiences from the play and movie!
South Pacific was not the only time the dramatic juxtaposition of love and loss and victory and defeat of WWII was set to music. Here are some others that came up in a number of emails and “water cooler” discussions on the subject!
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm Dinner with a Curator – Larry Decuers presents “WWII in the Movies”
Stage Door Canteen
From factual to fantastic, Museum Curator Larry Decuers will highlight examples of the diverse array of WWII films. Covering what many consider the best of the genre, the presentation will include 1940s propaganda pieces, gritty combat films from the ‘50s and ‘60s and some of the more reverent works of the past two decades. Clips from Air Force, The Sands of Iwo Jima, 12 O’Clock High, Kelly’s Heroes and many others will be shown and discussed
Dinner with a Curator is a seasonal series where Museum staff and guests discuss a featured topic related to World War II while enjoying a delicious three-course dinner. All dinners catered by Chef John Besh at the Museum’s American Sector restaurant. Space is limited. Reservations are required.
The response was so overwhelming that we decided to share them with you in a series of blog posts. Feel free to share your favorites in the comments section or on our Facebook wall.
War through the Eyes of Children
There are a number of WWII films told from the perspective of children or young adults. For many of our staff, these were some of the most powerful interpretations of life in war. A number of the submissions addressed the fact that they had seen the movies as children themselves and were able to identify with them more easily than films centered around adults. Others were struck by the innocence of these narratives.
Empire of the Sun (1987) and Hope & Glory (1987)
These two films were intertwined in a number of our staff submissions (possibly because they were released within a month of one another). Both deal with coming of age in war. At the same time, they take place (in more ways than one) a world away from one another.
Hope and Glory and Empire of the Sun – I feel war as seen through the eyes of children is a story not often or well told, so my two choices are movies that show not just the brutality and machinations of the war but how that brutality looked and felt to them.
Laura Sparaco, K-12 Curriculum Coordinator
Empire of the Sun – it is an amazing journey and experience of a school age child through the war in the Pacific (and Christian Bales’ first movie).
Ruth Katz, Director of Group Sales
Empire of the Sun, hands-down choice. Ballard can’t be beat, one because he’s a fantastic writer and secondly because this is less a work of fiction and more a slightly embellished biography – Ballard was interred as a child along thousands of other British, American and European citizens from the Shanghai International Settlement. Bale and Malkovich are both excellent, but the film really succeeds I feel in its depiction of the real human consequences for civilians – usually mute or passive or altogether absent in most war films. The fact that you feel remorse for the young Japanese pilot dying near the conclusion of the film is proof of its effective storytelling.
One of my faves is the French film Au Revoir Les Enfants (an autobiographical film by Louis Malle). It’s about a young French boy who is sent off to a Catholic boarding school in 1944. He discovers that a fellow student is Jewish and is being hidden by one of the school’s priests. The story ends where the boy (along with 2 others) and the priest are discovered by the Gestapo and are taken away to concentration camps. The students shout to their priest being led away, “Au revoir mon pere!” and he replies, “Au revoir les enfants! A bientot!” (Goodbye, children! See you soon!)
I remember watching this in my freshman year of high school French class. The students in this film were only a little younger than me, so their story really stuck. This was probably one of the first foreign films I ever watched and I remember crying in the middle of class. I caught my teacher tearing up at the film’s ending too, even though I’m sure she watched it with many classes over the years.
Chrissy Gregg, Virtual Classroom Coordinator
Europa Europa (1990)
This film came up on several lists that were submitted, but no one listed it as their hands-down-favorite. However, we felt that is was certainly worth including.
Come and See (1985)
This film also showed up on more than one staff member’s list, but never at the top. We warn that it is an extremely graphic portrayal and not for the squeamish or faint of heart (just to give you an idea, Director Quentin Tarantino once put it at the top of his list of best WWII films).
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm Dinner with a Curator – Larry Decuers presents “WWII in the Movies”
Stage Door Canteen
From factual to fantastic, Museum Curator Larry Decuers will highlight examples of the diverse array of WWII films. Covering what many consider the best of the genre, the presentation will include 1940s propaganda pieces, gritty combat films from the ‘50s and ‘60s and some of the more reverent works of the past two decades. Clips from Air Force, The Sands of Iwo Jima, 12 O’Clock High, Kelly’s Heroes and many others will be shown and discussed
Dinner with a Curator is a seasonal series where Museum staff and guests discuss a featured topic related to World War II while enjoying a delicious three-course dinner. All dinners catered by Chef John Besh at the Museum’s American Sector restaurant. Space is limited. Reservations are required.
The response was so overwhelming that we decided to share them with you in a series of blog posts. Feel free to share your favorites in the comments section or on our Facebook wall.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Initially, we fully expected to get several submissions of this movie, but we were surprised by how many of our staff went outside of what one might consider “the usual suspects” in the world of WWII film. We were also deeply moved by the emotional connection that Sue Lampton, Director of Patriots Circle and Member Events, so eloquently expressed.
My favorite WWII movie is Saving Private Ryan. My brothers and I were weaned on WWII movies (and football games). My Dad was a Flight Officer on B-29s in the Pacific. He suffered with vivid nightmares about the war. He always told us that being in a plane wasn’t as hard as being on the ground. I know that’s not necessarily true now. But he loved watching those old WWII movies with us when we were kids—adding his commentary throughout the films—a distraction we didn’t often appreciate.
I saw Saving Private Ryanwhen it premiered on the big screen. That scene of the men landing at Omaha Beach—I felt what it must have been to be a 17-year-old kid watching body parts fly, the sounds, the confusion and the fear. The fear. Up to that time, I experienced those old WWII movies like a Western; bang, you’re dead. But what Steven Spielberg did with this film was unlike anything I’d experienced before. It evoked such a visceral response that my body stayed tense the entire film. And then there is that amazing scene in which Tom Hank’s character finally tells his men his story of being an English teacher back home in order to distract them from killing the German soldier and each other—Wow!
I left the theatre crying, trembling and thinking “What if that were my son Matthew storming Normandy beach?” I went home with a headache.
I spoke to my Dad about the film after he had seen it. It was the first time I ever saw him cry over a film and about the war. He said, “The best part of that movie was when Capt. Miller tells Private Ryan to “Earn it.” Those guys in combat, they did what they had to do. It was bad for the men who died and their friends and families. But those men who came through that darkness, they will always feel, as I do now, the responsibility to make your life count for something.” Amen Dad.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm Dinner with a Curator – Larry Decuers presents “WWII in the Movies”
Stage Door Canteen
From factual to fantastic, Museum Curator Larry Decuers will highlight examples of the diverse array of WWII films. Covering what many consider the best of the genre, the presentation will include 1940s propaganda pieces, gritty combat films from the ‘50s and ‘60s and some of the more reverent works of the past two decades. Clips from Air Force, The Sands of Iwo Jima, 12 O’clock High, Kelly’s Heroes and many others will be shown and discussed.
Dinner with a Curator is a seasonal series where Museum staff and guests discuss a featured topic related to World War II while enjoying a delicious three-course dinner. All dinners catered by Chef John Besh at the Museum’s American Sector restaurant. Space is limited. Reservations are required.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
The Enemy Below (1957) starring Robert Mitchum and Curd Jurgens – It was filmed on the type of ship that I used to work on, and it is an excellent presentation both of life on a small ship and on how submarines and destroyer escorts fought in WWII. It also doesn’t portray the Germans as evil, but rather as men doing a job they didn’t necessarily want to do, which is refreshing.
South Pacific (1958)
Empire of the Sun (1987) and Hope & Glory (1987)
