By Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo. During his meteoric career, Ozwald Boateng’s been called the coolest man on Earth, and the fashion world’s best-kept secret. Yet the candid new documentary A Man’s Story, opening this weekend in New York and Los Angeles, makes certain that the British fashion designer and style icon no longer remains a secret.
In a career already spanning two decades, the 45 year-old Boateng has outfitted celebrities from Will Smith to Russell Crowe, from Jamie Foxx to Mick Jagger. At age 28, he became the youngest tailor – and the first of African descent – to open a store on London’s legendary Savile Row. Boateng’s also designed menswear for Givenchy and bespoke costumes for films like The Matrix and Ocean’s Thirteen, and he’s even been the subject of his own Sundance Channel TV series, House of Boateng. He’s also the recipient of an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for his contributions to the clothing industry.
Throughout all this, however, Boateng’s private side – such as his quiet struggles in the rarified world of British fashion, or his efforts to foster entrepreneurial investment in Africa – have taken a back seat in public to his style innovations.
Director Varon Bonicos’ new documentary, A Man’s Story – for which Bonicos filmed Boateng from 1998 through 2010 – reveals much about Boateng’s personal life: from the challenges of growing up as a young man of African descent in London of the ’70s and ’80s, to the abiding influence of his father on his life and career. The result is a warm and often poignant film that humanizes Boateng, while doing full justice to the glamorous place he occupies in the world of men’s fashion.
We spoke with Ozwald Boateng and Varon Bonicos in Los Angeles, where they are promoting A Man’s Story. The interview has been edited for length.
GM: What is your passion for film – and in particular, how are you inspired by the intersection of film and fashion?
OB: Film has always been a really good tool for me to communicate emotion about why I create a collection. I’m probably one of the first designers to make short films. The first time I did it was back in 1994. The invite for my first fashion show was a VHS cassette. And it kind of became part of the language of my designing collections – I was always putting together short films.
Apart from that, I think fashion designers are directors anyway. We spend a year designing a collection for a fashion show that lasts maybe fifteen minutes. We have to design the look of the catwalk, cast the model for each look, work up the sound, the lighting – it’s a lot of work that goes into that fifteen minutes.
JA: Film has been so important in terms of influencing men’s style, men’s self-perceptions. I was curious whether there were film icons, movie stars who have influenced your sense of style?
OB: Sean Connery, of course, since I was a kid – you know, James Bond. Or The Thomas Crown Affair – you can’t beat those three piece suits. The Italian Job with Michael Caine – again the suits. If you’re a designer, there’s got to be some films that you’ve seen that have inspired you creatively. There’s no escaping that. Film is such a very good tool for communicating emotions, and all designers and creative people look to inspire an emotional response.
Revealing the personal side of Boateng.
JA: You mention Connery and Bond, and he was so crucial in selling the Savile Row style here in the States.
OB: Absolutely.
JA: You yourself have become an icon on behalf of that style. Was that something you planned from the outset as a designer – to be so out front selling the look yourself?
OB: No, actually, I tried to stay out of it. In the early years, it was because I was a very young guy working in a very old discipline – so really, that’s tough to begin with. And then I was trying to do it in a very modern way – so again, that’s tough. Add me, visually, into the mix of all that, and that just complicates things. So for the first few years, I didn’t let anyone take any pictures of me. Basically, a lot of people had no idea what I looked like. And because my name did not necessarily sound African, a lot of people … just thought I was some kind of middle aged white guy [laughs]. So no-one actually knew what I looked like, and that was the best thing – because it allowed everyone to focus on the work. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: A Conversation With Fashion Icon Ozwald Boateng on Style, Africa, and His New Film A Man’s Story
[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today on the front page of The Huffington Post.]
By Govindini Murty. They’re among the most iconic faces of the second half of the twentieth century. Isabella Rossellini, Beverly Johnson, Paulina Porizkova, and their supermodel sorority helped to shape public perceptions of beauty and womanhood at a time of rapid expansion in the mass media. Their faces graced thousands of magazine covers and they were role models to millions of young women.
But was the rise of the supermodel a sign of female empowerment, or of female objectification?
About Face: Supermodels Then and Now, an insightful new documentary by director and photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders available on HBO on-demand through September 3 and HBO Go through 2013, interviews sixteen of these supermodels about the true nature of beauty in an age of consumerism and mass media.
As alluded to in About Face, the irony that underlies the modeling profession is that it should lead to both the empowerment and objectification of women. On the one hand, the mass distribution of images of female models through fashion magazines, ads, and other media in the past century has led to women becoming quite literally more visible in today’s world – with that visibility being an affirmation of their femininity and right to exist as women in the public sphere. In contrast to this, from the Puritans to the Taliban, misogynistic societies through history have restricted sensual or beautiful images of women as a prelude to denying their basic right to participate in public life, citing women’s beauty as a “corrupting” influence on social morality. The predominance of beautiful images of women in Western culture has thus affirmed the broader right of women to exist in public as feminine and not as neutered beings.
On the other hand, modeling has also had the effect of objectifying women by focusing on external surfaces, and at times unnatural standards of beauty. In About Face, Isabella Rossellini asks of the pressure for women to undergo plastic surgery: “Is this the new foot-binding? It’s misogyny to say that older women are unattractive.” Objectification can also lead to racism by dehumanizing people and imposing narrow standards of ‘beauty’ or ‘normalcy.’ Model and agent Bethann Hardison describes in About Face trying to book African-American models for runway shows in the ’70s and ’80s, only to be told by the casting agents that such models weren’t their “aesthetic.” As Hardison explains “‘Aesthetic’ is borderline for racist.”
I spoke with director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders about some of these issues at the LA Film Festival’s screening of About Face. The interview has been edited for length.
Model Beverly Johnson.
GM: What drew you to these ladies? I know you met them initially at a party in New York, but what did you find so magical about them?
TGS: I think when I met them at that party … I immediately got a sense of how smart they were. You know, the cliché is that you either have brains or beauty, but you don’t have both. Well, they seemed to have both. It really makes it an interesting film. And I thought that people weren’t aware of that. I have two young daughters who knew who they were. But many young people today who are so interested in fashion, they don’t know the history of it and of these iconic women.
GM: What has changed about modeling? You mentioned in the screening that these models were so unique, whereas today the models and their careers seem more transient. Why is there this disparity today versus back then?
TGS: I think that it was a smaller world then. I think there was a warmer relationship between the models and the designers and even the businesspeople involved. It was not so cut-throat and not so corporate. And I think today it’s just big business and big money, and I don’t think the human relationship is there as much. I think it’s very changed.
GM: Do you think a big part of that is the issue of covers – that the actresses are taking over magazine covers?
TGS: Yes.
GM: It’s such a striking change. What has that done to the morale of the models? Does it make a big difference behind the scenes?
TGS: I’m not sure I can answer that because it’s not my world, exactly. But I know certainly it was huge in those days to have covers, because covers were the definition of success. And the cover of Vogue was the ultimate success. So when Beverly Johnson got on the cover of Vogue – the first black woman to do so [in August, 1974], that was a big deal. And today – that doesn’t happen for models.
Model Paulina Porizkova.
GM: I thought it was very interesting what Dayle Haddon said that it wasn’t just that she thought she was the prettiest – in fact she didn’t quite fit into the physical type that was popular at the time, but that she brought something else to the picture.
TGS: She brought something else. And Dayle Haddon had to struggle because she wasn’t the look of the moment. She was a very smart woman and she figured out a way to add something more to the picture.
GM: Do you think the reason that those models from that era were so powerful – we’re talking the ’70s and ’80s, was because they were often muses for the designers they were working with?
By Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty. NBA fans know that two-time MVP point guard Steve Nash recently joined the Los Angeles Lakers. Fans are buzzing, because the addition of Nash could soon result in a return to championship glory for the league’s most glamorous franchise. As big as Nash’s impact on the Lakers might be, however, it can’t possibly match the impact that flashy point guard Kevin Sheppard — the former Jacksonville University star and Virgin Islands native — had in 2008 on A.S. Shiraz, a professional basketball team in Iran’s Super League.
The reasons for this go beyond sports, however, because over the course of one gripping and emotional season — a season documented by director Till Schauder and producer Sara Nodjoumi in their extraordinary new documentary, The Iran Job — Sheppard becomes one of Iran’s most popular athletes, and brings a ray of hope into an increasingly repressive and isolated society.
The Iran Job screened last week in Washington, D.C., and had its world premiere recently at the Los Angeles Film Festival, where we had the chance to talk to the film’s creators.
American basketball player Kevin Sheppard in Iran.
As depicted in the film, Kevin Sheppard’s Iranian odyssey begins in the fall of 2008, when he’s offered a spot on A.S. Shiraz’s roster. Having already played professional basketball in South America, Europe, China and Israel, the voluble Sheppard is unfazed by the prospect of playing overseas — but is understandably nervous as an American traveling to Iran. Coming in the midst of a 2008 election in which Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain all had sharp words for Iran and its nuclear program, Sheppard nonetheless decides to take the plunge out of a spirit of professionalism.
It was a decision that would change his life, as well as the lives of everyday Iranians — and in particular, those of three young Iranian women.
One of the most compelling aspects of The Iran Job is the way it captures the casual details of life in today’s Iran — a closed society that clearly harbors some unusual stereotypes about the outside world. So for example, the moment Sheppard arrives in Iran and meets up with his Serbian roommate (the team’s 7-foot center, and the only other non-Iranian allowed on the squad), Sheppard learns that his cable TV has been custom-provided with hundreds of pornographic channels — the assumption being that because he is an American, he must be sex-obsessed. The irony that such programming is even available in a “strict” Islamic society, of course, is not lost on Sheppard — who can’t help but laugh at Iranian officialdom’s awkward notions of diplomatic courtesy.
Such ticklish moments aside, however, Sheppard immediately begins bonding with average Iranians. A natural show-off with a wicked sense of humor, Sheppard dazzles everyone around him — even when they barely speak English, and are only able to respond to his warm smile and playfulness. The camera follows him early on as he goes out to grab dinner, and we see regular Iranians high-fiving him and snapping pictures with him before he’s even picked up a basketball. His enthusiasm and dynamic personality ignite smiles everywhere.
We asked Sheppard about the rock-star treatment he received from average Iranians:
“The funny thing about it is, once I got over there — people really love America. The government would say, ‘Down with America.’ They have all kinds of signs — ‘America is the Devil,’ ‘Down with the U.S.A.’ — but once you get to the people, they love American culture, they know everything about America, they love all the American sports. So it was a little bit ironic and crazy for me at first. I was like, how can you have all these signs around? But yet, when you speak to the people it’s totally different. So I know it [hostility toward America] was not coming from the mass of the people in general. This was all pushed upon them by the government.”
As The Iran Job proceeds, however, Sheppard’s innate enthusiasm is challenged by his lackluster basketball team, A.S. Shiraz a new and untested squad in Iran’s Super League, and a team sorely lacking in the kind of talent or winning attitude to which Sheppard is accustomed. Viewers basically get the sense that Sheppard has just joined The Bad News Bears of Iranian basketball, and his first task will be to shake up the underwhelming squad.
By Govindini Murty. Egypt’s government announced on Sunday that an Islamist has won Egypt’s first competitive presidential election. The superb new documentary Words of Witness, screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York through June 26th, sheds much needed light on how Egyptians got to this point. Directed by Mai Iskander, the film depicts the complex reality of an Egypt in which long-suffering citizens genuinely desire democracy, but must deal with the less than ideal reality of having to vote either for the Muslim Brotherhood or for remnants of the former Mubarak regime – with the military looming over any choice they might make.
Against this backdrop, Words of Witness makes the smart decision to focus its story on a young Egyptian woman, journalist Heba Afify. The documentary follows the 22 year-old Afify, a reporter for the English-language newspaper Egypt Independent, as she covers Egypt’s transition to democracy – from the heady days of the revolution in early 2011, through Egypt’s chaotic year and a half under military rule, to the recent months of buildup to Egypt’s first free presidential election. Completed in just the last few weeks, Words of Witness has a remarkable timeliness and immediacy in depicting the contending forces that are challenging Egypt’s journey to democracy.
Like her fellow citizens, Heba Afify finds herself torn between tradition and progress. Her traditional Muslim family worries about her career and her safety, while Afify’s chief concern is reporting the truth of the Egyptian revolution so that she may contribute to her nation’s democratic future.
Heba Afify in Tahrir Square.
As Afify poignantly says: “I can’t abide by the rules of being an Egyptian girl if I want to be a good reporter.” And if she can’t be a good reporter, the implication is that she can’t help her country, as a free press and democratic liberty go hand in hand. Afify adds, “It’s hard to live under a dictatorship – if you say the wrong thing, they will knock on your door and take you away forever.”
The film documents the remarkable degree to which Afify and other young Egyptians like her are willing to buck authority in order to bring about freedom and progress. It is her faith in these ideals that leads Afify to volunteer to cover the most dangerous demonstrations, despite the fears of her family. Afify’s conviction and her willingness to put her ideals on the line are what ultimately make her such a compelling protagonist.
In one extraordinary scene, Afify hears that there is a protest taking place outside the State Security headquarters. This is the home of the hated secret police who have been arresting (and reportedly torturing) thousands of pro-democracy activists. Even though it is nighttime, and reports indicate that the situation is dangerous, Afify doesn’t hesitate to join the demonstration. What follows is shocking footage, shot by Afify herself, in which the demure young woman dives right into the crowd of protesters in the dark – joining them as they break into the building. They’re hoping to free political prisoners, but as they turn on the lights in the building, they discover something even more surprising: boxes of surveillance files kept by the secret police on government employees, media, public figures, and countless ordinary Egyptians. A colleague of hers hands Afify boxes of files, saying “This happens only once in history, Heba.” Afify shakes her head at the magnitude of the surveillance, commenting: “The number of files is unbelievable.”
As Afify later examines the files in her office, she finds a transcript of an actress’ phone call; Afify wonders why the state police felt the need to write down every word of this woman’s personal phone conversation. As the film suggests, such an abuse of authority engenders a moral corrosion that is an important reason why authoritarian societies have such trouble adapting to freedom. It can take generations to overcome the cynicism, paranoia, and bad faith created by a system in which the government spends more time repressing its own people than in serving them.
Heba and her mother at home.
Another important point made in the film is the need for religious tolerance. Afify shows concern when the unity between Muslims and Christians – that had largely prevailed in the early days of the revolution – breaks down in the wake of attacks on Christians. When a church is burned down in the village of Atfeeh, leading to riots in Cairo, Afify goes to the village herself to find out what has happened. When she gets to the village, she finds a curious scene – the kind of scene that often doesn’t make it into the Western media. A local Muslim leader addresses a large group of villagers, telling them that they should show support for their Christian brothers and work to have the church rebuilt. However, a large army presence watches the scene, and Afify is prevented from visiting the site of the church. Indeed, no-one is allowed to go near the church site, and the rumor ripples through the crowd that it is the State Security apparatus itself that burned the church down in order to inflame religious tensions in Egypt and justify the old regime hanging on to power.
By Govindini Murty. Even as Chinese dissidents like Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo and artist Ai Weiwei suffer physical imprisonment, hundreds of millions of their fellow Chinese citizens are suffering a form of mental imprisonment thanks to their nation’s system of internet censorship. For example, the Chinese government recently blocked on-line searches for words relating to the 23rd anniversary of the June 4th, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, censoring the terms “Tiananmen square,” “June 4th,” the number twenty-three, the words “never forget,” and even images of candles. The award-winning documentary High Tech, Low Life, currently screening at film festivals in the U.S., UK, and Australia, profiles two dissident Chinese bloggers who are working to challenge this Orwellian system.
Directed by Stephen Maing, High Tech, Low Life was in part funded by a Kickstarter campaign publicized on The Huffington Post and was an official selection of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. High Tech, Low Life documents the work of 57-year old blogger Zhang Shihe (known as “Tiger Temple”) and 27-year old Zhou Shuguang (known as “Zola”), two of China’s best-known “citizen reporters.” Even as the Chinese government uses internet technology to stifle dissent, these brave bloggers find creative ways to circumvent “The Great Firewall of China” and publish the truth about human rights abuses to the world. Along the way, Tiger and Zola suffer official harassment, familial disapproval, eviction, and arrest.
Blogger Zola describes in the film the vast apparatus of internet censorship that exists in China:
“There are 440 million netizens in China, 40,000 internal police monitor them, and 500,000 websites are blocked in China.” [Despite this,] “if an incident happens anywhere, netizens and citizen journalists will flock to the scene from all over the country. The censors might stop some of us, but they can’t stop all of us.”
Tiger Temple expands on the morally corrosive effect of the government’s censorship: “We’ve all been brainwashed. We’ve been listening to lies for too many years.” Although material prosperity may have improved in China, Tiger argues that life today is as bad as it was under Mao’s dictatorship. As Tiger puts it, the Chinese people are “complacent because they feel powerless.”
Tiger Temple and Zola could not be more different in style. The older, more experienced Tiger is a writer and former publisher living in Beijing who becomes closely involved in his subjects’ lives, bringing them food, money, and legal help. Tiger’s father was a high official in the Communist Party, but the family was persecuted by Mao during the Cultural Revolution in the ’60s. Tiger recalls how he and his family were beaten, evicted from their home, and exiled to the countryside. It was then, as a 13-year old, that Tiger says he started “roaming the country.”
Tiger’s entry into blogging was almost accidental. Returning home one day from viewing an exhibition of Monet paintings in Beijing, he saw a woman being stabbed to death on the street by a man as bystanders watched. Horrified but unable to prevent the murder, Tiger grabbed his camera and documented its aftermath instead. He notes that when the police showed up, they were angrier at him for taking the photos than at the murderer himself, because such scenes would normally be censored from the press. Tiger went on to publish the photos online and caused a sensation, becoming known as China’s first “citizen journalist.” Tiger adds that he calls himself a “citizen” and not a “citizen journalist” because that way the government can’t ban him.
Years later, Tiger makes lengthy journeys on bike through the countryside to report on the lives of the rural poor who have suffered in the rush to urbanization. He is even on occasion tailed by agents of the government. In one trip documented in the film, Tiger bicycles 4000 miles to Er Loa, a village devastated by the illegal flooding of toxic waste by the local government. The floods of waste have caused the farmers’ homes to collapse and have made farming impossible. Villagers tell Tiger that local officials have warned them that if they complain too much they will be arrested. Not only does Tiger take photos and video of the environmental devastation, he also brings the villagers flour and noodles to feed them and tells them he has forwarded their information to a university in Beijing where law students are working to file a legal complaint with the authorities. Tiger interests an NGO in their case, and the farmers are ultimately brought to Beijing to speak at the Civil Society Watch’s Environmental Protection Conference.
By Jason Apuzzo. Memorial Day weekend is approaching, a time when Americans traditionally focus their attention on corn dogs, guacamole burgers and LeBron’s fading playoff hopes – but it’s also a time when we remember the men and women who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and for freedom.
And although Universal’s new film Battleship just capsized at the box office, unable to compete with the entertaining spectacle of The Avengers or Facebook’s Hindenburg-style IPO, it’s still a perfect excuse to take a look at The Top 10 Naval Warfare Movies of All Time.
Movies about America’s naval heroes – and there have been some great ones – teach us about courage under fire, about the importance of strategy, and recall a more romantic era when tactical masterminds made split-second decisions that changed the course of world history.
Old-school naval warfare in "Battleship."
Granted, America’s enemies these days don’t seem to like the water very much. Long gone are the days of legendary naval adversaries like Japan’s Isoroku Yamamoto (the Harvard-trained mastermind behind the Pearl Harbor attack), Germany’s Alfred von Tirpitz (whose submarines raised havoc during World War I), or even Britain’s Lord Sandwich – who somehow took time out from battling America’s Continental Navy to invent the sandwich.
Even the Russians don’t seem eager to confront the U.S. out in the open ocean, anymore – possibly due to the traditional Russian difficulty of keeping nuclear-powered ships afloat.
All of this is why Hasbro and director Peter Berg resurrected the cinema’s most reliable enemy, space aliens, to serve as the foe in Battleship.
And even though Battleship doesn’t make the Top 10 list below, as Memorial Day approaches the film may nonetheless put you in the mood to watch one of these classics of the World War II era and beyond, from the days when America proved her might – and sailors proved their mettle – by battling for supremacy on the high seas:
1. The Enemy Below (1957)
The Enemy Below pits laconic World War II destroyer captain Robert Mitchum against a craggy, war-weary German U-boat skipper played by Curt Jürgens. Mitchum and Jürgens play cat-and-mouse with each other across the south Atlantic, putting their tactical skill and nerves to the maximum test. And as their duel grows more intense, so too does their respect for one another. With a great musical score by Leigh Harline and directed by actor Dick Powell, The Enemy Below set the standard for realism in its day – although it’s Mitchum’s rivalry with Jürgens that puts the film over the top.
Best line: “I don’t want to know the man I’m trying to destroy.”
2. Destination Tokyo (1944)
Destination Tokyo stars Cary Grant as a conscientious sub captain who leads his crew on a daring mission from the Aleutian Islands to Tokyo Bay. Co-starring John Garfield as a skirt-chasing sailor named ‘Wolf’, and featuring colorful performances from Alan Hale and Dane Clark, Destination Tokyo brings the action like few other war films of its day. Grant’s sub torpedoes destroyers and aircraft carriers, and conducts bold night missions along the Japanese coast – all while dodging minefields, depth charges, bombs, even an appendicitis attack among its crew. Destination Tokyo was so good, it inspired a young Tony Curtis to join the Navy – years before he would appear on-screen with Grant in Operation Petticoat.
Best line: “Congratulations, Wolf … It’s been an hour since anything reminded you of a dame.”
3. Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
A mega-production that tells the story of the Pearl Harbor attack from both the American and Japanese perspectives, Tora! Tora! Tora! was so big that it needed three directors to make – one of whom initially was Akira Kurosawa. Tora! Tora! Tora! takes its history seriously, exploring the political and military context behind the infamous December 7th, 1941 raid. An epic film in every sense, including in its methodical pacing, Tora! Tora! Tora! shows what a complex, risky gamble the attack was for the Imperial Japanese – along with the many tactical failures on the American side that made it possible. In the pre-digital era, few war pictures seem bigger than Tora! Tora! Tora!, and the final attack sequence still looks incredible today – because so many of the pyrotechnics are real.
Best line: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Sean Connery as Marko Ramius.
4. The Hunt for Red October (1990)
A signature film of the Cold War era and based on the famous Tom Clancy novel, The Hunt for Red October stars Sean Connery as Soviet sub captain Marko Ramius, who decides to defect to the U.S. and hand over his undetectable sub, the Red October, before the Russians can use it to launch World War III. Connery is perfect as the wily Ramius, and a young Alec Baldwin does a nice turn playing Jack Ryan before Harrison Ford took over the role in later films. A great musical score by Basil Poledouris – along with sharp performances by James Earl Jones, Sam Neill, Fred Thompson and Scott Glenn – rounds out this must-see classic.
Best line: “We will pass through the American patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to their rock-and-roll … while we conduct missile drills.”
5. Sink the Bismarck! (1960)
This neglected classic recounts the harrowing story of how Germany’s massive Bismarck battleship, the naval Death Star of its day, threatened to obliterate Britain’s Royal Navy – and actually did obliterate the HMS Hood, Britain’s most powerful battlecruiser. Sink the Bismarck! also dramatizes how blind luck often factors in to history’s most decisive battles. Strong performances by Kenneth More and Dana Wynter, as well as a colorful turn by Karel Štěpánek as Germany’s Admiral Lütjens, make Sink the Bismarck! key viewing for naval warfare buffs.
Best line: “We are unsinkable … and we are German!”
6. They Were Expendable (1945)
Director John Ford’s They Were Expendable brings an element of poetry and heightened realism to the genre in telling the story of how America’s PT boats fought the war against the Imperial Japanese in the Philippines. They Were Expendable stars John Wayne and Robert Montgomery – who actually commanded a PT boat during the war, and who took over directing the film when Ford (who shot footage of the Battle of Midway and also of D-Day for the Navy Department) fell ill. A sobering, moody look at the sacrifices made during wartime, and also at military innovation in the face of numerically superior forces, They Were Expendable was Ford’s last wartime film – and a memorable one.
Best line: “I used to skipper a cake of soap in the bathtub, too.”
7. Midway (1976)
With a boffo cast featuring Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Glenn Ford and Toshiro Mifune, and with music by John Williams, Midway recounts the decisive Battle of Midway on an epic scale. Although the film sometimes feels cobbled together with too much stock footage, Midway takes combat strategy more seriously than most war films – painstakingly setting up the options facing both the American and Imperial Japanese fleets in this crucial naval conflict that turned the tide in the Pacific. And even with Mifune playing Admiral Yamamoto, and Fonda as Admiral Nimitz, it’s Heston who steals the show as hard-ass Navy captain Matt Garth.
Best line: “‘Wait and see.’ We waited. December 7th, we saw. The ‘Wait and see’-ers will bust your ass every time.”
8. The Caine Mutiny (1954)
This exceptional adaptation of Herman Wouk’s novel is probably the finest film ever on the psychological strain of command. Humphrey Bogart (himself a former Navy man) was nominated for Best Actor for his iconic performance as Captain Queeg, who loses his composure – and possibly his sanity – during a dangerous typhoon, prompting his minesweeper crew to relieve him of duty. Scintillating performances by Fred MacMurray and José Ferrer, and vivid Technicolor cinematography by Franz Planer, round out this dramatic and provocative look at stress under fire. Plus, you’ll never look at a bowl of strawberries the same way.
Best line: “The first thing you’ve got to learn about this ship is that she was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots.”
9. Pearl Harbor (2001)
Michael Bay’s epic telling of the Pearl Harbor attack brought a new level of realism and detail to the depiction of combat – with ILM’s visual effects team re-creating not only the Japanese attack, but also the Doolittle raid and the Battle of Britain. Although the film’s romantic subplot never totally clicks, Pearl Harbor still packs an emotional punch once the Japanese raid kicks in – and the film’s old-fashioned, patriotic sensibility fits the subject matter perfectly. Bay’s team actually re-created a large-scale section of the doomed battleship USS Oklahoma and capsized it for the film. Don’t try that at home.
Best line: “I’ve got some genuine French champagne. From France.”
10. Action in the North Atlantic (1943)
Another classic from Humphrey Bogart, this wartime Warner Brothers gem was Bogie’s first film after Casablanca made him a superstar. Action dramatizes the vital role of the Merchant Marine in transporting armaments during World War II, as Bogie and Raymond Massey guide a Liberty ship on a harrowing mission to Murmansk – battling U-boats and the Luftwaffe along the way. Action is well-named, with more combat scenes than any World War II film outside of Destination Tokyo. And although the film was shot exclusively on the back lot, Bogie and Massey still made real-life dives off one of the film’s burning ships … after a few drinks.
Best line: “The trouble with you, Pulaski, is you think America is just a place to eat and sleep. You don’t know what side your future’s buttered on.”
Honorable Mentions: Crash Dive (1943), Operation Pacific (1951), In Harm’s Way (1965).
