There have been a number of movies made on the Vietnam War, with some of them such as ‘Deer Hunter’, Apocalypse Now’, ‘Platoon’, and recently ‘Forrest Gump’ having attained iconic status. A lot of these movies have now focused on the severe trauma of battle, with the physical and mental affect on the people involved. Many of them have been very brutal in their depiction of the actual war scenes, and were far from the jingoistic patriotic depiction of war (and this could be because of the Vietnam War being a very controversial war, with opinion being divided on whether this war was even necessary). Movies made on the second world war have not faced this moral dilemma, and hence have not focused so much on the trauma (with even the ultra-realistic movie such as ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and the ‘Thin Red Line’ showing the horror of war, but staying away from a mental deterioration of the soldiers involved).

Patton was a movie made on a heavily decorated (and highly controversial) soldier of the War, General George S Patton (Wikipedia) (played by George C. Scott). General Patton was a major architect in the victory for the US Army in the Second World War, with his passion for discipline, and his fast movement through Europe after the Normandy Landings. He also played a key role in the missions in Morocco expanding to other parts of North Africa, and then Sicily. Another of his great missions was in deceiving the Germans about the actual landing of the Allied forces in Europe, with the ‘Operation Fortitude’ being designed to convince the Germans that Patton was the head of an army that would attack through the French town of Calais. They were successful in this deception, with the Germans being unconvinced of the landing at Normandy.
Patton was a person who was not very well liked by his troops, with his emphasis on discipline, and a strong focus on the mission. He was not particularly fond of humour directed against him either. However, he was a General whom the Germans had feared because of his strong and pretty effective tactics; his focus on making the breakout in the push into France and then Germany in a fast and very mobile manner (they were only stopping because they ran out of fuel) prevented the Germans from being able to recoup.
The film starts off with a resounding speech by George Scott with an massive American Flag behind him; this opening speech and the entire shot has become iconic. The movie fairly accurately captures the nature of the General as we get to see the military life-story of the General in the War, with his successes in North Africa, and then in Sicily. After getting into trouble due to having slapped a soldier (and with Eisenhower forcing him to apologize for that incident), he comes back into action after the Normandy landing. The movie also captures the rapid downfall of this celebrated soldier after that, when his biases against the Russians (although his opinion of what would happen in East Europe after the Soviets took control came true), his tolerating of the ex-Nazis in German areas under his control, and his outbursts subsequently led to his losing his position.
The movie was a success, and also won 7 Oscars:
- Best Actor (George Scott refused to accept, considering the awards to be a meat parade of actors)
- Best Art Direction-Set Decoration,
- Best Director,
- Best Film Editing,
- Best Picture,
- Best Sound and
- Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced
Nominations:
- Best Cinematography,
- Best Effects,
- Special Visual Effects and
- Best Music, Original Score

The movie was directed by . It stars George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Michael Bates, and Karl Michael Vogler. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, and was based on a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North.

Mighty strange name for a movie, and one would wonder about what the name means .. the name actually is meant to represent ‘death’, as in the final sleep. In 1939, Raymond Chandler wrote a book where he created the famous detective persona of Philip Marlowe, and set it against a mystery involving deception, revenge, many people betraying each other, and an overall complex story line. It was but natural for such a story to be made into a movie, and this piece of fiction was made into 2 movies, one made in 1945, and the other made in 1978. The movie, released in 1946, starred the famous stars, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall as the lead stars. It is tough to make such a complex case (so complex that even the author apparently left one murder in the story unsolved), and this effort was done by Director Howard Hawks, with screenplay by William Faulkner.

One story about the filming that portrays the complication of the story was that when the Director was unable to figure out as to who killed the chauffeur Owen Taylor, he sent a note to the author Chandler, and Chandler could not figure out either. By the time of the movie release, the ’story’ of Bogart and Bacall was in full flow, and Bacall’s agent wanted to get more screen presence of Bacall in the movie, and new scenes were added for this purpose. And of course, this also meant that scenes of Martha Vickers (Carmen) were cut in order to give more significance to Bacall. Another interesting point was that the novel had to be censored to fit into the production mores that were in force in Hollywood at that time.
The movie is about the investigation by Private Detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) of a case given to him by General Sternwood (Charles Waldron). The General wants him to resolve some gambling debts owed by his younger daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers) to a bookseller called Arthur Geiger. In this visit, Carmen tries to flirt with Philip, but he remains indifferent to her. He also meets the General’s recently divorced older daughter, Mrs. Vivian Rutlidge (Lauren Bacall). And Philip plunges headlong into a mystery involving nymphomania, pornography, murder, deceit. At the center of all this is Carmen, and involves the murder of Geiger. In the end, after some murders, a lot of violence, eventually he is able to learn the true facts of the case and figure out what to tell the police.

Jezebel is a very unusual name, standing in the scriptures for a cruel and immoral Queen of Israel, the wife of king Ahab of Israel. She persuaded her husband to start the worship of the Tyrian god Baal-Melkart into Israel, breaking the traditional worship of Yahweh. She was condemned by God, and consequently died a horrible death (and as a result, this name is almost never used as a name for children). The name, after this movie, also stands for a headstrong, arrogant lady who will do only as she pleases; and in the process loses all that she wanted, including the love of her life.
The movie starred Bette Davis, the leading female actress of her generation, at a time when she was struggling with the thought of not being considered for the role of the female lead in the great Civil War, ‘Gone with the Wind’. In the midst of this came the movie, Jezebel, with a strong woman oriented role grounded in tragedy and eventually leading to despair, and which was also set in the Antebellum, the pre Civil War south. The movie was directed by the famous director, William Wyler.

Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) is a strong-willed lass in New Orleans, in love with, and engaged to the banker Preston ‘Pres’ Dillard (Henry Fonda). There is a ball, the most important party event of the year, where unmarried ladies are expected to wear white dresses. However, Julie is mad when Preston is unwilling to go with her for shopping for a dress, and in spite, orders a red dress (against the convention). She refuses to listen to anyone, and goes to the ball with Pres, where she faces shocked looks and disapproval. It is there that she realizes that she has committed a huge social blunder, but by then it is too late. Preston refuses to move away from there, and forces her to do a dance, till a time when they are the sole couple dancing.
Their engagement is broken, confirmed by the slap that Julie delivers to Pres. She refuses to go to him to ask for forgiveness, fully expecting that Pres will return to her. Instead, he goes off to the North, and Julie withdraws into a shell. A year later, Pres does return, but he is there with Dr. Livingstone to help in the preparation (by getting the authorities to take preparation) for avoiding a plague of yellow fever. This time, Julie pleads for forgiveness, but it is too late, Preston is already married, and introduces his Northern wife Amy (Margaret Lindsay).
Julie tries to get her admirer, Buck Cantrell (George Brent), to quarrel with Preston so that they would have to fight a duel, where Buck is an expert. However, things go wrong where Julie’s brother Ted is the one who agrees to the duel, and in the duel, Ted unexpectedly wins, and Buck is shot. And then the final event. The yellow fever epidemic sweeps the town, and Preston is affected; he has to go to a quarantine center (located on an island). Julie convinces Amy that she will go to the island since she knows the local situation, including being able to handle the slaves (she wants to do this as repentance), and Amy agrees.

Oscars:
# Academy Award for Best Actress – Bette Davis
# Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – Fay Bainter
# Academy Award for Best Picture – Hal B. Wallis and Henry Blanke (nominated)
# Academy Award for Best Cinematography – Ernest Haller (nominated)

Why the title of ‘A successful failure’ ? Well, because the third manned mission to the moon, part of the Project Apollo was a failure to make it to its target, but managed to be successful in a return journey back to Earth. There had been 2 successful moon landings so far, a major success for the US in its space program. The 3rd such mission did not have the same amount of public involvement, and yet turned out to be an extremely riveting adventure, because of the drama involved. An explosion in space, power failure, less air, and the consequent on-the-spot-engineering to make things work out and get the 3 astronauts back to Earth made for an excellent story waiting to be told. The incredible thing was that it took so long to be made into a movie, released at a time when the current generation would not know or remember about this incident.

The whole incident was turned into a 1995 movie starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris; the movie was in turn based on a book called ‘Lost Moon’ by Jim Lovell (the actual commander of the 1970 Apollo 13 mission; the other members of the mission were Command Module pilot John L. “Jack” Swigert, and Lunar Module pilot Fred W. Haise) and Jeffrey Kluger. The movie was praised by critics for a good dramatization of an epic episode during the space race while being accurate to the actual events and the scientific facts. Some of the scenes involving weightlessness were filmed abroad the NASA flight that is actually used to mimic microgravity for a brief periods of time, the KC-135 aircraft called the ‘Vomit Comet’.
The movie starts out with details of the build-up to the Apollo program, covers the first landing on the moon, and then moves onto the actual planning of the crew for the Apollo 13 mission, including the fact that the crew was not originally planned for this mission. The movie then covers the lift-off into space with a slight problem, and soon moves into the actual disaster, with the explosion, leaking of the oxygen tanks, cancellation of the lunar landing mission, and then the entire drama of the magnificent engineering feats involved in working out how to get the crew back from deep space (where there is no possibility of a rescue mission).
The movie was nominated for 9 Academy Awards and won 2 awards (but none of the acting and other high profile awards):
* Won – Best Film Editing — Mike Hill, Daniel Hanley
* Won – Best Sound Mixing — Rick Dior, Steve Pederson, Scott Millan, David MacMilan
* Nominated – Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role — Ed Harris
* Nominated – Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role — Kathleen Quinlan
* Nominated – Best Achievement in Art Direction — Michael Corenblith, Merideth Boswell
* Nominated – Best Original Score — James Horner
* Nominated – Best Picture — Brian Grazer
* Nominated – Best Visual Effects — Robert Legato, Michael Kanfer, Leslie Ekker, Matt Sweeney
* Nominated – Best Adapted Screenplay — William Broyles Jr., Al Reinert