Last time on War Movie Mondays Again we featured the film Kelly’s Heroes. This time it’s the 1969 Guy Hamilton directed classic Battle of Britain. This film depicts the valiant struggle of Great Britain’s Royal Air Force against the onslaught of the numerically superior German Luftwaffe during the summer of 1940

The film opens as France falls in May 1940, and the British and their allies avoid capture with the massive evacuation at the coastal city of Dunkirk. With time to regroup and strengthen their home defenses, the British lie and wait for Hitler’s forces to eventually invade England.

The film is told through a collection of fighter squadron groups (English and German) who are veterans in the skies over France and the low countries during early 1940. Like many films of the mid to late 1960’s, Battle of Britain has its fare share of brilliant English and German actors. Screen legend Sir Laurence Olivier leads the cast as Chief Air Marshal H.C. Dowding who helped to coordinate British forces to total victory in the battle.

Other screen greats include Harry Andrews, Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Trevor Howard, Curt Jurgens, Ian McShane, Kenneth More, Nigel Patrick, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Robert Shaw, Patrick Wymark, and Susannah York.

As we did with Western Wednesdays Again, we’re bringing back another favorite feature: War Movie Mondays. And kicking things off is 1970’s Kelly’s Heroes. Written by Douglas Barnett, War Movie Mondays explores a different film in the “war movie” genre each week with him offering his unique take on the film, details about the production and whole lot more.

So, we’re pleased to bring you the first installment of what we’re now calling “War Movie Mondays Again.” Yes, we know, another great title. How do we do it? Talent. Enjoy!

– Chris

Kelly’s Heroes is a war film that has all the great elements of an old fashion, rousing epic that keeps your attention all the way through. Set in the late summer of 1944 as the allies swept across occupied France, Kelly (played by the ever cool Clint Eastwood) and his squad of screwball infantry men find out that the Germans are holding over sixteen million dollars worth of gold bars in a bank thirty miles behind enemy lines.

Tired of the politics of infantry life and the gross inefficiency of their Captain, Kelly and the rest of the squad run by tough sergeant ‘Big Joe’ (Telly Savalas), cook up a scheme to go behind the lines with three M-4 Sherman tanks to rob the bank. As the movie poster states: “They set out to rob a bank and damn near won a war instead.”

With Kelly’s Heroes, Eastwood began his second collaboration with director Brian G. Hutton, who had directed him a year earlier in the highly successful Where Eagles Dare (1969) — a movie which solidified Eastwood’s status as a major box office star. One thing making Kelly’s Heroes such an interesting film is the fact it was released in 1970, just as the U.S. was beginning to downsize its presence in Vietnam.

Other films such as M*A*S*H, which came out in the same year, mirrored that of the country’s current attitude towards the war in Vietnam and was considered to be escapist entertainment. ‘Oddball’ (Donald Sutherland) graces the screen as World War II’s only hippie who commands the three Shermans who accompany Eastwood’s squad to steal the gold.

This week’s pick salutes Steven Spielberg’s epic Saving Private Ryan (1998) which tells the story of an eight man rifle squad which is chosen to find and safely bring back Pvt. Ryan after it is discovered that his three older brothers have all died in combat just days apart from one another. The film stars Tom Hanks (Capt. John H. Miller, Charlie Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion), Tom Sizemore (Sgt. Mike Horvath), Ed Burns (Pfc. Richard Reiben), Jeremy Davies (Cpl. Timothy E. Upham), Barry Pepper (Pvt. Daniel Jackson), Adam Goldberg (Pvt. Stanley Mellish), Vin Diesel (Pfc. Adrian Caparzo), Giovanni Ribisi (Pvt. Irwin Wade), and Matt Damon (Pvt. James Ryan).

Saving Private Ryan is best known for its first thirty minute opening which is one of the most brutal depictions of combat ever put on film. Elements of Capt. Miller’s (Hanks) battalion prepare for the assault on Omaha Beach on the fateful morning of June 6, 1944. While the assault force approaches the Normandy coast aboard the landing craft, each man is preparing themselves for the inevitable. Many men are seasick, while many pray silently to themselves.

The operator of the boat alerts them that they will hit the beach in just thirty seconds. Miller instructs his men to move fast and to clear the “murder hole” (the opening of the craft). When the ramp hits, you are immediately plunged into the intense combat. Rows of men are cut down from German machine gun fire before they can even leave the craft. Other men are instructed to jump over the sides, only to drown due to the amount of heavy equipment many troops carried into combat.

Miller helps a fellow soldier ashore while they make their way through the maze of anti-tank traps and dead bodies at the water’s edge. The camera is submerged under the water, and then surfaces. The use of sound in this scene is fantastic. When submerged, the scene is tranquil and peaceful but when on the surface, you are subjected to the sound of machine gun fire, explosions, and bullet ricochets off of men and the tank traps that were placed to keep American armored vehicles from reaching the beach.

This week’s pick salutes the heroes of a forgotten American war, The Spanish American War which until the First Gulf War, was the shortest war in American history. John Milius (Red Dawn, Flight of the Intruder, The Wind and the Lion), directs Rough Riders, which stars Tom Berenger as future American president Teddy Roosevelt who commanded the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry unit during the war.

Originally aired as a three hour mini series in 1997 on TNT Networks, the film is a fantastic look at the men who made history against Spanish hegemony in 1898 Cuba. The film stars a who’s who of great actors and characters who would help to shape history. Gary Busey (Maj. Gen. Joe Wheeler) commander of all cavalry units during the war, and a U.S. Congressman as well, Brian Keith (President William McKinley), Dale Dye (Col. Leonard Wood) Marshall R. Teague (Lt. John “Black Jack” Pershing), and Adam Storke (Stephen Crane).

As the United States was entering the twentieth century, its presence on the world stage was beginning to take hold. The Spanish American War was what allowed the U.S. to become a major player in world events, and allowed the U.S. to forever wield the “Big Stick” of foreign policy. The film opens up with a brilliant montage of newspaper headlines which depict the defenseless Cubans battling their Spanish masters, while Uncle Sam looks on with a sense of anger and an overwhelming desire to help the oppressed.

The Great Escape (1963) is one of those films that no matter how many times I see it, I find a new way to appreciate it even more. Director John Sturges (Never So Few, The Magnificent Seven) brings to the screen this World War II adventure about allied soldiers who stage one of the greatest massive escapes from a new type of German POW camp.

Steve McQueen (Capt. Virgil “The Cooler King” Hilts), James Garner ( Lt. Robert “The Scrounger” Hendley), Richard Attenborough (Squadron Leader Roger “The Big X” Bartlett), Charles Bronson (Lt. Danny “The Tunnel King” Velinski), James Coburn (Flying Officer Louis “The Manufacturer” Sedgwick) and Donald Pleasence (Lt. Colin “The Forger” Blythe) make up the cast of escape artists.

The German Luftwaffe (Air Force) has created a new type of POW camp in which “all their rotten eggs” can be placed in one heavily guarded basket. Allied POWs have been gathered from all stockades in Germany and are brought to Stalag Luft III outside of Sagan, Germany. The new camp commandant, Col. von Luger (Hannes Messemer) informs the new prisoners that there will be no escape attempts and if any try they will be executed. The senior allied officer, Group Captain Ramsey (James Donald) tells the commandant that it is the sworn duty of every prisoner to try and escape.

Von Luger feels comfortable that the new facility will make it impossible for any to escape. Within the first few minutes of arriving in the camp, the main characters begin probing for weaknesses among the camp’s guards, the wire, and the conning towers which overlook everyone and everything within the camp. Several make attempts to try and escape but are quickly discovered and prove to be a handful for their captors.

The most notable of these attempts is perpetrated by Capt Hilts (McQueen), an American flier who throws his baseball over the “wire of death” which is erected in front of the camp perimeter fence. Hilts informs one of his fellow American inmates that between the two towers at night, makes it almost impossible for them to see someone trying to cut through the fence. He is discovered by one guard and is shot at by another in one of the towers.

This week’s pick is legendary filmmaker and pioneer of balletic death scenes Sam Peckinpah’s 1977 production of Cross of Iron. The film stars James Coburn (in one of his finest performances, and as one of Peckinpah’s go-to-actors) as Sgt. Rolf Steiner, a tough German soldier stationed on the Eastern Front in 1943 as the German army was being pushed back by the advancing Soviets.

Steiner is in command of a small squad who are attached to the main German column who are retreating from the Taman peninsula on the Black Sea coast following the German defeat at Stalingrad (one year earlier), which turned the tide of the war in the east. The story is that of conflict between Steiner and a new company commander Captain Stransky (Maximilian Schell), a Prussian aristocrat who covets the famed Iron Cross which is one of the highest awards given to a German soldier.

Cross of Iron was Peckinpah’s only war film that shows the audience the kind of war that was being fought on the Eastern Front, and that it was the last place a German soldier wanted to go. Steiner (Coburn) is tired of war and has very little respect for those in charge. When Stransky reports to his new commander, Colonel Brandt (played by veteran British actor James Mason), he tells the Colonel that he applied for a transfer from occupied France to the Eastern Front in order to win the Iron Cross.

The Colonel’s adjutant, Captain Kiesel (the great character actor David Warner) who is also sick of war and military politics, scoffs at Stransky and his naive outlook. Steiner is introduced to Stransky who is told of his exploits. Stransky promotes Steiner to Staff Sgt. in order to curry favor. Steiner shows overt contempt and little appreciation for Stransky as a German officer. To Steiner, Stransky is the real enemy with false notions of heroism and bravery.