Training Movie
- Thread starter DM
- Start date
spartacus70
Mongoose
DM said:For those in the UK:
SINK THE BISMARCK
BBC2, Wednesday january 2nd, 11:25 - 13:00
Well worth setting your VCR or digital hard disk based equivalent for
I'M not in UK (I'm a canadian from Montreal) but I rent it last week. Beyond the inevitable love affair, it is a very good document. I loved to see that real war footages.
Maybe you already saw it but HBO has reedited a classic called Victory at sea. Made in 54 by a US TV chanel (NBC or ABC not sure) it's a documentary of 26 episodes of 30 minutes. Covering all theaters of aeronavals operations , all made with the differents navies films archives.
Greet and cheap, 12$ US (or CAN , same value by this days...).
Soulmage said:
I beleive it's called "Pursuit of the Graf Spee"
I burned a VHS video tape to DVD to get a copy.
Verrrry hard to find movie.
Used contempoary ships ( at the time the movie was made ) and a US Springfield-class CA as a stand-in for the Graf Spee.
Kinda flaky with the stiff-upper-lip Brits, but was so-so movie. Most surface action takes place near beginning of movie, then rest degenerates to the yak-yak diplomancy of internmet in Montevideo.
A better Brit movie to get is called "The Cruel Sea". You can find that on Amazon.
Its called "Battle of the River Plate" in the rest of the world and is fairly easy to come by on Ebay or via places such as Maritime Books (and, Play.com - currently £9.99 or £13.99 in a boxed set with "We Dive at Dawn" and "In Which We Serve", one of the best WW2 naval movies ever made. R2 of course but almost anyone with access to the internet can make their DVD player multi region anyway).
The stand-in cruiser for the Graf Spee was the "Des Moines" class heavy cruiser USS SALEM (CA-139), which is currently a museum ship in Quincy, near Boston, MA. Well worth a look and the exhibit on the making of the film is most interesting (it exlains the apparent error of having the "German" crew wearing US Navy helmets in some of the scenes).
Of the four British warships featured in the film, two took part in the actual Graf Spee campaign (although one was significantly modified by the time the film was made).
The stand-in cruiser for the Graf Spee was the "Des Moines" class heavy cruiser USS SALEM (CA-139), which is currently a museum ship in Quincy, near Boston, MA. Well worth a look and the exhibit on the making of the film is most interesting (it exlains the apparent error of having the "German" crew wearing US Navy helmets in some of the scenes).
Of the four British warships featured in the film, two took part in the actual Graf Spee campaign (although one was significantly modified by the time the film was made).
As I recall the filmmakers wanted the crew to wear authentic German "Coal scuttle" helmets but (IIRC) the CO said tat no one on his ship was going to wear them so they had to stick with US pattern helmets. Its often touted as a "goof" on the part of the filmmakers, but wasn't their fault.
Interestingly enough, the captain of the Salem also wouldn't display the swastika on his ship, so any scene where you can see one is actually on board one of the British vessels.
damn, we should get a pub quiz team going
anyway, in this mishmash of films, forget not das boot.
damn, we should get a pub quiz team going
anyway, in this mishmash of films, forget not das boot.
Also worth noting for the anoraks out there that "battle of the River Plate" also has one of the best illustrations of the conduct of a RAS and the wave structure 'twixt ships that you'll see in the movies!
(I'll get my anorak! - but every time I see it I remind myself to take a video camera next time I go to sea to film one for real!)
(I'll get my anorak! - but every time I see it I remind myself to take a video camera next time I go to sea to film one for real!)
Similar threads
