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Since life and entertainment tend to represent opposite
experiences, the concept of 'real' needs to be understood
in this case as approximate only. Here are famous battles,
exploits and so on, rendered with at least some degree of
faithfulness to their reality, so far as that is ascertainable,
but also, invariably, with more or less significant concessions
to perceived box office requirements.
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| Above Us the Waves (GB, 1954, 99 mins) |
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| The attack (September 1943) by British
midget submarines on the Tirpitz while she was anchored
in a Norwegian fjord. With John Mills, John Gregson, James
Robertson Justice. Dir Ralph Thomas |
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| The Angry Sea (aka Ikari no Umi) (Japan,
1944, 90 mins) |
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| A Japanese perspective on the London
Naval Disarmament Conference of November 1934, in which
Britain and America scheme to limit Japanese naval progress.
Dir Tadashi Imai |
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| The Battle of the Japan Sea (aka Nihonkai
Daikaisen) (Japan, 1969, 128 mins) |
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| Spectacular account of the battle
of the Tsushima Straits of 1905, in which the Japanese
admiral Togo destroyed the Russian fleet opposing him.
With Toshiro Mifune. Dir SeijiMaruyama |
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| Battleship Potemkin (aka Bronenosets
Potyemkin) (USSR, 1925, 65 mins) |
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| Silent Soviet classic, concerning
the mutiny of the Black Sea fleet during the abortive
1905 revolution. With A Antonov, V Barski, G Alexandrov.
Dir SM Eisenstein |
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| The Battle of Jutland (GB, 1921, 30
mins) |
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| The first of a number of features
made by British Instructional Films about major land and
sea engagements of WW1, using archive material, animated
maps and specially shot scenes. This describes the only
occasion (May 1916) when two modern battle fleets engaged
one another in European waters. Dir. H.Bruce Woolfe |
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| The Battle of the River Plate (aka Pursuit
of the Graf Spee) (GB, 1956, 117 mins) |
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| An account of the first major naval
action of WW2 - the fight between the pocket battleship
Graf Spee (played by the US heavy cruiser Salem) and HMS
Ajax (played by HMS Sheffield), HMNZS Achilles (played
by INS Delhi) and HMS Exeter (played by HMS Jamaica);
HMS Cumberland, also involved, plays herself. With Peter
Finch, Anthony Quayle, John Gregson. Dir Michael Powell/Emeric
Pressburger |
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| The Battles of Coronel and the Falkland
Islands (GB, 1927, 115 mins) |
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| Another of the British Instructional
features, this deals with the battle of Coronel (November1914:
German victory, sinking of HMS Good Hope and Monmouth)
and its sequel off the Falklands (December 1914: British
victory, sinking of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and others.)
Dir. Walter Summers |
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| Channel Incident (GB, 1940, 15 mins) |
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| Woman with motorboat joins impromptu
armada for the Dunkirk evacuation. With Peggy Ashcroft,
Robert Newton, Gordon Harker. Dir Anthony Asquith |
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| Cockleshell Heroes (GB, 1955, 98 mins) |
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| Story of how a unit of Marines used
kayaks to infiltrate Bordeaux harbour and destroy German
shipping with limpet mines. With Trevor Howard, Jose Ferrer,
Anthony Newley. Dir Jose Ferrer |
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| The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell
(aka One Man Mutiny) (US, 1955, 100 mins) |
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| Mitchell was a US Army Air Force brigadier,
whose aggressive championing of aerial warfare in the
1920s led to him being dismissed from the service. Of
naval interest for Mitchell's demonstration of the vulnerability
of capital ships and his prediction of the attack on Pearl
Harbour. With Gary Cooper, Rod Steiger, Charles Bickford.
Dir Otto Preminger |
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| Dunkirk (GB, 1958, 134 mins) |
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| The fortunes of an army platoon trying
to reach the Dunkirk beaches; and the organizing of the
rescue flotilla, including civilian small boats. (A French
account - Weekend at Dunkirk,1965 - is mainly concerned
with the French army.) With John Mills, Bernard Lee, Richard
Attenborough. Dir Leslie Norman |
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| For Freedom (GB, 1940, 84 mins) |
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| A potted history of the events leading
up to the war is followed by a re-enactment of the battle
of the River Plate, and its sequel, the boarding of the
supply ship Altmark. Made immediately after the events,
and featuring some of the personnel who took part. With
Will Fyffe, Albert Lieven, Anthony Hulme. Dir Maurice
Elvey/Castleton Knight |
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| The Gallant Hours (US, 1960, 116 mins) |
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| Admiral W. Halsey recalls his WW2
experiences, particularly the sea battle off Guadalcanal,
November 1942. With James Cagney, Dennis Weaver, Richard
Jaeckel. Dir. Robert Montgomery |
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| Gift Horse (aka Glory at Sea) (GB, 1952,
100 mins) |
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| Fictionalised story of one of the
fifty over-age ships transferred from the USA to Britain
in1940; climax is the raid on St Nazaire, March 1942.
With Trevor Howard, Richard Attenborough, James Donald.
Dir Compton Bennett |
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| Human Torpedoes (aka I Sette dell' Orsa
Maggiore) (Italy, 1953, 102 mins) |
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| Recounts an assault by an Italian
underwater team on British warships in Alexandria harbour;
several of the personnel involved appear in the film.
(Based on the same action depicted in The Valiant - see
below.) With Paul Cressoy, Tino Carraro, Paul Mulle. Dir
Duilio Coletti If We Go To Sea (aka Umi Yukuba) (Japan,
1943, 90 mins) Dramatised account of the creation of the
Japanese navy as a fighting force in the years before
the outbreak of war. Dir Masanori Igayama |
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| Inchon (US, 1982, 105 mins) |
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| Korea, September 1950; the amphibious
landing at Inchon (mostly unopposed) and the land fighting
that followed. With Laurence Olivier, Ben Gazzara, Richard
Roundtree. Dir Terence Young |
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| The Man Who Never Was (GB, 1955, 103
mins) |
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| Plot hatched by the Admiralty to mislead
the enemy about the forthcoming Sicily landings, by planting
false information on a drowned corpse. With Clifton Webb,
Robert Flemyng, Stephen Boyd. Dir. Ronald Neame |
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| Midway (aka Battle of Midway) |
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| (US, 1976, 132 mins) Describes the
course of the great naval battle of June 1942, intermingled
with the personal stories of some of the people involved.
With Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn. Dir Jack
Smight |
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| Mission of the Shark (US, 1991, 100
mins) |
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| The torpedoing of the USS Indianapolis
in 1945, and the subsequent ordeal of the survivors in
the water. With Stacy Keach, Richard Thomas, Don Harvey.
Dir Robert Iscove |
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| Okinawa (US, 1952, 67 mins) |
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| Set on a destroyer taking part in
the naval operations supporting the invasion of Okinawa,
April 1945; includes much newsreel material. With Pat
O'Brien, Cameron Mitchell, Richard Denning. Dir. Leigh
Jason |
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| PT 109 (US, 1963, 140 mins) |
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| The adventures of president-to-be
John F Kennedy, skipper of a PT boat which is sunk by
a Japanese destroyer. With Cliff Robertson, Robert Culp,
Robert Blake. Dir. Leslie Martinson |
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| San Demetrio, London (GB, 1943, 104
mins) |
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| An incident from the battle of the
Atlantic: the crew of a torpedoed tanker first abandon
her then, finding her still afloat after several days,
reboard her and manage to steer her home to the Clyde.
"From factual material by F Tennyson Jesse". With Walter
Fitzgerald, Ralph Michael, Frederick Piper. Dir Charles
Frend |
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| The Silent Enemy (GB, 1958, 92 mins) |
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| The wartime exploits of Lionel Crabb,
i/c the diving team based on Gibraltar, 1941.(Commander
Crabb RNVR disappeared under mysterious circumstances
in April 1956,apparently while diving near some visiting
Soviet warships in Portsmouth harbour - a sensational
news story in its day, and evidently the spur for the
production of this picture.)With Laurence Harvey, Michael
Craig, John Clements. Dir William Fairchild |
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| The Sinking of the Lusitania (US, 1918,
12 mins) |
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| Technically extraordinary animated
depiction of the sinking in 1915 of the liner Lusitania
by the German sub U-20. Dir Winsor McCay |
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| Sink the Bismarck! (GB, 1960, 97 mins) |
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| An account of the Bismarck's breakout
into the Atlantic in Spring 1941, its sinking of HMS Hood,
and its eventual destruction. With Kenneth More, Carl
Mohner, Michael Hordern. Dir Lewis Gilbert |
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| The Story of Dr.Wassell (US, 1944, 140
mins) |
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| Dr.Wassell was a US navy doctor who
refused to abandon his patients, conducting them safely
from Japanese-held Java to Australia. With Gary Cooper,
Dennis O'Keefe, Laraine Day. Dir Cecil B DeMille |
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| The Sullivans (aka The Fighting Sullivans)
(US, 1944, 111 mins) |
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| The Sullivans were five brothers from
Waterloo, Iowa who all joined the navy and who were all
killed together when the cruiser Juneau was sunk off Guadalcanal.
With Edward Ryan, John Campbell, James Cardwell. Dir Lloyd
Bacon |
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| Tora! Tora! Tora! (US, 1970, 143 mins) |
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| The Japanese bombing of the US Pacific
Fleet at Pearl Harbour, December 1941. The first half
describes from both Japanese and American perspectives
the events leading up to the attack, the second half reproduces
the attack itself. With Martin Balsam, So Yamamura. EG
Marshall. Dir. Richard Fleischer. (nb. this action has
also been featured in such melodramas as From Here to
Eternity, 1953; In Harm's Way, 1965 - see Stories of the
War at Sea, below; and Pearl, 1978. The scene in which
the news of Pearl Harbour is first broken over the radio
back in America is, of course, a recurring one in Hollywood
WW2 movies. And the1953 anti-communist thriller Big Jim
McLain includes a scene is which the hero, John Wayne,
visits the wreck of the Arizona to vow "Never again..."
See also December 7th in the Documentary section, below.) |
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| Under Ten Flags (aka Sotto Dieci Bandiere)
(Italy/US, 1960, 92 mins) |
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| The story of the German armed merchant
ship Atlantis, which sank 22 Allied vessels before herself
being disposed of by HMS Devonshire. (The hero-worshipping
portrayal of the Atlantis's captain - Bernhard Rogge,
a NATO admiral at the time the film was made -generated
much controversy in the UK.) With Van Heflin, Charles
Laughton, John Ericson. Dir Duilio Coletti |
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| The Valiant (aka L'Affondamento della
'Valiant') (GB/Italy, 1961, 90 mins) |
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| Anglo-Italian movie about an incident
in WW2, when two Italian frogmen placed time-fused mines
under the British battleship Valiant. (The film was shot
on board an Italian cruiser reprieved from the scrap yard;
see also Human Torpedoes, above.) With John Mills, Ettore
Manni, Robert Shaw. Dir Roy Baker |
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| Yangtse Incident (aka Battle Hell/Escape
of the Amethyst) (GB, 1957, 113 mins) |
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| Describes how the frigate Amethyst
was detained by the Chinese in 1949 and how, after negotiations
failed, she escaped under heavy fire to the open sea.
HMS Amethyst is played by herself, the Yangtse is played
by the river Orwell, in Suffolk. With Richard Todd, Donald
Houston, Robert Urquhart. Dir Michael Anderson |
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| Zeebrugge (aka The Attack on Zeebrugge)
(GB, 1924, 70 mins/also abridged to 16 mins) |
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| Another British Instructional re-enactment,
this time of the attempt (April 1918) to block the submarine
canal at Zeebrugge with five old cruisers filled with
cement. Dir H Bruce Woolfe/AV Bramble |
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| Top Stories |
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