The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944)

People are voting emotionally.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Blistering performances.

*Spoiler/plot- 1944, The documentary story of a flying fortress and it's crews 25th and last mission over occupied Europe.*Special Stars- Director: William Wilder *Theme- The flying fortresses were very vulnerable over occupied Europe. *Trivia/location/goofs- A major and well publicized documentary of it's time.*Emotion- An enjoyable documentary made up of live action combat or newsreel footage. However, there are the unpleasant shots of injured Americans and killed Germans with some blatant racist language. But it is extremely educational and does what a narrative simulated war film can do. **ALSO SEE: "Thunderbolt", a film about WW2 fighter pilots

Having met most of the men who flew this B-17 as well as the men commanding and the ground crew; it was confirmed to me that ordinary men do what was necessary to do during the War. They faced the enemy and did the job; in spite of a gnawing fear, they flew and became heroes. Men of courage mixed with pure guts most times. I know -----I married one who flew another plane of the same group and gave a part of himself so we could all live in freedom. We were also friends with the Crew Chief of the Memphis Belle.My husband was the Eastern Division Secretary for twelve years while Paul Chryst, Joe Camelleri, Joe Giambrone were Co Chairmen and Treasurer. The 91st Bombardment Group (H) Memorial Association was a wonderful outfit and we had many Rallies and Reunions all over the United States and Europe.

The most interesting thing about this documentary is its inherent paradox. It is a look at a US air base in England, 1944; its preparations for and carrying out of a strike on a prime German economic base. This kind of event is a one-off, necessitating spontaneous film-making (you can't ask for another take). And yet the director is William Wyler. Wyler could be great, it is true, but he was one of the most rigid of filmmakers, with every scene so preprepared and exact that it was often difficult for it to breathe. He was a theatrical kind of director, favouring interior, static set-ups, often base on canoncial, or high-minded material (e.g. Emily Bronte, Henry James, 'Ben-Hur').Of course, like all documentaries, this film is heavily controlled, its 'reality' mediated by Wyler's craft, as well as the propaganda needs of the War Office. The film follows a very schematic script - preparations, attack, return - which reads more like a Hollywood treatment than the messy loose-ends of a war. Every event and 'actor' is shown to have a purpose, from the glamorous bombers to the lowly mechanics. Several scenes are obviously contrived ('real' people are terrible actors), and we are asked to believe that in the middle of a life-or-death dogfight, salty veterans wouldn't swear.The didactic narrator, a disembodied Voice of God in a very physical, corporeal conflict, gathers everything authoritively to himself - he tells us what we are seeing; he can inform us what the soldiers are saying; he explains tactics and motives, putting a relatively minor operation into the wider context of the US (definitely US!!) war effort. We are told, no less, what war is for. Images of brutal injury and death are not denied, but are appropriated for the optimistic project: we are tacitly asked to think of the greater good.So, over fifty years on, with a completely different world view, does this film have any value, or meaning for us? Oh yes. Turn the sound down. Marvel at the sheer FACT (not in a history book, or a film) of history in motion, before your very eyes. Mere statistics now walk and talk and smile like actual people. This not all. The aerial sequences are astoundingly beautiful. There is a remarkable purity of geometry to the air formations, making you think they were set up by Wyler. The film stock, neither Technicolour gloss, nor the vapidly clear image of modern film, gives a bleached, dream-like effect to the spectacle, making you forget that in a few moments these machines are going to murder women and children.There is also something curiously moving about the transition from the smooth, controllable base footage to the elliptical chaos of the bombing and subsequent dogfight. We are told at the beginning that much of this footage was lost because of over-exposure; its absence - making us confront in our much more potent imaginations what really happened - is a beautiful triumph of the power of imagery, editing and ellipsis (i.e. art) over the sterile, fascist hectoring of the narrator's words.

Ever see paramedics resuscitate a dead man? If you have, it's impossible to take a medical drama seriously again. There is absolutely no drama in their actions. "The Memphis Belle" left me with same impression about soldiers. Although they worked in an inherently tense situation, a situation in which their lives could end on a whim, or an instant shift in kharma, it was their calmness that colored them the most. For two magnificent segments, director William Wyler plays taped intercom conversations over the already breathtaking photography. What we get are scenes that put those of ANY fictionalized war movie to shame. In the first, the camera is in the right place at the right time as he captures the waistgunner engaging a charging Messerschmidt. He lets his gun loose, and a stream of tracers goes sailing off into oblivion, wreathing the enemy plane. Then a few hit, then a few more and then the enemy fighter is engulfed in a cloud of black smoke. As he watches the plane drop with a sickening whistle, he hollers over the intercom in joy: "ha, ha, I got him, I got him." The Captain, annoyed, barks back: "don't yell on the damn intercom!" No joy, no bravado, just the grim realities of war. In the second, the camera captures a foundering B-17 turning on its side and slowly nosing down in a beautiful arc. Their response: {calmly} "a B-17 is goin' down at four o'clock" The crew chants in irritation "come on you guys, get out of there. What are you fellows asleep in there, get out!" Finally, two or three parachutes unfurl, closely resembling a Daffodil blooming. War turns out to be beautiful. Kurosawa's "Ran" and Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" argued this same point. But they were just movies. This film with its countless shots of the clear blue skies and the appealing flak patterns, proves it to anyone who dares to believe. In the film, there was not one patriotic utterance, or a single pean to heroic sacrifice, at least not from the men who flew the planes. These men were not heroes, nor were they warriors, or even soldiers in the sense that we portray those things. They were EMPLOYEES of the U.S. Army Air Corps. They did a job, and did it only because the "Boss" told them to. Even if they hated it (and you get the sense that they did), they did it. That impression never leaves me. The human species and its ability to accept any situation and get used to it. From now on, the passions of the soldiers in all the "blockbuster" war flicks will make me sick. Why dramatize that which is inherently full of tension. but we know most people that write war flicks have never been in jeopardy, so what do you expect. "The Memphis Belle" requires no histrionics or flowery dialogue to be the greatest war movie ever made.