Walking the Berkshires

Connecticut's "Still Revolutionary" Brand: The First Salvo

With my 18th century interests and Connecticut residence, a tag line like "Still Revolutionary" certainly ought to appeal to me, but I am not the target audience of Connecticut's newly minted $27 million promotional campaign.  Watch the initial video and then we'll read the tea leaves together.

   So, does this speak to you?  Does it reach out to your heart and disposable income and say come to Connecticut?  Whose vision is this?

Well, it is Governor Malloy's, certainly, and the professional consulting firm hired to promote our state.  It seems to be directed toward at affluent professionals, vacationing families with children, cultural and heritage tourism, and particularly at successful African Americans.  I'll return to this last demographic shortly, and consider the curious choice to emphasize a storyline connecting an African American man to his Connecticut roots and an ancestor who served during the Revolution,  rather than hitching a ride on the Civil War Sesquicentennial which is totally absent from this video.

Actually, there is a great deal that is not emphasized in this two minute and seven second-long "Connecticut: Still Revolutionary " brand launch.  Western Connecticut is missing, for one thing, with its world class trout streams and outstanding outdoor recreation opportunities including national treasures like the Appalachian Trail.  Aside from someone falling backward off a bridge on a zip wire in slow motion - overwhelmingly the preferred camera speed for this promotion - the only way people in this ad seem to enjoy the outdoors is from their vehicles. 

Classic New England fall foliage and white steepled village greens just didn't make the cut. One would not get the impression from this video that Connecticut has any farms at all, except for wineries.  So much for Agra-tourism.  So much for bucolic landscapes and covered bridges. There is plenty in the video about the Connecticut River Valley and the Southeastern part of the state.  We have Mystic Seaport and Aquarium and the two big casinos on full view.  It was nice to see the Essex Steam Train and Hartford Symphony featured, but this still leaves a great deal of the state and what it has to offer out of view.

The "Still Revolutionary" motto implies that The Land of Steady Habits is full of disruptive technology, a place where invention and independence are both highly valued.  So where are the heirs to Samuel Colt, or P.T. Barnum, or David Bushnell (who was both a Revolutionary and an inventor)?  Making wine, or making bets at Foxwoods, maybe, but they are not in evidence in this initial promotion. And why is that nice white couple that shows up in their car at 1:32 seconds into the video using a paper map to "follow the sky" like it says in the promotional song?  Don't they have GPS?

If the creators of this campaign really wanted to make a strong connection between our state's Revolutionary past and our innovative present, all it required was a shot of the full-scale replica of Bushnell's American Turtle submarine at the Connecticut River Museum fading into a shot of a sub from General Dynamics putting out to sea.  Stick Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park in the sequence and the African American man in the video could make a direct connection to his Revolutionary forebears by viewing its Jordan Freeman plaque commemorating the heroics of one of its black patriot defenders. It just feels like another missed opportunity.

Let's examine the story arc of the African American couple in the video who come to Connecticut.  Their inspiration is apparently the discovery of an image in a book of a black soldier of the Revolution, with the inference that he is an ancestor.  Given the popularity of genealogy programs like Henry Louis Gates' "Finding Your Roots", this is a pretty good hook.  You can clearly see the soldier's cocked hat and hunting frock (and anachronistic mustache, too), though it is not clear whether the illustration is meant to be a photograph or a black and white reproduction of a painted or engraved portrait.  Given that daguerreotypes were not available before 1839, one hopes it is not the former.  Again, going with a contemporary photograph of a black soldier from the Civil War would have made the connection so much easier, but then there would be nothing in the film that directly references the American Revolution and the "Still Revolutionary" tag line.

The story continues as the couple get on their motorcycle (visually relaxing as they enjoy the freedom of Connecticut's roadways). Then the man dismounts, removes his helmet, and tries to orient himself.  He glimpses a quiet stream.  He sees the shade of his ancestor marching away through the forest (the only glimpse of outdoor recreation in the video that is truly Revolutionary).  He then goes to dinner at a casino to toast his homecoming. 

If he had had his moment of ancestral connection at Putnam Memorial Park, or Fort Griswold, I would have bought it.  If the choice had been to highlight the service of African Americans in the Civil War and the State's considerable contributions to the cause of Abolition - after all, we have the birthplaces both of Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown right here in western CT - I would have been more satisfied.  But then, it is not about me, or my interests. It is about that guy on his motorcycle and others like him and what will motivate them to come to relax and spend money in Connecticut.

I wonder whether the consultants and focus groups used for this promotion deliberately chose not to link to the Civil War for its target African American audience.  Being reminded of slavery is not the same as being reminded of freedom.  There were more than 300 men of color from Connecticut who fought during the Revolutionary War, the vast majority of them for long terms of service in the Continental Line.  For most of the war, they were part of integrated regiments, and this is what the video shows in its brief depiction of the ancestral soldier, marching away in single file behind two fellow white soldiers.  This is not part of the popular narrative of the Revolution, but neither is slavery.  

The message here is; "You are successful, a self made man, and you can be proud of the part your Connecticut ancestor played in winning our freedom." It is not a Revolutionary message, though it does put people of color back into the story of our nation's founding.  It does not put them in our extraordinary natural areas, but there may be a reason for that as well.  I once shared a plane ride with the poet Nikky Finney, who remarked that when she was growing up in rural South Carolina, her grandparents had an intimate knowledge of their farm that stopped short at the uncultivated woods beyond their fields.  Bad things could happen to you in there.  There were trees with strange fruit.

I would like to think that when the African American man in the promotion gets off his motorcycle, he is struck by the stillness of the woods and the movement of the brook and something else awakens inside him when he sees the ghost of his revolutionary ancestor.  A sense of belonging as well as continuity.  A connection to place as well as history.  An investment in what happens here going forward.  That would be a great outcome, for him and for Connecticut.

Thoughts on Revisiting Dances with Wolves

I saw Dances with Wolves during its theatrical release.  I was mesmerized, but I was predisposed to be so.  I have been a fan of westerns since I was weaned on recordings of The Lone Ranger, and was a Civil War buff of longstanding.  I was also a fan of the anti-western, or rather, the alternative to the standard, white hatted version of western history where the story was not just the one that made it into dime novels or technicolor.  When I was in 2nd grade, I started receiving volumes from Time Life books Old West series, and I knew that there was more to the frontier than cowboys and Indians.  I also knew that Indians generally got short shrift in westerns.

The movie, as with any creative work, is a reflection of its own time.  It feels dated now, with its sympathetic retelling from the perspective of the native people (the Lakota, anyway) and depiction of ecological devastation and culture genocide associated with European dominance of the prairie.  It is not a movie that would have been made in 1970, or 2011.  It is a love story, really, a yearning for something lost, or maybe to be lost ourselves in that wide open solitude of the young land before the plow.

The use of the Lakota language and the many domestic scenes in the camp of the Sioux, make the film feel more like ethnography than Hollywood.  Its native American actors are far more authentic than their predecessors on the silver screen.  The cinematography is gorgeous, seductive, even, for one who loves the wild, and fell in love with the idea of Native Americans back in the days when I played "pioneers and Indians" as one of them. 

It is an ugly movie, also, when it shows the degradation of the despoilers of the West and the savagery of the Pawnee (humanizing the Sioux at their expense).  It is unsubtle, and yet easily dismissed in our cynical age.  It embarresses us, today, sticky with the political correctness of its day and its seven Academy awards.  We prefer to think that Clint Eastwood reinvented and ressurected the Western genre with Unforgiven in 1992, forgetting that Wolves won Best Picture as well and two years before.  Both films are about moral ambiguity, but Dances with Wolves is about choosing sides across an irreconcilable gulf between two worlds, while Unforgiven has only antiheroes and is a much bleaker vision of humanity.  All that is missing is the profanity of Deadwood to bring it up to date.

Dances with Wolves is a romance on an epic scale.  It is a throwback because it is a romance that wears its loyalties on its buckskinned sleeve, but a decent one, by and large.  It reminds me of my years living in Africa, among those of other cultures where everything was new, for us all.  I relate to that part of the movie in ways I cannot relate to the characters in Unforgiven.  It is not a true picture of the West, any more than any western movie can be, but it is moving and it was groundbreaking twenty odd years ago, and an important piece of film history even if it belongs to another time.

 

 

The Right Moment

This is one of the best pictures I have ever taken.   I wish I could say there was a lot of forethought involved in getting the composition, backlighting and focus exactly right. This picture was really a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  I recognized the opportunity and took a single exposure. The fortunate result is breathtaking.

The photograph works on a number of levels. It has a moody quality I like - that is a dropoff over a waterfall, after all.  That patch of light on the little mountain maple at right is the perfect counterpoint in the shade of the hemlocks to all that sunlight in the evergreens on the other side.  The eye darts about like a speckled trout as the stream comes out of the woods, into the light and over the brink.

Consistent performance, however, cannot be left to chance.  On another day, I took another picture near the same spot.  This was three years later around the same time of year, but so much is different.  There is much less subtlety, no shifting shadows.  The light is flat, as the day was mostly cloudy. The leaves have turned and there is no backlight to enhance their natural color.  The water level is much higher and the water itself more assertive in steely blue.  The vantage point is farther back from the edge, and the edge itself is sharply defined.  The motion here is entirely in the brook, and the focus is not as sharp.

I do not care much for this second picture, especially because such a finer one was possible and does, in fact, exist.  It is serviceable, but it is not art.

Recognizing opportunities and having the means to take advantage of them are hallmarks of success.  With photography, it comes down to skill, light and luck. This was a better day to take portraits than to animate landscapes.  Sometimes inspiration comes from knowing the odds and seeking the right moment, and sometimes you just know. 

 

Maggie, May I?

Stiff upper lipped self parody with an ex parrot.

Wrong Then and Wrong Today: a Review of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" (1950)

Buried within the DVD extras for the 1951 classic Captain Horatio Hornblower - along with a Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam send up - is a 20 minute piece of Red Scare era "hystery" called "My Country 'Tis of Thee."  Warner Brothers felt obliged to preface this archival short film with the disclaimer that

"these depictions were wrong then and they are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of today's society,[this film is] being presented as...originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming that these prejudices never existed." 

What it should have said was that the massively distorted presentation of American history it represents would require an even longer short to enumerate and interpret.

 With the obvious exception of "Indians on the warpath" who did the decent thing and faded away shortly after the Pilgrims landed on Plimoth Rock, one is left wondering what prejudices and stereotypes Warner's legal department recognized that required such a disclaimer without further explanation.  As a service to any viewers who may be tempted to sit through this 20 minute piece of manifest malarky, here are just a few of the remarkable aspects of American history captured in Technicolor in "My Country 'Tis of Thee."

• The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.  Aside from some archival footage of FDR's funeral, we do not see a single person of color apart from those Indians on the warpath.
• The Monroe Doctrine was our gift to the rest of the nations in our Hemisphere to protect them from foreign influence.
• There was no Great Depression, and aside from various wars, no hard times either.
• Not much happened during the Revolution between the Declaration of Independence and Yorktown except for a bit of flag making by Betsy Ross and the heroic efforts of John Paul Jones and the American Navy.
• Thomas Jefferson could tell just by looking at a map that he should buy the entire Louisiana Territory for 4 cents an acre.
• There wasn't a soul on the continent except for those inconvenient natives before the godly pilgrims stepped off the boat.  Unless you count the Virginians, but they were in it for the money, so the less said about them, the better.
• The only presidents you need to know about are those on Mt. Rushmore, along with Monroe for his doctrine (and John Quincy Adams for listening to it) Madison for the Constitution, and those "First in War" (FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Wilson and Jackson), but not Grant.  Then again, between Washington and Ike, who else was there worth mentioning?  Fillmore? Harding?  Anyone remember the Coolidge Doctrine?
• The only women worth mentioning are Betsy Ross and...um,  Betsy Ross.  See, if they had included Jamestown in the narrative, we could have said Pocahontas.  Too bad the Indians had all faded away by then.
• The nation in 1950 had 50,000 pulpits, or one for every 3,000 people.  Actually, this may be true.  The film seemed proud of this number, but unless they were all the size of cathedrals there must have been an awful lot of our fellow citizens sitting out the Sabbath.

Well, what do you want?  In 1950, this was Oscar material - though it lost out to In Beaver Valley in the short subjects, 2 reel category.  I can only ascribe this to blatant Communist sympathies on the part of Academy voters.  Good thing Tail Gunner Joe nipped that in the bud, tout de suite.  We'll have no foreign influences in these parts, sonny boy.  On the other hand, the UN and the North Atlantic Alliance get full marks in this film, so it is a good thing it makes no mention of that bit about "the mischiefs of foreign intrigue (and) the impostures of pretended patriotism" in Washington's Farewell Address. 

It would only confuse the masses.

Sunday Morning Classical Rock: Led Zep for Tuba, etc.

I am a shameless fan of cover songs.  Not just any covers, though.  Fiendishly subversive, cross genre cover songs.  Like two old farts playing Led Zeppelin's Black Dog on a tuba.

Oustanding stuff. But wait, there's more, and it isn't just parody. How about Kashmir with 4 cellos?

Or Stairway to Heaven by a bass saxophone quartet?

Or by Roderigo y Gabriela.

Now I realize that Hayseed Dixie and Dredd Zeppelin are not everyone's cup of Jo (although I cannot for the life of me understand how this could be so), so for the rest of you proud, flag waving fans of the classics, here is an homage to Francis Scott Key, on Ukulele, by way of Jimi Hendrix.

All I'm trying to do is take you to Funky Town. God Bless America.

Reflections on Ken Burns' : The National Parks

I've been watching the DVDs of Ken Burn's latest documentary: The National Parks; America's Best Idea.  Burns and collaborator Dayton Duncan have brought their cinematic eye and art to the American wilderness,  illuminating places such as the Grand Canyon - about which Teddy Roosevelt observed; "The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it." -  and ideas about conservation and public benefit that the filmmakers present as emblematic of American democracy. 

It is a powerful story, carried forward by stunning visuals and Burn's signature treatment of historic images and personalities.  Like many viewers I find it inspiring and it makes me want to visit and revisit many of these places (which will likely be welcomed by the Park Service in the face of a marked trend of decreasing visitation and connection between Americans and our Great Outdoors. 

It is also a story that embodies great complexity, with larger than life figures like John Muir who somehow outshines even Teddy Roosevelt in the first part of the series.  Some of the "talking heads" help to weave together what for the sake of the story is tempting to cast as opposing conservation viewpoints rather than two sides of the same coin. The nation's first Forest Service Director, Gifford Pinchot, still gets less than his due, in my opinion, particularly after having just read Timothy Egan's brilliant new history of The Big Burn; Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America.  Pinchot was certainly more significant as a conservationist than just as the pragmatic proponent of sustainable use of forestland that he becomes when juxtaposed to the wilderness prophet Muir.

Those talking heads without whom a modern documentary would be unthinkable are a narrative device pioneered and perfected by Burns.  I am always intrigued to see which emerges as the charismatic authoritative voice in the film, as Shelby Foote did in Burn's treatment of The Civil War.  Two episodes into the series, there are two voices that stand out for me, but for very different reasons. 

One belongs to William Cronon, the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and author of the excellent Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England.  His is the voice of gentle intelligence and sensitivity, seeing the study of history and ecology as mutually sustaining (a perspective with which I am fully in accord). 

The other is Shelton Johnston, a charismatic veteran park ranger, a marvelous story teller whose love of the parks is palpable.  Johnston is an African American with considerable Native American ancestry who was raised in Detroit.  More than this, his background makes him a distinct minority both as a Park Ranger and among visitors to our national parks.  Not even 1% of those who visit Yosemite, for example, are African American.  As Johnston said in a recent interview:

"It's bigger than just African Americans not visiting national parks. It's a disassociation from the natural world," said Johnson, who has worked in Yosemite for the past 15 of his 22 years in the Park Service. "I think it is, in part, a memory of the horrible things that were done to us in rural America."

The rejection of the natural world by the black community, he said, is a scar left over from slavery.

"All Snoop Dogg has to do is go camping in Yosemite and it would change the world," said Johnson, 51. "If Oprah Winfrey went on a road trip to the national parks, it would do more than I have done in my whole career."

The conservation movement in America has a long way to go before this disconnect is resolved.

Burns' film emphasizes that the creation of National Parks was a reaction to the wholesale exploitation of natural resources during the final decades of the 19th century.  Yet the very idea of setting aside land for non consumptive public benefit would not even have been considered for the American wilderness if we had not already chosen to do so within our own developed habitat.  The rural cemetery movement, the development of public parks within the urban landscape by Frederick Law Olmstead and those he inspired, and even the setting aside of some of the great killing fields of our nation's Civil War as monuments to its memory, all preceded the establishment of the first National Park.

This was not the case in the 18th century, when the Common was a place for the community's livestock and there were better uses for old battlefields than places of quiet reflection.   We do not set aside land until we believe what it contains is both essential and irreplaceable.  Nor do we invest in the survival of what we do not see as having value.  Whether that value is intrinsic, as Muir would have it, or essential to our own health and well being, or both of these things, has long been part of the national conservation debate, and especially so regarding the conservation purposes, use and management of public lands. 

One thing, at least, has changed since Roosevelt's Day.  Nature does not take its course, at least during the span of human lives, completely free of our influence.  Our hands may mar without our even being aware, but they can only mend if we are deliberately conscious in our choices and pay close attention to the results of our interventions.  Having a national conversation along these lines would be a wonderful outcome of Burn's storytelling.

  

Of Quagmires and Hollywood Endings

What was the last significant American movie about the Viet Nam era?  Stuck?  Let me rephrase the question.  Have there been any this decade?  Here are your choices:

We Were Soldiers (March, 2002) : Mel Gibson

The Quiet American (February, 2003) Michael Caine

Word of Honor (December 2003) Don Johnson

Faith of my Fathers (May 2005) TV movie about POW John McCain

Rescue Dawn (July 2007) Christian Bale

American Gangster (November 2007) Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe

1968 Tunnel Rats (March 2009) Independent film

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that since the Gulf War, the Viet Nam war movie has been in a state of arrested development.

Forrest Gump and Dead Presidents were the decade's most notable offerings in the 1990's, and I do not mean to imply that a film had to be highbrow or highly political to be notable.  Forrest Gump's importance is not what it has to say about history but as an early, high profile use of digital manipulation of historic film footage. Dead Presidents is just classic Blacksploitation revisited. Not a Deerhunter or Full Metal Jacket among them,nor yet a Rambo.

Since 9/11, the genre continues to be impoverished.  Gibson's movie, filmed in 2001, is a continuation of the redemptive, heroic depiction of the service and sacrifice of American soldiers in Viet Nam - and their families at home - that arose in American society in the late 1980s and continues to this day.  The Quiet American is based on a novel from an earlier era and is more notable for the Oscar nominated performance of Michael Caine than what the story itself has to say about American involvement in Southeast Asia.  The rest are throwbacks of varying quality, but do nothing to carry the conversation about how we interpret the events of the fast receding past and that heavily value laden conflict.

Mainstream American films - aside for those that go direct to video - quite naturally tend to track with the tastes of contemporary American audiences.  American films about Viet Nam will indicate how contemporary politics and society grapple with the memory of what amounts to a period of national trauma. A gung ho film like John Wayne's Green Berets gives way to the nihilism of Apocalypse Now, the morality play of Platoon, the revenge fantasy of Rambo.  Depictions of the Viet Nam veteran progress from hero to outcast to perpetrator to victim and back to hero, and that is where we are left as a new generation of veterans emerges from a new series of conflicts.

Maybe there is nothing new for Hollywood to say about Viet Nam because we have come full circle, or perhaps we are stalled by contemporary events.   Maybe when the first President Bush declared during the Gulf War that we have put Viet Nam behind us, it foreshadowed the second''s declaration of "mission accomplished".  And maybe in another ten years, the memory of our current wars will inform how Hollywood revisits Viet Nam. 

Either that, or we will get another pulpy Quentin Tarantino gorefest along the lines of Inglorious Bastards.  

Really Bad History Movies

There are plenty of instances where anachronisms creep into historical films, or screenplays play a bit fast and loose with the facts for the sake of a good story.  The massacre of Colonel Munro's column by Indians in the woods beyond Fort William Henry made for stirring drama in the most recent version of The Last of the Mohicans, even if it didn't happen quite that way in 1757. 

We are not concerned about the occasional wristwatch on a Viking or a misplaced chronology here or there.  Even films that scrupulously strive for historical accuracy can slip up from time to time.  No, what this post intends to expose to much deserved scorn are other sorts of movie altogether - the counter-factual "docudrama" with pretensions to truth, and the faux historical epic with hardly a minute of actual fact in an otherwise sloppy sea of melodrama.

The difference between the two may be a matter of sins of commission and sins of omission.  Ollie Stone's JFK and D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation are both slickly produced revisionist fantasies masquerading as history, as sumptuous and seductive as propaganda as they are devoid of historic merit.  Much can be learned from both, but not what the directors intended.  These films tell us a great deal about the political sensibilities of their creators and their times, but far less about the actual events they purport to depict.

The wall of shame would need to be long, indeed, to account for the many travesties passed off on film as history, though in fairness it must be said that Hollywood gets much of it right far more often than not.  I am loathe to suggest a "top ten" list for the very worst, but the following films should be avoided by any seeking to learn something of the history they make such hash of for our entertainment:

-  Pearl Harbor:  I am told that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and indeed this happens in the movie.  The rest is absolute rubbish as far as history goes.  One gets the impression that the producers figured if James Cameron could get audiences to believe in Leonardo and Kate's characters, Ben Afleck ought to be able to get them swooning past a movie so cavalier with history that it, too, will live in infamy.

- The Patriot:  Amazingly, the loyal farm workers on the plantation were all freemen!  Nosiree, no slaves in the revolutionary South (they were all off fighting for their freedom with the British, presumably).  Apparently you can't have a redcoat in green, even if Tarleton's (oh, right, Tavington's) Legion were green coated loyalists, but you can have Abraham Lincoln's face on a greenback that Gibson's character passes off on a shopkeeper.  About the only things that are accurate in this movie are the flintlock pistols fired at the gallop - and they shouldn't be!

- Braveheart: The noble Lowland Scot recast as a dyed-in-the-woad Highlander who raises an army of mullet headed savages, this movie is among the least deserving ever to win the best picture Oscar.  Biggest howler: William Wallace impregnates the future queen of England, even though the real Isabella of France was 2 years old at the time.  About right for a Mel Gibson movie, however.  The man makes Tom Cruise look completely rational.

- Gods and Generals: A Lost Cause fantasy with an army of overfed, middle aged actors and reenactors that is utterly unwatchable and grinds on for an interminable three hours and thirty-nine minutes, or so I am told because I switched it off long before the end. Ted Turner blows $60 million financing this fiasco of clean limbed, mawkish sentimentality.

- Revolution: I am certain Al Pacino wishes this film would vanish from his filmography.  I swear, it would have been  better history if they had included legions of zombies, and certainly more entertaining.  The final confrontation amid the towering cliffs of Yorktown bears no resemblance whatsoever to tidewater, Virginia, but by they you are passed caring.  Donald Sutherland was in this film and in Kelly's Heroes, which is the more historically accurate movie.  But then, so is Hogan's Heroes.

- Every film ever made about Robin Hood, but especially the most recent BBC series, with Guy of Gisborne wearing what looks like a Drizabone Aussie raincoat, Maid Marion moonlighting as The Green Arrow, and a female Saracen garbed as one of the lads among Robin's handful of Merry Men.  Modern dialog and moralizing about how muslims and christians need to understand each other better must have Mallory turning in his grave.  They killed off Marion in Season II, but Robin has a new wench in Season III, and Holy Shogun, Batman, she fights with a Katana!  Look for Richard the Lion Heart to come riding back on a mastodon.

I am sure you can suggest some other candidates for the pillory.

Companion Pieces: Paired Up History Films

Sometimes an historical epic or period piece that can stand perfectly well on its own takes on added meaning when paired with another film.  Certain movies with cult followings actually received double billings - think Harold and Maude and King of Hearts - while others offer complementary perspectives on significant events and personages when viewed together.  Here are some suggestions for some history films that go rather well together.

Paths of Glory (1957) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930):  Stanley Kubrick's film underscores the horrors of trench warfare in stark black and white, and the demands of the French high command to make scapegoats of innocent men driven beyond the limits of human endurance.  It parallels the more familiar story told from the German perspective in the classic All Quiet on the Western Front. 

Das Boot (1981) and The Cruel Sea (1953)   I grew up reading The Cruel Sea, and am aware of no other book that so successfully evokes the desperate years of convoy escorts and U-boat warfare during the Battle of the Atlantic.  The movie version is excellent, with Jack Hawkins as the grizzled commander of the doomed HMS Compass Rose.  Das Boot, on the other hand, manages to depict the claustrophopia, desperate fear and vulnerability of the U-boat crews so hauntingly that even one such as I who was weaned on stories of blackout shades and U-boats just off our coast could appreciate that those below the surface might well have felt like the underdogs, especially as the war progressed.

Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968)  Peter O'toole stars as King Henry II in both films, and manages to bring a fresh interpretation in each performance.  The cast of The Lion in Winter is especially fine, with Anthony Hopkins and Katherine Hepburn in fine fettle.

Breaker Morant (1979) and Gallipoli (1981)  Aussie films that are as much about British notions of class and colonial prejudices as they are about the havoc and moral ambiguity of modern war.  One takes place during the Boer War, and includes one of the most dramatic trial sequences in film (others in this post also share that distinction, including Paths of Glory and especially To Kill a Mockingbird).  The other is about wasted potential and the futility of trying to outrun death in frontal assaults made obsolete by machine guns.

The Vikings (1958) and The War Lord (1965)  These obscure films deserve wider exposure, particularly for their attention to period detail.  Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine sail up the fjords in longboats straight from the Osberg ship burials or the Bayeaux tapestry.  As for The War Lord, it is the tapestry itself come to life, kite shields and all, and stars Charlton Heston.

The African Queen (1951) and King Solomon's Mines (1950) Both were filmed in Africa within a year of each other, and both are a feast for the eye.  The trek into the unknown parts of interior East Africa by Quartermain and company takes advantage of the extraordinary scenery, wildlife and cultures of the region, while Bogart's battle with the leeches and running past the guns of the German Askaris and over the falls are epic moments in cinematic history.

The Grapes of Wrath (1940)  and To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)  Both of these films captures different aspects of the American experience around the time of the Depression so cdonvincingly that they have become cultural benchmarks for those times and places.  Whether it is Tom Joad and family's desperate oddysey or the crippling weight of racial and class predjudice that oppresses black and white alike where even an honest man like Atticus cannot make justice prevail, the films take us to some of the hardest places in our past without crushing the faint hope of redemption.

Which other history films go well together?