Midway (film)
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| Midway | |
|---|---|
 Original film poster |
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| Directed by | Jack Smight |
| Produced by | Walter Mirisch |
| Written by | Donald S. Sanford |
| Starring | Charlton Heston Henry Fonda Glenn Ford James Coburn Hal Holbrook Toshiro Mifune Robert Mitchum |
| Music by | John Williams |
| Cinematography | Harry Stradling Jr. |
| Editing by | Robert Swink Frank J. Urioste |
| Distributed by | Universal |
| Release date(s) |  June 18, 1976 |
| Running time | 132 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Midway is a 1976 war film made by the Mirisch Corporation and released by Universal Pictures . It was directed by Jack Smight and produced by Walter Mirisch from a screenplay by Donald S. Sanford. The music score was by John Williams and the cinematography by Harry Stradling, Jr.
The film features an international cast of well-established actors including Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Toshiro Mifune, Robert Mitchum, Pat Morita, Cliff Robertson and Robert Wagner, among others.
The soundtrack used "Sensurround" to augment the physical sensation of engine noise, explosions, crashes and gunfire.
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[edit] Plot
The film chronicles two battles in the Pacific during World War II, the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, which decided the war in the Pacific. The Japanese Imperial Navy had been undefeated until that time and out-numbered the American naval forces by four to one. Their chief strategist Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (played by Mifune) creates a complicated battle plan in order to ambush the few remaining American aircraft carriers after the Coral Sea battle. Unknown to the Japanese, American signals intelligence has broken the Japanese Naval encryption codes and know ahead of time that the ambush will take place at Midway Island. American Admiral Chester Nimitz (played by Fonda), plays a desperate gamble by sending his last remaining carriers to Midway before the Japanese to set up his own ambush.
The film depicts the battle as a great American victory brought about by a combination of intelligence, audacity, skill, teamwork and luck. A sub-plot involves an American fighter pilot and his Nisei Japanese American girlfriend, whose family has been placed in internment during the war. As with many "carrier films" produced around this time, the US Navy Essex class aircraft carrier USS Lexington played the parts of both American and Japanese flattops for shipboard scenes.
[edit] Background and production
The film was shot at the Terminal Island Naval Base, Los Angeles, California, the U.S. Naval Station, Long Beach, California and Pensacola, Florida. The on-board scenes were filmed on the USS Lexington. The Lexington, decommissioned in 1991, was the longest serving carrier in history. She is now a museum ship at Corpus Christi, Texas.
It was the second of only four films released with a "Sensurround" sound mix which required special speakers to be installed in movie theatres. The other "Sensurround" films were Earthquake (1974), Rollercoaster (1977), and Battlestar Galactica (1978). The regular soundtrack (dialog, background and music) was monaural; a second optical track was devoted to low frequency rumble added to battle scenes and when characters were near unmuffled military engines.
Many of the action sequences used footage from earlier films: most sequences of the Japanese air raids on Midway are stock shots from 20th Century Fox's Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Some scenes are from the Japanese Toho film Hawai Middouei daikaikusen: Taiheiyo no arashi" (1960). Several action scenes, including the one where an A6M Zero slams into the Yorktown's bridge, were taken from Away All Boats (1956); scenes of Doolittle's Tokyo raid at the beginning of the film are from Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). In addition, most dogfight sequences come from wartime gun camera footage.
[edit] Authenticity of the combat footage
The U.S. carrier fighter-planes in the Battle of Midway were Grumman F4F "Wildcats". Numerous scenes of combat action and carrier landings in the movie all show the later era and visibly distinct Grumman F6F "Hellcat" and F4U "Corsair". Some combat footage of Grumman F4F "Wildcats" in flight is used in the production. Mention is made of the Brewster F2A, which was employed extensively in the real battle, but no aircraft of this type are seen in the film.
According to Robert Osborne, the host of the Turner Classic Movies channel, the film relied heavily on combat footage shot on color film stock which is more likely to have been shot by the U.S. Navy after the battle.[1][2]
Other scenes include footage of German Bf 109 and He 111 aircraft which did not participate in the actual battle, possibly the result of using stock footage from the film Battle of Britain.[citation needed] The film does not depict the first air attacks launched by B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, B-26 Marauders, and TBF Avenger torpedo bombers.
Ensign George H. Gay's plane was in actuality a three-seater torpedo bomber plane of Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8) which crashed into the ocean during one of the unsuccessful attacks on the Japanese fleet. The movie used footage of a single-seater "Hellcat" fighter to depict his crash into the ocean. Various appearances of the Douglas TBD-1 Devastator also had footage of SB2U Vindicators substituted.
These inaccurate depictions resulted from various limitations, including the desire to make use of contemporary color film footage, which was both rare and mostly absent with regards to the actual events being portrayed in the film. The 18 minute John Ford documentary, The Battle of Midway, was shot during the battle in color, though the footage was all shot from the island of Midway and thus offered no footage of aerial combat or naval operations. Stock footage from other theatrical films was used to augment the available wartime footage, namely from Battle of Britain and Tora! Tora! Tora!
[edit] Other inaccuracies
Two historic inaccuracies are depicted in the scene where the Japanese aircraft carriers are destroyed. The bridge of the carrier Akagi is shown being blasted by a bomb and shattering the interior; this happened to the Kaga. The scene also shows aircraft from the Yorktown attacking the Kaga; Yorktown's aircraft actually focused their attack on the Soryu.
[edit] Internment in Hawaii
The film portrays a young Japanese-American woman, Haruko, and her Issei parents interned near Pearl Harbor naval base. This is very unlikely as only 1,800 citizens of Japanese ancestry were interned in Hawaii (as compared to over 100,000 in California) and by June, 1942, most had been moved to internment camps on the mainland. The closest internment camp to Pearl Harbor was on Sand Island, a former quarantine island at the mouth of the harbor. Sand Island housed prominent Issei social and religious leaders and separated men's quarters from women's. The film shows Haruko's parents sitting together in a shared room and Haruko defends them as being introverted and harmless recipients of Japanese patriotic magazines and newspapers; a situation that would have been common in California. Internees at Sand Island had at least one member of their family assessed as a major security risk.
[edit] TV version
Shortly after its successful theatrical debut, additional material was assembled and shot in standard 1.33:1 ratio for a TV version of the film. A major character was added: Susan Sullivan played Ann, the girlfriend of Captain Garth, adding depth to his reason for previously divorcing Ensign Garth's mother, and bringing further emotional impact to the fate of Captain Garth. The TV version also has Coral Sea battle scenes to help the plot build up to the decisive engagement at Midway. The TV version was 33 minutes longer than the film and was aired as a two-part special.
[edit] Cast in alphabetical order
[edit] References
- ^ One SBD Dauntless dive bomber (flown by Charlton Heston's character) shown to be involved in an accident with the aircraft carrier's ramp was actually shot in part during the Korean War. (The scene in "MIDWAY" shows an SB2C "Helldiver" striking the ramp before turning into an F9F "Panther" jet fighter bomber as it explodes. The latter accident was non-fatal in real life and involved Cdr. Duncan of CV-41, USS Midway, 23 July 1951. In addition to its use in "MIDWAY", Cdr. Duncan's crash was featured in 1954's "Men of the Fighting Lady" as the demise of Keenan Wynn's Lt. Cdr. Ted Dodson and later in 1990's "The Hunt for Red October" as a damaged F-14 "Tomcat.")
- ^ Check-Six.com - George Duncan's F9F Crash
[edit] External links
- Midway at the Internet Movie Database
