stuthehistoryguy

I'll admit I wasn't expecting much here - I'd seen the tail-end of the movie a while back, and it didn't look too hot, but I'm a wannabe John Wayne completest, so I took it upon myself to watch this 1953 effort as an outward and visible sign of my devotion.

It's a stunning film, for those who appreciate such things. The Duke plays against type to a degree here. He's a WWII-era transport pilot in this one whose plane goes off-course and crashes in an uncharted region of Labrador in -70F (-56C) temperatures. He's not exactly a hopeless neurotic - this is John Wayne, after all - but you can see his confidence falter as it becomes increasingly likely that he and his men aren't going to make it out alive. This is paralleled by the story of the search pilots, whose confidence also wanes as they poke around the confusing landscape trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. Great performances on that side of the story, too, most notably by Andy Devine of all people - the veteran John Wayne fan keeps waiting for the comic relief from this fine character actor, and its absence adds to the overall tension. The juxtaposition of the two stories underscores the importance of friendship, devotion, courage, cooperation, and creativity. For the history-minded among you, it is also piques one's interest in radio and aviation technology of the WWII period - in ways the Duke's "fighter jock" movies like "The Flying Tigers" and "Flying Leathernecks" really do not. This is a remarkable film, well written in Hemmingwayesque sparse, masculine prose and effectively photographed in stark black and white. Highly recommended, especially for the odd duck who still believes that John Wayne couldn't act. 8/10

This film gives us a touching look at several unique, vibrant people who survived the Holocaust-era persecution of homosexuals, but it lacks the substance and historical detail that a good treatment of this subject requires. The stories of the pro-gay Wiemar culture are the best thing about the picture. From them, we get a real sense of what that era was like and what a loss the Nazi ascension represented. When the film considers the Holocaust itself, however, the interviewees' reticence on the topic fails to provide nearly so rich a description of either the camps or the legal mechanisms of Nazi persecution of homosexuals. It is not a bad film by any means, but it does little to educate the viewer, and education on this topic is sorely needed.

This is a fantastic effort, a virtual one-woman show. Flannigan takes daunting, challenging material and makes it poetically lucid. The highlight comes in a long, sexually explicit monologue where she shows wonderful comfort with her body and expresses aspects of the feminine psyche not often seen in films. Highly recommended