Directors: Richard
Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, Toshio Masuda
Writers: Larry Forrester,
Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima, Gordon W. Prange (story “Tora! Tora! Tora!”),
Ladislas Farago (story “The Broken Seal”)
Starring: Martin Balsam,
Soh Yamamura, Joseph Cotten, Tatsuya Mihashi, E. G. Marshall, James Whitmore,
Takahiro Tamura, Eijiro Tono, Jason Robards, Wesley Addy, Shôgo Shimada, Frank
Aletter, Koreya Senda, Leon Ames, Junya Usami, Richard Anderson, Kazuo
Kitamura, Keith Andes, Susumu Fujita, Edward Andrews, Bontarô Miake, Neville
Brand, Ichirô Ryûzaki
“Tora! Tora! Tora!” was made
at the end of an era in Hollywood. War films had long been a staple in
Hollywood filmmaking. Like the western, it was once a very popular genre.
“Tora! Tora! Tora!” was the last of its breed, a war film that propped up our
patriotism. It reflected that once we needed to embrace war to succeed as a
country. Vietnam changed that, and war films fell out of popularity. They barely
even returned as their own genre until almost a decade later when “Apocalypse
Now” started the trend of presenting the horrors of war above the patriotism
that once convinced teenagers to lie about their age to go to combat for their
country.
“Tora! Tora! Tora!” was also
a transitional movie of sorts. It wasn’t satisfied with just touting the
patriotism of American troops. It showed both sides of the conflict. It was a
bold experiment in factual filmmaking by having two crews tell both the
American side of how Pearl Harbor occurred and the Japanese side. Using
Japanese actors, directors and writers to tell the Japanese end of the story
and Americans to tell the American, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” isn’t so much an
entertainment as it is a history lesson.
The screenplay ticks off all
the important points of both sides of the conflict. It raised the curtain on
how war conflicts develop. It’s fascinating to learn details like the fact that
the Japanese accidentally proclaimed their act of war after the attack on Pearl
Harbor had begun. They meant to play by the rules of the Hague Convention on
proper warfare practices, but because their declaration had been sent in code
to their ambassadors, who weren’t able to crack it in time for their own
deadline, the Americans already knew about the declaration and the attack
before the ambassadors could tell anybody.
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1 comment:
Funnily enough, I think I can see why some criticisms the film got is that it doesn't really follow or provide any development for any specific characters in the attack itself, with the exception of Admiral Kimmel; films like "Zulu" (1964) introduce and give development to characters to increase our investment in them so when there’s actual combat, we care about the participants. In "Tora! Tora! Tora!", while the attacks are brutal and horrific, I can't say on whether audience members are for the most part personally invested in anyone who dies or fights during the movie. The "more notable heroes of Pearl Harbor" depicted are mainly introduced the morning of the seventh, or not so much introduced as just shown. Dorie Miller, who is notable for coming from below quarters and is the only black man shown in the attack scene (in real life, besides Miller, there was George Bland and Clark Simmons. Bland and Miller served as mess attendants on the USS West Virginia, where Miller pursued boxing as a sport. Simmons served as mess attendant on the USS Utah. They were recently the subject of a Pearl Harbor episode on a short series called “Erased: WW2’s Heroes of Color.” One said he was treated with disrespect by the white sailors but when he saw how badly wounded they were, he helped them because he saw them, especially at the heights of their misery, as people recognizable as fellow human beings deserving of compassion. He helped fellow wounded white sailors, despite being the target of abuse of several casual and brutal racist remarks from them prior to the attack; when asked by his daughter on why he helped them, despite their previous behaviour, he tearfully said that in that moment, he saw them as human beings in their worst moment of need and put their prior remarks aside), is shown firing an anti-aircraft gun, but we don’t know anything about him. Some people also wish Miller had more scenes or lines, specifically him helping carry wounded sailors to safety (in the film, we last seen Miller being knocked down to the deck, by the blast of the Arizona exploding). Although to be fair to the film, this is probably because the movie already has a lot of ground to cover, and we don’t need the back story of everyone at Pearl Harbor involved. Much like The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far, we don't need to know EVERY character. The situation carries its own inherent drama. We don’t need to know what John Finn was doing the day before–we just need to see him bleeding and firing in the middle of chaos.
Maybe not knowing who some of these people are makes it less engaging. Maybe the movie is too long, but this movie gives a lot of information and a lot of action, and much of it looks great. Funnily enough, the two P-40 pilots, George Welch and Kenneth Taylor, have some scenes prior to the attack and are notable for one of the film's best sequences, when they shoot down several Japanese planes to defend the harbor, but we last see them still fighting, and audience members (unless they read before) don't get to find out whether they survived.
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