Skip to main content

History Via Hollywood

March 2023
1min read

Memphis Belle

directed by Michael Mann, Twentieth Century-Fox Video

Colonial America has proved a strangely nettlesome subject for Hollywood. Full-blown features from 1776 to Revolution! have failed miserably with critics and at the box office. This one gets it right, turning the book into a thrilling, romantic adventure smart enough for grownups. As in James Fenimore Cooper’s classic novel, the action is set in 1757, during “the third year of the war between England and France for the possession of the continent,” according to the opening credits.

The acting is often riveting, but the movie’s real stars are the art direction and editing. The film is gorgeous, with stunning historical re-creations. Huge night battles are eerily illuminated by the smoke from firing cannon. Like all great adventure films, this one is not always plausible, but its characters are real enough, and it avoids the trap of canonizing its native Americans. It depicts the colonial frontier as a gorgeous, wild, romantic, and horribly dangerous place where the seeds for democracy are sown.

directed by Michael Caton-Jones, Warner Home Video

The critics tended to patronize this movie about an 8th Air Force bombing raid on Hamburg, when it came out a couple of years back: one said that the crew of the B-17 that gives the film its title seemed too young (!); another that they were too brave (perhaps he thought the P-51s were along to keep them from running away). A third said the character development was weak, but grudgingly admitted that the movie did convey the sweep and complexity of the air battle over Europe. In fact, Memphis Belle most impressively succeeds in suggesting the immense effort that went into our bombing campaign against Germany, and again fills the sky with the hardware that won it. The moviemakers are sensitive enough to fold in a patch of archival footage, a salutary reminder of the world of difference between the cleverest recreation and the real thing. Add to this a first-rate score and a hair-raising ride home from the target, and the result is a picture that deserves far more serious consideration than it received.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "February/March 1994"

Authored by: The Editors

Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK

Authored by: The Editors

Washington

Authored by: The Editors

Phil Stern’s Hollywood: Photographs 1940–1979

Authored by: The Editors

W. E. B. Du Bois Biography of a Race, 1868–1919

Authored by: The Editors

722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York

Authored by: The Editors

The Duke Ellington Reader

Authored by: The Editors

The Debate on the Constitution

Authored by: The Editors

Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community

Authored by: The Editors

Suddenly We Didn’t Want to Die: Memoirs of a World War I Marine

Authored by: The Editors

The Donner Party

Featured Articles

The world’s most prominent actress risked her career by standing up to one of Hollywood’s mega-studios, proving that behind the beauty was also a very savvy businesswoman. 

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.