Reviews

This movie follows the first Au Pair and though a bit of a copycat production from the original it does prove that movies can be clean, wholesome and interestingly entertaining. Once again Heidi Lenhart lights up the screen and Greg Harrison gives the production a manly presentation. I was surprised that some reviewers only gave these two both films two stars; the beautiful scenes in Austria along the Danube are worth four stars alone. I really did not want to see either film end as they were that enjoyable.

There are several troubling components of this movie other than the criticism that Shroder was not 12 years old when playing the role. This lad enlisted fraudently as did many other under-aged enlistees in World War 2. Some because of patriotism but in the case of this boy it was because of economic deprivation. He performed his war duties well enough to be awarded citations for bravery. Due to some bureaucratic foul-up he was jailed when returning from leave for desertion. The sad part of this story is that he was raped while in the brig and even the chaplain admitted he was not authorized to write to family members indicating where he was. A fellow prisoner upon release did courageously call the victim's sister and she contacted a local paper to secure his release. But the final absurdity is seen when an officer tells the released victim to not divulge what happened to him. The navy did not want its dirty wash shown to the world.

A completely immoral and ridiculous movie reminding us that at one time it was considered quite justifiable to lynch a man accused of rape in many areas of the U.S. before he was tried. And the deputy whose leg was shot off by the avenging father surely must be the most forgiving, magnanimous, altruistic victim in movie history when he agreed with the father's actions. The prosecutor's summation asking the jury to change the skin color o the victim and the accused is also idiotic. We have seen the outrage when whites have been allowed to take the law into their own hands and the later riots. It is indeed sad that movies such as this can still be made and few protest their message.

Most history buffs will like this though they may disagree with the portrayal of Dr. Mudd as being complete innocent after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Historians say Mudd knew John Wilkes Booth from often seeing the famous actor on the stage. However, it doubtful if he knew Booth had just assassinated Lincoln and was in flight from pursuing soldiers after breaking his leg while leaping from the Ford Theatre balcony onto the stage. It is now believed by many that Dr. Mudd allowed Booth to remain in his home overnight due to the strain put upon the recently set leg. The next morning Mudd went into town to get a newspaper and then discovered that Booth was wanted for Lincoln's murder. He was thus placed in the uncomfortable position of unintentionally harboring a murderer and if he had notified the police at that time he would never have been implicated in the tragedy. He unwisely chose not to do so and instead returned home to tell Booth to leave. The pusuing troops discovered that Booth had been at the Mudd home and the doctor was arrested and later tried. The movie does give a good presentation of the trial which was a travesty conducted by the military with orders from the authorities to convict and hang all those charged. Booth did luck out a bit by escaping the death penalty. Many legal experts now believe that the trial was illegal since the civilian courts were still functioning. But vengeance was to be extracted and what did befall Dr. Mudd could have been far worse.

The participants in this battle were awarded more VCs than in any other single battle fought by British troops. The small contingent proved that once again modern weapons could overcome a numerical disadvantage. The famous ditty in Rhodesia was, "We care not how many Zulus they have got; We have the Gatling gun and they have not." The Gatling was so successfully used on hordes of spear carrying African natives that it was later used in Europe during World War One. Not as one-sidedly since the Germans had weapons which could, and did, reply in kind. Superior weaponry created empires and brutally held them together until their demise when it was finally learned that they were expensive to maintain in lives and treasure.

I was stationed in the Pacific during World War Two when I first saw this film. It was perhaps the most senseless of all the movies released at that time. The good thing is that it did not stop us from winning the war anyway.

I first saw this film while serving overseas during World War Two. The reaction from the troops was one of hilarity with Bronx cheers in over-abundance. The picture did go one thing and that was it added a new phrase into our language, gung ho, which today is contempuously used to denote senseless exuberance without giving the reason for it much thought or analysis.

This was Winston Churchill's favorite movie mainly because Korda allowed him to write some of the dialogue. The real goal was to enlist American support in WW2 by comparing the Hitler threat to the earlier threat to the British Empire to the one from Napoleon.

This was Churchill's favorite film mainly because Korda allowed him to write some of the dialogue. It was British propaganda mainly to target American audiences to enlist in the war against Hitler. The film made an analogy to this by citing the threat to Britain from Napoleon at the time. In one scene Alan Mowbray, as the impotent victim/husband of Lady Hamilton, played by Vivien Leigh, shows her a global map comparing the size of the British Isles to France. "How small", she replies. (Britain at the time owned or controlled one-fourth the planet.) Hamilton also mentioned that nations are constantly "attempting to steal what others have built up", referring Napoleon's threat to the British Empire. Left unsaid of course was not mentioning the methods used to create all empires. "Hardly a missionary enterprise" as someone once said though the missionaries were often the point men in that enterprise. The anti-interventionist forces in the U.S. congress had scheduled Korda to appear before them to explain this film which they viewed as propaganda. Pearl Harbor was attacked before that happened and the confrontation was cancelled.

I first saw this film as a boy in 1935. Loved it at the time and still do but not as much now. The problem is what has always plagued Hollywood when it attempts to deal with history and alters it to suit its own purposes. After reading an article by James Mitchener I became convinced Bligh was a product of his era when common seamen ranked at the bottom of the totem pole economically and socially. It was a miserable life which often required the ship owners to kidnap men for the long voyages which often lasted for years. We should not be surprised that the crew of the Bounty mutinied after visiting what must have seemed the equivalent of heaven-Tahiti. Beautiful women on an island which did not know poverty as the crew experienced in England. The wonder of this is why it really happened to this ship and to this captain? Why not others who suffered similar deprivations? The original story by Nordoff-Hall was really a trilogy. The films made of this incident attempt to combine the three books into one story and that is unfortunate. I liked the original book which dealt with the mutiny, was fascinated with the later books dealing with Bligh's superb seamanship in getting the long boat to safety in the Dutch West Indies with the loss of only one man. The mutineers later establishing a colony on Pitcairn Island shows that the racism of the crew dealing with those natives kidnapped after leaving Tahiti, the effects of alcohol in the murder of all the mutineers except one and the shortage of women makes this part of the story even more interesting than the mutiny. Seamen around the world had one thing in common and that was living a miserable life while at sea with very little respect from anyone at any station of life. For example, seamen who defeated the Spanish Armada were actually allowed to starve to death because Parliament refused the necessary appropriations to feed them. The First Lord of the Admiralty actually advocated this as the fewer that survived were fewer to be paid. A later First Lord, Winston Churchill, did not think too highly of the men he commanded when he commented that the fleet's lifestyle was "rum, the lash and sodomy." Samuel Johnson was amazed when his servent ran away to sea by noting, "He would be better off in jail as that cannot sink."