Posted on 09/30/2008 9:33:59 AM PDT by Publius804
From Times Online
September 30, 2008
Italian war veterans denounce 'insulting' Spike Lee film
Richard Owen, in Rome
Italian partisan organisations are to stage protests tomorrow at the Italian premiere of Spike Lee's film Miracle at St. Anna, which they say is full of lies, and insults the memory of the Italian Resistance during the Second World War.
The controversial film, already released in the United States, will be running in Italian cinemas from Friday. But it is being shown first at Viareggio on the Tuscan coast, close to the village of Sant' Anna di Stazzema in the Apennine hills above, where 560 civilians — including women and children — were murdered in cold blood in August 1944 by Nazi SS troops as they retreated northwards in the face of the Allied advance.
Miracle at St. Anna, which highlights the role of African-American soldiers in the war, suggests that anti-Fascist partisans indirectly caused the atrocity by first taking refuge in the village and then abandoning the villagers to their fate.
It even shows a partisan named Rodolfo collaborating with the Nazis. This runs directly counter to the accepted Italian version of events, which is that the slaughter was not a reprisal but an unprovoked act of brutality and that the hunt for partisans was a pretext.
It also questions one of the founding myths of Italy's postwar democracy, which holds that the help the partisans gave to the Allies regained Italy the honour it had lost under Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator, by allying itself with Hitler and Nazi Germany.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Spike Lee film = Three words to say - Don’t go to the movie.
spike lee is almost pathologically bigoted against Italians. I have only seen 2 of his films (do the right thing, summer of sam) and that much was obvious, esp. summer of sam.
Shut up, Gumbas...no one noticed he had a movie out.
Imagine the outrage if an Italian movie was made on MLK focusing on his weaker points or of black slave holders or of black tribes that sold their slaves to the white man or...
I love it. Spike’s on the hot seat. How do you like it Spike?
Rev. Wright said Romans are “white” so it’s okay for Spike to insult them.
Everything to him is “the white man’s fault”.
Who'da thunk.
You are correct I’m Italian American from NY and he is hates whites and Italians in particular. John Turturro is his resident Italian American (house italian if you will) - who he throws into these roles again and again. Spike Lee is a pile of trash who appeals to guilt ridden urban white yuppies.
OK Spike. Pi$$ off the Mafia. They will set you straight.
In "Do The Right Thing", "Jungle Fever", "Malcolm X", "Clockers", "Summer Of Sam" and "She Hate Me" he presents a bestiary of vile Italian characters.
(2) The Italian partisans in Northern Italy were as likely to be Communists as Italian patriots and were not above encouraging Nazi reprisals for propaganda purposes.
(3) The 92nd ID farely quite poorly in battle, were not accidentally fragged by an incompetent white officer and were not sent on reconnaissance missions. Theur main job after their first engagements was to mop up towns which had already been captured by the Allies.
What do you expect from Spike Lee?
Thanks Spike. All this time I thought it was FIVE MARINES AND ONE NAVY CORPSMAN.
Yeah he does obsess about Italians, maybe hes an italian wannabe, in the same vein as white kids who dress like rappers and listen to hip hop! lol
Question: Name a single Spike Lee movie where he doesn’t bash Italians and/or White people.
So this is Spike Lee’s answer to Clint Eastwood and how hollywood never does movies about black soliders in WW2? By doing a movie about a subject that is considered sacred ground by all Italians, the St. Anna massacre, and making the white american troops and most Italians out to be the bad guys? What a stupid racist bigot.
Dear God, is there anything stupider than a white teenager trying to sound like a black rapper?
Spike Lee grew up in Cobble Hill, which is now inhabited by limp-wristed yuppie douchebags, but at the time was overwhelmingly blue collar Italian. That accounts for the hostility.
he really should be a study in psychoanalysis on adults acting out childhood issues in their daily life for psychology masters/doctorates
Um yeah one group - people who cry or pass out when Obama gives a speech! They are the village idiots of America!!! :-)
Yeah, “FIGHT WHITEY” !!!...But do Whitey’s bidding peddling American Express Cards...Does this idiot have credibility with anyone ???
Anyone who wasted their time on “Do the Wrong Thing” would see Spike’s hostility towards Italians.
By the late 60s when Lee was growing up in a small black middle-class enclave in Fort Greene he likely ran into two demographics every day: the tough project black kids whom he looked up to and the tough Italian kids who looked down on him, assuming him to be one of those project kids.
He's spent the rest of his life glorifying the former and denigrating the latter.
See #21.
A few interesting excerpts from the article. First, the author states the book is FICTION. And then Spike Lee claims what he filmed was true and not made up! Another classic example of liberalism re-writing history to make it whatever they want it to be.
At a press screening in Rome, James McBride, the black American Second World War veteran who wrote the novel on which Mr Lee’s film is based, said: “I am very sorry if I have offended the partisans. I have enormous respect for them. As a black American, I understand what it’s like for someone to tell your history, and they are not you.”
He added: “But unfortunately, the history of World War II here in Italy is ours as well, and this was the best I could do ... it is after all a work of fiction, not a history book.”
Mr Lee said that the film, which follows the fate of four black GIs, was intended “to restore the voice of black soldiers who fought in the war.” He said that “not all Italians admired the partisans”, many of whom had fled to the mountains and left civilians to face the Nazis. “I have not invented anything,” he declared.
It was only later that he moved to Fort Greene, which went from Italian/Polish to black poor to buppie and (now) to 'Nilla over 35-40 years.
Nah, yo...
Even if it apparently exists only in Lee's mind.
Black racists like Lee have a problem: Simply put, if we're superior beings, how do you explain the last 400 years of history?
And the racists have no coherent answer. Either they invent a science fiction explanation (Elijah Muhammad's "Yakub the mad scientist" story, or Louis Farrakhan's mothership), or else, as with Spike Lee, modern history is just one long conspiracy by The Evil White Man To Keep The Black Man Down. In any case, facts are not welcome, and what matters is that white people "come to grips" with a version of history that varies wildly from actual events.
A huge conspiracy now covers up these "facts", in their opinion.
The kernel of reality: whenever black infantrymen were sent into a forward area in WWII, they took enough casualties to become disorganized and were easily repulsed, necessitating other units going in to finish up the job.
Spike Lee is also a racist, from Larry Elders' article "What Liberal Double Standard"
Isn't getting a lecture on racial sensitivity from Spike Lee sort of like taking tips on dating etiquette from Marv Albert? Remember a few years ago when Spike Lee announced he wants to be interviewed only by black reporters? Remember during the filming of Jungle Fever, and reports of cast members complaining about Spike Lee's alleged abusive treatment of white women? Remember after the release of Malcolm X, Lee implied a racist conspiracy to miscalculate and lowball box-office receipts of his movie? And remember when the Director, warmly and sensitively, explained his feeling toward mixed race couples: "I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street."
http://www.larryelder.com/racial/doublestandard.htm
Now Europeans see what we have been dealing with.
Guess what, this isn’t the same mindset you are used to Europeans. Different animal altogether.
Yes. The ones who pay $500 to get their hair dreadlocked so they can look like one too.
No, the history of Italy in WWII was very complex.
The events of this movie are supposed to take place in August of 1944 at the time of the massacre of Italian civilians in St. Anna della Stazzema.
In July 1943 Mussolini was ousted from power by the Fascists and the King and was replaced by Badoglio.
Mussolini was arrested and then he was rescued by the SS in September 1943 and headed north to Lake Garda.
This happened in the context of the Allied invasion of Italy from the South.
The Fascists still held central Italy, the Nazis were in control of Northern Italy with Mussolini as the head of a breakaway Northern Italian republic, and the Allies held southern Italy.
The Badoglio government signed an armistice with the Allies but were forced to flee to Malta, because anti-Fascist Italians were enraged that the armistice might help the Fascists remain in power on a negotiated basis with the allies.
Central Italy was in total chaos with the remains of the Fascist government engaged in street warfare with Stalinists, Trotskyites, republicans and royalists.
The Allies moved in by spring 1944 to assault the Gothic Line - the front created by the Nazis to keep the Allies from northern Italy.
Thousands and thousands of Fascists flooded north to escape the Allies and by mid-summer 1944 the Germans were falling back in an orderly fashion.
Tuscany, where the town in question was located, was a patchwork of Italian Communist partisan bands, royalists, Fascist remnants and just flat-out gangsters and thieves roaming around and preying on the population.
One of the men convicted in the destruction of the town was an Italian SS man.
I’ve never seen it, but I do know those who were scarred for life after watching it.
The question of the performance of black units is very interesting.
The “old army” professional black units were apparently very good indeed, possibly because being a soldier was a step up for a lot of black recruits and the army could afford to be selective.
Black conscript units in WWI apparently were quite good also, but that may be because the few that got into combat had a large professional cadre and there were so few of them that they may have had their pick of the most motivated.
In WWII the Army seems to have made a big mistake in disbanding the professional black regiments, they got diluted into a mass of non-combat units and those few combat units that did get in were mostly mediocre(though not all, some were excellent). Large units like the 91st were sent in late and “green” and did poorly initially as could be expected, but didn’t have time to shake out.
In Korea the conscript black units were for the most part unreliable and difficult to manage, higher commands often felt that they needed to be “stiffened” by white units, and the management of replacements by race was difficult - in fact integration began by the need to provide whatever replacements were available to the units most in need, regardless of race. There were sound practical reasons for integrating the army, integration began at the level of the Korean theater out of pure military necessity.
Le Notte de Cabiria is an interesting portrait of immediately-postwar Rome.
I would've been a film studies major if it didn't entail me moving back with my parents for the rest of my life.
In WWII, if a black unit sustained anything near a 10% casualty rate in combat, their morale was shattered and they became disorganized.
The normal solution was just to grab effectives from other units and fill the holes in the line, but you could not fill those holes with the available personnel - i.e. whites.
You just had to retire the black unit and replace it with a white unit wholesale.
A logistical and tactical nightmare for which the logical solution of integration had to be found.
Also, in fairness to the black units in Italy, the units they were facing were the best fighting units the world has ever seen (the Wehrmacht) and their very presence on the field drove the Nazis into a fury, since they took the deployment of black troops as a personal insult (and it was probably intended that way).
Heh heh.
Funny about that German business.
The French in Italy had lots of black units (and brown), and deployed them wholesale. These tended to be quite good soldiers, and are credited with some spectacular military feats.
Nope, but it sure is entertaining watching them climb stairs in those baggy pants.
LOL Deb! This guy’s joints are so bad his filmography suffers from rheumatoid arthritis.
25th Hour and Inside Man come to mind.
I saw Salo. It’s a boring piece of crap.
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