Posted on 01/09/2018 11:18:14 PM PST by iowamark
Please pardon the vanity. I just saw Darkest Hour. It was really excellent and moving. Both history and drama. Some lines and scenes are obviously fictionalized. The scene with Churchill riding the subway is silly, but I understand the need for dramatic license.
It is about the last three weeks of May 1940. Churchill becomes Prime Minister, even though Chamberlain, Halifax, and King George dislike him. Hitler invades France, which becomes a rout. Halifax insists on peace negotiations with Hitler. Churchill wavers, but decides to fight on. It is impossible to say what might have happened if Britain had made a deal with Hitler.
I strongly encourage all to see Darkest Hour. The cast is all excellent.
Gary Oldman as Churchill, Kristin Scott Thomas as his wife, Ben Mendelsohn as George VI, Lily James as his secretary, Ronald Pickup as Neville Chamberlain, Stephen Dillane Lord Halifax.
>>The film is good and it appears to be the way most people learn history now. Once we all read books. If the film inspires people to look things up on Google, then it is good.
Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t about government censorship, it was how they watch tv (or the movie) instead of reading anymore.
From some newspaper:
“And McCarten admitted that no, it probably did not happen. But something like it might well have. “This the kind of thing he did right through the war,” said McCarten of Churchill. “He would go AWOL, disappear and pop up somewhere in London with ordinary people, to find out what they were thinking. So that scene was drawn from deep research, but we have no record that it happened.”
i thought the scene was a dramatization if true events. Why not?
It’s not as if Churchill wasn’t successful. And for a good reason he would have read Shakespeare. This was Prince Hal
That’s Henry IV for the rio lindo folks
Yes, Churchill’s own work is still the best source on the war, although it contains some errors, intentional or unintentional. Of course, there are many things like codebreaking that he could not mention at the time.
I am still unclear on why Halifax declined the PM offer on May 9 when he could have had it. The movie has him saying: “My time has not yet come.” I think that that was unlikely. It is clear that Halifax and Churchill had a mortal fight over peace negotiations later that month. The movie has George VI coming to visit Churchill to promise his support.
F451 was about censorship and denying people to obtain information outside of the official version. Books were banned so people would stop thinking and listen to the State...no?
Dunkirk was good but you have to understand it was an artistic film concentrating on elements of fear and tension and not of the “Longest Day” or “Saving Private Ryan” genre.
Churchill - and this movie - clearly showed that for Freedom to be preserved in the face of a strong, evil, dangerous and statist military power; courage, bravery and a willingness to take risks and losses are REQUIRED. Churchill was flawed, but he had what it took as a person and as a leader to effectively rally people to the cause of freedom at a dangerous time when fear tempted most politicians to trade and sacrifice freedom in the false hope of greater “Security.”
IMHO: Lord Halifax it would seem did not want the burden of the office of PM at that time. In short, he was scared to assume that role.
Dunkirk was popular
Any war movie that depicts the protagonists with not jus clean shaved throughout but hairstyles loses me
No idea who was who No characters, relationships, names.
No
Thanks for this
The History Vhannel this week is running a program “ Secrets of the Axis” with some fascinating insights into moves by some Germans to make a deal and reach a settlement with the British before Hitler’s ruinous invasion if Russia
German and Japanese Hands off the British Empire in return for England’s acceptance of the new German dominated mainland European and Japanese Asian Pacific order
Members of the British aristocracy including some military were supportive of this - amenable to the idea that if Germany and Japan were defeated the main beneficiaries would not be England - but the US which would then dominate the world
....disappointed with Dunkirk... Cinematography excellent, but the movie was too “choppy”, jumping from scene to scene became annoying
“He is a humble man, with much reason for his humility”
I believe Churchill was referring to Anthony Eden in previous post.
The German Army also bears responsibility for antagonizing the Russian people. The SS were not the only forces brutalizing the population of the USSR.
Darkest Hour is a good complement to Dunkirk. it is more accessible than Dunkirk because it is a straightforward story line and less concentration is needed. i saw Darkest Hour twice over last month even though i was initially skeptical that Oldman could make me believe he was Churchill. he did-brilliantly. he deserved that Golden Globe.
We got lucky that our German scientists were better than Russia’s German scientists.
Actually, the Russians didn’t do anything, they were still under the spell of Levchenko.
Blame the Rosenbergs and fellow travelers for that little debacle.
Really nice, satisfying movie and Oldman was excellent as was Ronald Pickup as Chamberlain. And not an F bomb in site. We get all these movies on dvd because we belong to the actor’s union and I lasted about 15 minutes with the hateful 3 Billboards.
Thank you, iowamark...I will go see it!
Most probably yes. While the Germans are excellent at organization. Their atomic bomb project was a disjointed and disorganized affair. Nine different agencies all had a hand in the program. The bureaucratic infighting between these agencies slowed production to a snails pace. Some of the scientists, like Heisenberg, may have been trying to sabotage the project. There effort at A bomb creation paled in comparison to our Manhattan Project.
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