Objective, Burma! (1945)

[randy_byers]

I've now watched all four WWII movies that Raoul Walsh made with Errol Flynn while the war was still raging: Desperate Journey (1942), Northern Pursuit (1943), Uncertain Glory (1944), and what is widely, but by no means unanimously, considered the best of them, Objective, Burma! (1945). Dave Kehr has argued that these four films form a kind of continuing story, "one that traces both the progress of the war, from the Blitz to the Pacific campaign, and the evolution of a hero, from carefree swashbuckler to somber leader of men." The last two movies in the series certainly seem the best to me, although all four are very good. Objective, Burma! is probably the grimmest. It shares with the first, Desperate Journey, a story about being trapped behind enemy lines, but Flynn is indeed a more introspective and melancholy figure in the later film, and the whole tone is much darker.

I wondered in my post about Desperate Journey whether Hollywood was ever as sympathetic with the Japanese as that film was with the anti-Nazi German underground. Objective, Burma! is not it, if so. Hatred of the "Japs" is expressed left and right, although at least they are spared the buffoonish caricature that the Nazis are lampooned with in the character played by Raymond Massey in the earlier film. The Japanese characters in Objective, Burma! are nameless and essentially voiceless, since we're never given any translation of what they're saying. I couldn't tell if they were even speaking actual Japanese. It mostly didn't sound like it. One of the most powerful scenes is when our heroes find a comrade who has been tortured by the Japanese, and the reporter played by Henry Hull bellows that he's seen atrocities in the U.S., including lynchings, but never anything as horrible as this. The evocation of lynching in this context is like a punch in the gut, coming in a pre-Civil Rights era in which lynching was still going on, especially considering that Japanese-Americans were being held in internment camps at the time. On the other hand, the Chinese and Indians are happily portrayed as great allies in this front of the war.

Director of photography on this one was James Wong Howe, who filmed some of Walsh's greatest movies, including my favorite, Pursued (1947). There's nothing flashy, but just one effective shot after another. I love this opening shot that merges a map, the animated silhouette of a military plane, and real sky (not Howe's work, most likely). The whole opening sequence, as reconnaissance film is developed to illustrate the map, is a beautiful transition into a filmic world. The intelligence at work in this propaganda piece is subtle and deep.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

and what is widely, but by no means unanimously, considered the best of them, Objective, Burma!

Recently remade as Objective, Myanmar!

(yes, that was a joke)

IMDB doesn't say who played the nameless Japs (as they would have been called then). Maybe they were Chinese, or something else entirely. I've noted the number of movie Nazis who were played by Jews, including both Col. Klink and Sgt. Schultz.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Objective, Myanmar! might come after Retreat from Waziristan.

I wondered whether the Japanese characters weren't actually played by Filipinos speaking Tagalog, but that's just wild-assed conjecture. (It didn't sound like Mandarin or Cantonese either.)

There's a Jewish character amongst our heroes in this one. You can tell, because he says "Mazal tov." Also, he's the one from New York. Pretty good character though. A calming influence, and cheerful too, but also a dab hand with a machine gun.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of something I read in an article about the seventies Australian WWII series, Spyforce:

The Japanese ‘army’ was made up of mainly
Asian students from universities in Sydney.
As it happened, almost every Asian nationality
except Japan was represented in their ranks,
but they filled the bill adequately. The
students indulged in friendly rivalry, boasting
how many times they had ‘died’ during filming.
"To Westerners, all Japanese look alike,"
explained Roger Mirams. "We keep killing the
same ones over and over and nobody knows the
difference."

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I haven't been able to find out anything about who played the Japanese in this movie, but IMDb has this interesting bit of history:

'The movie was pulled from release in Britain after just one week. It was banned there after heated protest from British veterans groups and the military establishment. As the Burma campaign was a predominantly British and Australian operation, the picture was taken as a national insult due to the movie's Americanization of the Burma operation. The resentment that many felt was seen as yet another example of Americans believing they had won the war singlehandedly. It was not shown in Britain again until 1952/1953 and then with an apology disclaimer. Incidentally, writer Lester Cole, who co-wrote the somewhat overly patriotic flag-waving script, would be branded an "Un-American" Communist, becoming one of the Hollywood Ten just a few years later.'

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

My impression is that back then because Asians didn't have the same status as Europeans giving individual credits or even getting the right ethnic grouping wasn't seen as important. Another example in Spyforce was the way they used a Maori actor to play various Japanese officers and diplomats.

The way US television and film pandered to its home market in regards to WWII certainly was a source of resentment amongst my parent's and grandparent's generations. The feeling seems to have been that they were happy enough for the Yanks to celebrate those bits of the war in which they featured but not to muscle in on areas that didn't belong to them. Good examples of this being Rat Patrol and Hogan's Heroes. Which is not to suggest there were no US servicemen in North Africa or detained in Europe but that such shows marginalise non-US involvement.