the audience applauded

Just perfect...

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The Memphis Belle (1944) is a War/History documentary about "The Memphis Belle" which is the 25th & last bombing mission of a B17 in Germany. It is directed by William Wyler and I think that he did a wonderful job. The documentary is clear, easy to understand, entertaining, interesting, and informative which is just about everything you could want in a documentary. I feel that this film would be suitable to show in schools in history class since it is easy to understand so students would probably learn from it.The documentary explains who is working on each campaign and gives lots of additional information about the campaigns in the introduction. The narrator is sure to include their plans and how they ensure to defeat the Nazis. The documentary shows you the people who are working in the American Army at the time of the mission and who they are and what they did before joining the military. Although the documentary is old, the imagery and shots are stunning. You can see clear birds-eye views of the bombing missions and are able to see the range of how much destruction they cause. You can see a first-hand perspective of fighter planes flying and getting ready to shoot while the narrator explains exactly what is going on. You can also hear the dialogue between the pilots and crew.

The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944) *** (out of 4)William Wyler directed this documentary that takes a look at a group of B-17 flyers on their 25th and final mission over Europe. Like many of the WWII documentaries from this era, it's true that they've been replaced in terms of some quality because in recent years people like A&E and The History Channel have been able to produce some spectacular documents of the war. With that said, there's also no doubt that these documentaries serve a great purpose because they show so many important stories and we get to see many historic battles. This documentary doesn't give you a great idea of who The Memphis Belle were as there's very little information given about them but this here is made up by the wonderful footage that we get. Shot in glorious Technicolor, this documentary contains some terrific footage of the men, what they did when not in the air and of course the battle footage. There are some terrific images from the air where we look down on the European countryside and it's so beautiful to look at that you often have to remind yourself that there's a war going on. The bombing scenes are breathtaking as are the scenes dealing with wounded soldiers. There's one sequence where a soldier is getting a blood transfusion and narrator Eugene Kern makes it clear that the blood could be from anyone in America, which was a clear cry for people to keep doing their part by giving blood.

The most interesting thing about this documentary is its inherent paradox. It is a look at a US air base in England, 1944; its preparations for and carrying out of a strike on a prime German economic base. This kind of event is a one-off, necessitating spontaneous film-making (you can't ask for another take). And yet the director is William Wyler. Wyler could be great, it is true, but he was one of the most rigid of filmmakers, with every scene so preprepared and exact that it was often difficult for it to breathe. He was a theatrical kind of director, favouring interior, static set-ups, often base on canoncial, or high-minded material (e.g. Emily Bronte, Henry James, 'Ben-Hur').Of course, like all documentaries, this film is heavily controlled, its 'reality' mediated by Wyler's craft, as well as the propaganda needs of the War Office. The film follows a very schematic script - preparations, attack, return - which reads more like a Hollywood treatment than the messy loose-ends of a war. Every event and 'actor' is shown to have a purpose, from the glamorous bombers to the lowly mechanics. Several scenes are obviously contrived ('real' people are terrible actors), and we are asked to believe that in the middle of a life-or-death dogfight, salty veterans wouldn't swear.The didactic narrator, a disembodied Voice of God in a very physical, corporeal conflict, gathers everything authoritively to himself - he tells us what we are seeing; he can inform us what the soldiers are saying; he explains tactics and motives, putting a relatively minor operation into the wider context of the US (definitely US!!) war effort. We are told, no less, what war is for. Images of brutal injury and death are not denied, but are appropriated for the optimistic project: we are tacitly asked to think of the greater good.So, over fifty years on, with a completely different world view, does this film have any value, or meaning for us? Oh yes. Turn the sound down. Marvel at the sheer FACT (not in a history book, or a film) of history in motion, before your very eyes. Mere statistics now walk and talk and smile like actual people. This not all. The aerial sequences are astoundingly beautiful. There is a remarkable purity of geometry to the air formations, making you think they were set up by Wyler. The film stock, neither Technicolour gloss, nor the vapidly clear image of modern film, gives a bleached, dream-like effect to the spectacle, making you forget that in a few moments these machines are going to murder women and children.There is also something curiously moving about the transition from the smooth, controllable base footage to the elliptical chaos of the bombing and subsequent dogfight. We are told at the beginning that much of this footage was lost because of over-exposure; its absence - making us confront in our much more potent imaginations what really happened - is a beautiful triumph of the power of imagery, editing and ellipsis (i.e. art) over the sterile, fascist hectoring of the narrator's words.

Ever see paramedics resuscitate a dead man? If you have, it's impossible to take a medical drama seriously again. There is absolutely no drama in their actions. "The Memphis Belle" left me with same impression about soldiers. Although they worked in an inherently tense situation, a situation in which their lives could end on a whim, or an instant shift in kharma, it was their calmness that colored them the most. For two magnificent segments, director William Wyler plays taped intercom conversations over the already breathtaking photography. What we get are scenes that put those of ANY fictionalized war movie to shame. In the first, the camera is in the right place at the right time as he captures the waistgunner engaging a charging Messerschmidt. He lets his gun loose, and a stream of tracers goes sailing off into oblivion, wreathing the enemy plane. Then a few hit, then a few more and then the enemy fighter is engulfed in a cloud of black smoke. As he watches the plane drop with a sickening whistle, he hollers over the intercom in joy: "ha, ha, I got him, I got him." The Captain, annoyed, barks back: "don't yell on the damn intercom!" No joy, no bravado, just the grim realities of war. In the second, the camera captures a foundering B-17 turning on its side and slowly nosing down in a beautiful arc. Their response: {calmly} "a B-17 is goin' down at four o'clock" The crew chants in irritation "come on you guys, get out of there. What are you fellows asleep in there, get out!" Finally, two or three parachutes unfurl, closely resembling a Daffodil blooming. War turns out to be beautiful. Kurosawa's "Ran" and Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" argued this same point. But they were just movies. This film with its countless shots of the clear blue skies and the appealing flak patterns, proves it to anyone who dares to believe. In the film, there was not one patriotic utterance, or a single pean to heroic sacrifice, at least not from the men who flew the planes. These men were not heroes, nor were they warriors, or even soldiers in the sense that we portray those things. They were EMPLOYEES of the U.S. Army Air Corps. They did a job, and did it only because the "Boss" told them to. Even if they hated it (and you get the sense that they did), they did it. That impression never leaves me. The human species and its ability to accept any situation and get used to it. From now on, the passions of the soldiers in all the "blockbuster" war flicks will make me sick. Why dramatize that which is inherently full of tension. but we know most people that write war flicks have never been in jeopardy, so what do you expect. "The Memphis Belle" requires no histrionics or flowery dialogue to be the greatest war movie ever made.