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History in different languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 41 of 51 18 March 2010 at 1:11am | IP Logged | ||
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ManicGenius, here are a few other films about WWII from other sides that I have seen over the years that may interest you.
1) Europa Europa (1990) (movie based on the life of a Jewish teenager from Poland who has to tread a fine line first with the Russians, and then with the Germans). 2) Hanna's War (1988) (movie based on the life of a young woman who leaves Palestine to join the resistance in Hungary) 3) Operation Daybreak (1975) (movie about Czech and Slovaks trained in Britain who assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the German governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia) 4) Das Boot (The Boat) (1981) (movie about a German submarine's mission) 5) Tmavomodrý Svět (Dark Blue World) (2001) (movie about Czech fighter pilots who join the RAF after the occupation of Czechoslovakia and being chased out of Poland and France after their conquests by the Germans) 6) Торпедоносцы (Torpedo Bombers) (1983) (movie about a squadron of Russian torpedo bombers whose base is in the Arctic (near the coast of the Barents Sea)) 7) Rengo kantai shirei chôkan: Yamamoto Isoroku (1968) (movie based on the life of Japan's Comamander-in-Chief of the Navy, Isoroku Yamamoto from the 1930s to his death in action in 1943) 8) Hawai Middouei daikaikusen: Taiheiyo no arashi (1960) (Hawaii & Midway Operation) (movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor and Battle of Midway from the viewpoint of a Japanese navigator-bombardier. This movie sometimes goes by the English title of "I Bombed Pearl Harbor") Each of these movies is available on DVD and can be watched with English subtitles if necessary. Because most of the movies' DVDs aren't from the USA, be sure that your machine can play them. ManicGenius, you'll probably enjoy a lot the Japanese films, "Torpedo Bombers" and "Dark Blue World" since they have scenes with aerial combat. However the ones not involving aerial combat are also quite good and for a language geek can be some fun. You can hear Russian, German, Polish and Hebrew in "Europa Europa", "Hanna's War"'s dialogues are in English or Hungarian, "Operation Daybreak"'s dialogues are in English or German, while "Das Boot" is done virtually all in German (it has a snippet of English and French too). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Julien71 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 5372 days ago 42 posts - 52 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Hungarian | Message 42 of 51 18 March 2010 at 1:35am | IP Logged | ||
If you’d like to learn more about this topic and happen to go to California, I recommend the visit of Manzanar National Historic Site, just northwest of the Death Valley and 230 miles (370 km) northeast of Los Angeles. I visited it last year and found very interesting to learn more on the way Japanese Americans were treated in the USA during World War II. http://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm Basically Manzanar was one of ten camps in the USA where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned during WWII and it’s one the best-preserved former camps that you can visit today. Edited by Julien71 on 18 March 2010 at 1:36am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ManicGenius Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 288 posts - 420 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French, Japanese | Message 43 of 51 18 March 2010 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I've seen a bunch of those.
I went through a WWII history nut phase awhile back. Europa Europa was fantastic, Das Boot is a classic, U-571 is good despite historical inaccuracies. There was some movie about Hitler in his bunker as well, but I don't remember the name. Outside of WWII, Good Bye Lenin! was entertaining, though I don't know how much truth there was in showing life in the DDR. And any Soviet era films I've seen were sort of... well biased :-P Das Boot does not refer to the movie Beerfest however :-P and Julien... It kills me knowing that I've been to California numerous times and have never thought to look a place like that up. Partially because I thought they were all torn down. I would love to go to Iwo Jima sometime but apparently it's near impossible to get there. Edited by ManicGenius on 18 March 2010 at 3:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 44 of 51 29 March 2010 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Great list Chung! I would like to add to the list two films: 1) "The dawns here are quiet today" AWESOME Russian war film about a platoon of female soldiers who encounter a German platoon on Russian territory. I really liked this one. It's part colour, part b/w, from late 1960s I think. 2) "Kukushka" - just a funky Russian film from 2006 or so,that takes place in Finland during the war. Finland teamed up with DE in desperation as it was quite scared of the USSR next door. The film is about a Saami woman who rescues two soldiers, a Russian and a German. They are not able to speak with each other because none can speak the others language. (I am studying Russian, hence the focus on Russian films... ) Edited by cordelia0507 on 29 March 2010 at 11:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| julie1275 Diglot Newbie Korea, South Joined 5694 days ago 12 posts - 20 votes Speaks: Korean*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin | Message 45 of 51 30 March 2010 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm sure there's a lot of variations in history of different countries. For example, in my country, South Korea, I am tought that many concepts are "Europian-oriented", which means biased. But I don't think many Europian history textbooks teach those things.
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 46 of 51 31 March 2010 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | ||
This movie is available in the original mix of Saami, Finnish and Russian with added Esperanto subtitles from filmoj.net . 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 47 of 51 31 March 2010 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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If people must necessarily watch films about the war (what an over-used topic this is!!) then I think that Russian films offer a much more interesting angle than Anglo-American ones.
The benefit of them is that they rarely show any actual shooting or killing. Instead they focus on the affect that the war had on normal people. To me, this is more interesting (although frankly the super-depressing war is definitely NOT my favourite topic for films!!) Russian war films also show people on both sides in a much more nuanced way than the English speaking films. The Germans in particular are portrayed as normal people drawn into a conflict that they may or may not support, forced to play along with the ideology, or temporarily carried away with it; and often forced make hard decisions. The Russian soldiers are also shown as individuals -- not always brave and heroic (but obviously "the good guys"...) There is one classic and well-loved old series which I did not know about previously, but learnt about through a Russian forum; called "Stirlitz". (Семнадцать мгновений весны) It's a TV series about a USSR secret agent who infiltrates Nazi headquarters towards the end of the war, to achieve some "noble" goals. (watch and find out). It has some great lines and plots and a very good lead actor who recently died and was mourned in Russia. If you look closely at the backdrop you can see that the series was actually shot on location in Germany (Berlin) in the 1960s. Most of the characters are portrayed in a nuanced way, by local actors where appropriate -- however the language used is Russian. Definitely "a thinking persons" war film. It comes in both b/w and a technicolour version. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 48 of 51 01 April 2010 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
That's a bit of a stereotype about war films. Russian war movies don't have a monopoly on being more cerebral in war films than British or American productions. Watch "Torpedo Bombers" for an example as its episodic nature lends itself to showing a couple of intense battle scenes (including one whose conclusion is rather gruesome yet moving), in addition to stuff on the ground and the effects of losses have on people. The British dramatization "Piece of Cake" is a good example of a war film being more cerebral and/or giving more credit to the enemy. It's based on a work of historical fiction about the Battle of France and Battle of Britain from the viewpoint of a British fighter squadron. Far from portraying the pilots of the RAF as virtuous supermen who routinely made mincemeat of the Luftwaffe, much of the movie (and original book) shows how tactically flawed much of the RAF was (the author did some research before writing his book). The pilots not only had to deal with prejudices entrenched in themselves and the military hierarchy, but also had their own personal problems (e.g. some were married, others were rookies, while still others weren't British and mistrusted by the British pilots) as well as German pilots who were more experienced and skillful than the average British fighter pilot. Much of the action scenes take place in the second half of the series, and in most cases the British side comes out no better than a tactical draw (or it scores a victory at a rather high cost), thus presenting the Battle of Britain as a much closer shave than otherwise believed. Also about the Battle of Britain is the British film "Angels One-Five" which focuses more on action on the ground than in the air. It focuses on one pilot in particular who has to learn to fight as part of a team, and much of his development is gleaned based on dialogues on the ground between him and his superiors. A good part of the aerial combat scenes (there are 1.5 of them in the movie - I say only 1.5 since part of one of them is seen mainly from the ground and is fairly brief) are set from the viewpoint of the sector station and you usually have to piece the aerial action together based on the pilots' radio transmissions filtering into the sector station. It's definitely not the type of movie for someone hoping for the thrill of seeing planes exploding in mid-air, pilots getting riddled with bullets in the cockpit, or sequences showing a handful of British planes taking on an armada of German bombers. Yet another example of a more "balanced" or cerebral presentation on film about an event in WWII outside Russian cinematography is the joint Japanese-American film about the attack on Pearl Harbour "Tora, Tora, Tora!". Here the film shows how many missed opportunities there were on the American side (frankly you'd feel like smacking your forehead 100 times over when you see all of the tactical blunders made by the American leadership as portrayed in the film), while also showing how reluctant the Japanese Navy's leadership was about entering the war, and realistically portraying Japanese military personnel as anything but a monolith of zealous automatons who are programmed to die in a suicidal "Banzai!" charge. The battle scene is quite spectacular for its time, but it isn't a gory mess (i.e. lots of explosions, flaming ships or airplanes, smashed buildings, but relatively few bloodstains). It's definitely head-and-shoulders above that piece of junk called "Pearl Harbor" from 2001 which combines the worst of cinematic thrill-seeking and (a)historical presentation. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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