December 7th
Sometimes I just can't help but be grateful to old Ted Turner for his work in film preservation and restoration, and yes I know he's a committed leftie.
I turned on TCM and this movie was on. It's a John Ford produced and directed propaganda/documentary movie made in 1943 about the Pearl Harbor attack. It's actually very, very good. The version I saw today was the complete 82 minute full length movie which was never released in theaters. It was cut down to a 34 minute short by the censors because of (among other things) the attention paid to U.S. complacency and errors in the run up to the attack, including implied criticism of the political establishment and the sympathetic treatment the movie gives to the 160,000 residents of the Hawaiian Islands who were of Japanese ancestry. Very few actors are used, John Huston is Uncle Sam, Dana Andrews plays the ghost of a sailor but there isn't much more than that, even the radar operator who picked up the Japanese planes that morning plays himself.
Besides being remarkably accurate for a movie made in 1943, it's a great period piece that gives an eye opening look at real people in the early 1940s during the war.
If you get the chance to see it I recommend it.
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