One problem with a WW2 movie is that the tone is usually somber, emotional, and the hero is god-like. Makes sense, but after the Nth such movie, it's not too entertaining. Here the tone is almost that of a light comedy. This works, once you get used to it, as the facts of the story are that of a mid-tier lawyer in the Swedish government working through the bungling bureaucracy trying to help Swedish citizens escape from Norway or Denmark or such and get back to Sweden. At this time early in the war, Sweden was nominally neutral, though they unfortunately were bidden to supply material and more to the Reich. With this pseudo-alliance, the Nazis were apt to help Sweden in their efforts to repatriate ex-pats.

Our hero is based on the real lawyer Gösta Engzell, whose government assignment was to help full Swedish citizens get the correct passports and visas needed to get out of Nazi-occupied Norway or Denmark and get back home. Little by little, Engzell is able to broaden the requirements, especially for Swedish Jews in danger of "deportation" - perhaps not a citizen, but married to one;  or not a citizen but lived in Sweden for a time, etc. The trick was to find some Swedish connection and to convince the Nazi apparatus that this was enough to let the person return.

About 20 minutes into the film, I suddenly realized that this was very close to a story I had been obsessed with in the '80s. I must have watched a TV documentary on Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish architect turned wartime diplomat who worked tirelessly in Budapest late in the war to do this exact same job. (One reason for my interest being that Wallenberg graduated, as I did, from The University of Michigan). Wallenberg provided paperwork, often quite fictitious, and set up houses and apartment buildings to shelter people safely until the paperwork and transportation was arranged. Perhaps five thousand lives were saved.

Wallenberg's story has some extraordinary and dramatic parts to it: At one point near the end of the Nazi occupation, as the Soviets were closing in, he negotiated directly with Adolf Eichmann to make sure the Jews he was protecting would be safe. And ultimately, after the Soviets began their takeover of Hungary, Wallenberg was driven to the Soviet generals' headquarters, and was never seen again. For decades there would be odd reports of an aging Swede in different parts of the Gulag prison system, but still today, no one knows what happened to Wallenberg. Among the honors given to him, in 1963, Yad Vashem designated Wallenberg as one of the "Righteous Among the Nations". In 1981, Wallenberg was only the second person (after Churchill) to have Congress declare him an Honorary American Citizen.

There are a few movies and plays about Wallenberg: A 1985 US TV movie starred Richard Chamberlain, which was fairly good, though of course picturing him as a bit too perfect. This contrasts with a 1990 Swedish movie starring Stellan Skarsgård as an exhausted, overworked half-maniac — a much more realistic, or at least more interesting, character.

Back to The Swedish Connection.... By the end of the movie, Engzell and his staff have helped some hundreds of people escape Nazi-occupied territories. And finally, the Swedish government changes some of their passport requirements to make this kind of work easier. It's now sometime in 1943, and suddenly a tall, somewhat gaunt but good-looking man arrives and asks to see Engzell to understand how the new visa/passport system works to help Jews escape – "My name is Raoul Wallenberg" !!! I literally jumped out of my chair. Turns out the occasional narration was by this actor; this is essentially the origin story of Wallenberg. Most people in Sweden will catch this, perhaps from the beginning; for most US audiences, this ending will be a bit of a puzzle.

As befits the film's light touch, the film ends with two small jokes. When Wallenberg introduces himself to Engzell, he is not recognized, which is accurate; to that point, Wallenberg was a nobody. Engzell passes him to his office staff to learn more—something like seeing Watson ignoring Holmes on first introduction. And the final shot, of the Engzell family in the car, fades out to Bing Crosby singing the upbeat "You've Got to Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive", a nod to the film's tone.

Crazy that an offhand watch of a Swedish WW2 movie brings back the connections to the Wallenberg story I had studied in the '80s and a thrill to  discover Gösta Engzell, the man who laid the legal groundwork for the survival of thousands of persecuted Jews.

The film tells the abbreviated story of Krystyna Skarbek, Polish emigre to the UK who joined the Special Operations Executive and spied for the course of the war. Reading the Wikipedia page on her, even that abbreviated biography makes you want to say (as is so often the case), This should have been a mini-series, not a movie.

What we get are the first and last episodes of her spy craft - getting back in to Poland to retrieve some microfilm communiqué, and finally over to the Drôme region of southern France to help the Vercors Maquis in July/August 1944.

I've mentioned a bit about the Battle of Vercors in a recent post. It's the kind of staggering bit of action - a division of Nazi soldiers, aircraft, gliders, heavy artillery, etc,  engaging in an inland alpine invasion, two months after D-Day - that fuels my near-obsession with the vastness of WW2 history.

The Resistance actions here are a small but critical part of the film. Unfortunately, the battle is only ever seen in long shot, with artillery explosions substituting for any protracted fighting shots. There's also a bit of fiction in that, in the film, the Brits renege on a promise to delivery artillery; the point is made that the Maquis were set up as a diversion. Not sure about that as on July 17 72 US B-17s dropped 800 some canisters of arms and munitions.

During my visit, we were able to get to the Departmental Museum of the Resistance of Vercors with myriad artifacts from the Free French forces and the battle.

The film then focuses on Skarbek's audacious visit to a Nazi prison to try and get senior Resistance fighters released. Unstated is that this happened on Aug 15-16, the day of the US-led Allied Operation Dragoon landings at three beaches (and four separate commando raids) along the Mediterranean coast, some 200 miles south. She walked in, got a meeting with the Commandant, and announced that she was a British spy here to negotiate for the release of her friends. Over a few hours, making sure the Commandant understood that his war was basically over and with the assistance of a two million franc bribe, Skarbek succeeded.

For some reason, that true story isn't quite enough for this film and some of the details above are ignored. Still, the ending is appropriately chilling and exciting. Knowing this background information made the movie work for me quite well; I'm happy to recommend it. Good performance by Morgane Polanski (daughter of director Roman Polanski) as Skarbek, a couple scenes with spymaster Malcom McDowell, and directed by James Marquand (son of Richard Marquand, director of Eye of the Needle and Return of the Jedi).

US War Memorials Overseas was one of the main research sites I used to map out my trip. France is notable in that the country as a whole continues to celebrate heroes and events of the two world wars that took such a terrible toll. The history is complicated of course, but it is heartening to see how many memorials are in place, especially for US forces and people. With no world war battles taking place on mainland USA, there are very few artifacts around, for example New York. Yet throughout France, there are not only memorials in place, but memorials that are actively cared for by French volunteers.

So, for my trip, visiting the memorials was a way to gain insight into the locations and people involved in the battles, a way to remember and call out their names, and a way to thank France for their commitment to maintaining the memorials.

For example, the trip started with an overnight flight to Nice - and the first memorial was a plaque at the airport dedicated to six US engineer infantrymen who died de-mining the harbor of Nazi explosives.

Amazingly, we happened to run across a memorial not in the database. During the Allied liberation of Southern France, Operation Rugby was the parachute drop part of Dragoon with some 9,000 troops landing about 5 miles inland from the CAMEL beachhead. This was led by General Robert Frederick, original leader of the famed Devil's Brigade. Upon landing and gathering his forces (as in Normandy, the troops missed the drop zones by wide margins), General Frederick set up his headquarters in a farmhouse in La Motte. Seeing this plaque on the outside wall of the house as we drove by on the narrow country road, we slammed on the brakes and were able to take some pictures.  Once back home I contacted the US War Memorial Overseas site manager and as you can see, the additional memorial is now live.

Very happy to have added to the memorial database.

As usual, I’m searching for any and all sights, memorials, and more to place on a map so whilst driving around we can make random stops to celebrate history, war memorials, whatever.  A Roman viaduct! A Van Gogh landscape! The meeting place of Napoleon’s return from Elba!

I was able to find a great organization and web site devoted to American War Memorials Overseas.  So I dig in and make note of memorials along our travel path dedicated to various WW2 US soldiers. (For example, there’s a memorial plaque at the Nice Airport to six Army engineers who died while removing mines from the airport)

Meanwhile, checking out other WW2 happenings in the area, I come across various accounts of the Resistance in the Vercours, a mountain range and high, wide plateaus in the French Alps, now a French national park. During WW2, especially after 1942, this area was famous for the myriad acts of resistance and in fact was hugely important during Operation Dragoon for cutting Wehrmacht communication lines —  of critical help disrupting the ability to organize a coherent defense of the landing sites.

The Vercours fighters had been operating for years in the area, becoming more of an organized enemy than a mere nuisance. At one point in July 1944, the area was in fact declared “Free France”. That declaration was too much for the Germans who organized a large-scale assault on the area, with a division or so, glider landings, etc, followed by, as usual, razing of villages, executions, etc.

Searching around, I also found some memorials to resistance fighters of the Oisans area. Ok, so now to search the internet for that. The Oisans is just east of the Vercours, in a somewhat more mountainous area, and now famous for many ski resorts, hiking, and climbing vacations.

One link got me to a plaque at some sort of mountain refuge near the (lake) Lac de La Fare, dedicated to a resistance group and US B-24 bomber crew who defended themselves and hospital evacuees from a German attack. The plaque is said to be inscribed:

The location is a near glacial runoff lake high up in the Grandes Rousses massif. The refuge/hut is now a rest cafe for hikers/skiers, Refuge de la Fare

A little more than interesting! I did a quick check on the American War Memorials site but nothing was listed around the Lake. Huh; maybe this is just an urban myth?

A bit more digging and I realize that the bomber crew is in fact the same crew that crashed near Prunières, France.  Not quite sure how much info is out there on this, but I want to at least find out if possible about the crew.

Searching around for B-24 crews and Prunières I find a few French articles and brochures about the resistance, but oddly no mention of the crew by name. Not even any names next to a purported picture of the bomber crew in the brochure.

• See this site on the Huez and Oisans Museum  – in the Description section
• Official summary of the mission from the 15th Air Force ,  report dated July 20th, 1944. But this report has no specific information about the crash, or the crews of the airplanes. It wasn't until the crew returned in October that the military was able to correct their MIA report.
• An interesting brochure on the Oisans resistance and the fight at the Refuge de La Fare. Includes this picture of the crew:

A few days later, I take that crew picture and do a reverse Google image search, which leads me not just to more info on the crew, but links to video remembrances by a crew member, by a daughter of the co-pilot, and to a book about the Crew’s escape route and help fighting off the German attack - “Onze Américains tombés du ciel” - "11 Americans who Fell from the Sky" writen by Pierre Montaz, at the time one of the Oisans resistance leaders (and also a key inventor of ski lift cable cars).

I’ll leave the rest of the story to the links below, a couple of which summarize the bombing mission, crash, escape, hospital evacuation, and more. (Make sure to use your browsers 'translate' feature for the French text, if needed.)

• https://www.ledauphine.com/hautes-alpes/2018/09/28/prunieres-1944-sur-les-pas-de-ces-americains-tombes-du-ciel   — story and video of daughter of co-pilot Ken Sorgenfrei, her visit to the memorial in 2018. 1st Lieutenant Ken Sorgenfrei was part of the 15th Air Force, 55th Bomb Wing, 460th Bomber Group, 762nd Bomber Squadron, based in Spinazzola, Italy.
• Mike Bisek, crew member, video interview – https://www.groutmuseumdistrict.org/about/news/downed-iowa-airman-99-saved-by-french-in-wwii-.aspx
• The B-24 was named "My Gloria",  # 42-51085 .  See https://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_serials/1942_3.html
• Eleven Americans Who Fell From the Sky - book by Pierre Montaz: https://www.amazon.fr/Onze-Américains-tombés-du-ciel/dp/2844240364
• Pierre Montaz obit - Aug 2021 - https://www.ledauphine.com/societe/2021/08/04/pierre-montaz-pionnier-des-remontees-mecaniques-est-mort
• Good summary of book  - https://embrun3945.wordpress.com/2020/03/01/11-americains-tombes-du-ciel/
• Another summary  - https://champsaur.net/11-americains-tombes-du-ciel/
• A page that clears up any confusion about the initial Refuge de la Fare and the higher-up Father Rajon hut beside the glacial lake La de la Fare - http://www.vallouimages.com/oisans/grandes-rousses/refuge-de-la-fare.htm

But importantly, for me, I’ve been able to contact the American War Memorials Overseas site and am working with them to update their info on the crash site and to add to their database the Lac du la Fare attack memorial.

I had only planned to get out as far as Napoleon's Meeting Place, but I guess I’ve got to carve out a day in our trip to go east a bit more and get to the Grandes Rousses mountains by cable car and the memorial site!

P.S. Just to note the wonders of the modern world:  The crew photo was scanned from a book published in 1994, a low-resolution copy was put on the web many years ago, and I copied that to Google image search, which in less than 1/2 second found many copies of it in its search database, giving me links around the world to other web sites with more info. Quite the best time to be a history researcher.

Obscure YT of the day: 1968s caper at an NFL game movie THE SPLIT has quite a cast: Jim Brown, Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Sutherland, Warren Oates, Jack Klugman, Diahann Carroll, Julie Harris! Based on a Parker novel! https://t.co/PjntVLaLma pic.twitter.com/wnezDiWq8Y

— James Kenney (@jfkenney) September 13, 2024

Obscure YT of the night: cool 1965 French noir flick HAIL, MAFIA, w/ Henry Silva, Jack Klugman(!), Eddie Constantine, Elsa Martinelli & Michael Lonsdale (MOONRAKER)! Director Raoul Levy also made THE DEFECTOR w Montgomery Clift & kiled himself in 66 :( https://t.co/PpcbQNEo9u pic.twitter.com/cptOgmVBIv

— James Kenney (@jfkenney) September 16, 2024

Obscure YT of the day: Al Pacino stars in THE LOCAL STIGMATIC (1990), with Paul Guilfoyle, directed by David Wheeler. A labor of love -- it's one of Pacino's favorite plays! https://t.co/6R4LRM5tty pic.twitter.com/ckA0a9WV1I

— James Kenney (@jfkenney) September 19, 2024

Obscure YT of the day: Warren Oates, Kristy Mcnichol, & Eileen Brennan do Hemingway in 1979s MY OLD MAN, directed by John Erman! https://t.co/yPGXlElXTQ pic.twitter.com/tD9hbuZ814

— James Kenney (@jfkenney) September 20, 2024

As Christopher Nolan must do, the plot, taken from the book American Prometheus, is told as three stories, intertwingled: the Manhattan Project from inception through August 1945,  Oppenheimer's degrading security clearance denial, and Lewis Strauss' cabinet confirmation hearing. As it goes, the interest level in each succeeding plotline is diminished by about half.

The reason for making the film is, of course, to tell the story of the Bomb. That part of the film has all the conflicting personalities, expositional debates, and real world science drama anyone can ask.  Once the (implosion-version) bomb is tested, in a great historical re-enactment set-piece,  we're left with medium-level politics. The bureaucratic backstabbing tries to elevate the movie to a grander level, but in retrospect, seems more a MacGuffin, a who-done-it-to-who-and-why mystery dwarfed by the main event.

Other quibbles:

• It was hard to figure out what screening to attend! Being old school, I wanted the 70mm film print, but didn't realize that the showing I attended wasn't IMAX, which disappointed, as I was looking for the biggest screen. In the end, not a big deal. But it was a little surprising that even in the first two weeks of release, this 70mm film print was quite scratchy - hadn't seen that from any movie screening in the past several years as various digital projector technologies have taken over.
• Great to see many of the real scientists thoughtfully represented, though of course, the actual project was far, far bigger in scale. (Much better than The Imitation Game which made the Bletchley Park complex look like a one-man show). That said, two favorites didn't show up: There's no Richard Feynman and no appearance by John Von Neumann. (Von Neumann regularly visited while engaged in other WW2 work and helped with modeling the implosion apparatus; frankly, he was just too much the polymath to be dedicated to one military project).
• Not to leak a spoiler, but the last few seconds of the film missed the mark for me. If you cut the film after Oppenheimer's portentous remark, "maybe we did set the world on fire", that would work as an open-ended question. But to follow that with a blazing global visual effect confuses the actual history. Well... so far.
• Random reminder: The Institute for Advanced Studies is "in" Princeton, NJ, not "at" Princeton University and is funded independently. Also, not sure what it says about the world, but looking at the current IAS scholars – no disrespect meant – but I vaguely recognize only 1 or 2 names; in the 50s I believe most people would have known of Oppie, Einstein, Von Neumann, Gödel at the least. Maybe the number of 'well known' scientists is bigger now? Or the well-known ones aren't actually doing top research?
• No, I haven't seen Peaky Blinders
• No, I have not seen the other film.

The movie's great trick is that Jordan is barely shown as a character, a trick that maybe only works for people of an age that know or saw his amazing game-play.   That trick comes to a climax in the boardroom seal-the-deal scene where we get a miraculous monologue from Matt Damon's character, a paean to the greatness of star athletes but also a caution on their inevitable fall from public grace. It's a brilliant balance to the purely elegiac Field of Dreams monologue, and better for it.

Must also add, if it even needs to be repeated, that Viola Davis is superb as always.

Extra: And also watched Thirteen Lives, a terrific, economical, fast-paced, and quite understated telling of the Thai kid's soccer team cave rescue.  Viggo stars with Colin Farrell as the main expert cave rescue divers. Also with Joel Eggerton (which makes this one, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Batman). I imagine that the title is also a nod to Ron Howard's Apollo 13, both high-pressure, technically challenged rescue missions.

I never watched original Top Gun in theaters (not even this one), and have only caught enough pieces of it on TV over the years to piece together the general story. Seemed ok enough, especially back in the day.

The sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, has had boffo B.O. and good reviews especially from some friends. Oddly, neither of my teen-aged kids had any interest in it, so on a slow night at home I went solo to the movies. Some observations:

RipOffs - nothing wrong with copying from the masters: The first scene takes a page from the end of The Right Stuff, and adds a nice joke to it; and the main flight operation is copied from Star Wars trench-run and thermal exhaust port torpedo shot. Is this a lack of imagination from the writers? Whatever, it's all in good fun. Best part is that there's an extended after-torpedo plot complication that adds another level of ridiculous fun to the affair.

Cruise - Most sequels are done right after the success of the original, and, usually, have little if any change characters of the leading parts. Here, Tom Cruise and Maverick have aged many decades and that's an integral part of the plot: Mav is older, only slightly wiser, has gone through a lot of (never completely explained) experiences, close calls, and almost-discharges. Great thing about this is that Cruise, looking older (he's my age after all!), embodies that part of the character, in contrast to the brash kid from the original. As Indy says, "It's not the years, it's the [visible] mileage".

You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - Interestingly, in the spot where there would be a re-run of the originals iconic musical pick-up-line, the movie puts in a scene where Goose's son plays 'Great Balls of Fire', recreating his father's other musical scene. The reaction of Maverick to hearing this blast from his tragic past is quite moving and Cruise milks it for all it's worth. A nicely different mood versus just a recreated bar sing-a-long.

IceMan - Good to see Val Kilmer back on screen and he does fine in his scene with Cruise. Again, rather than the standard scene setting of a hospital bed, this takes place with a terminal but still (barely) standing Iceman. (The recreated Kilmer voice is a non-issue; it's just a couple whispered sentences)

G-forces - The pre-release hype about the actors having to actually fly in F-18s (in the rear-seat) to get realistic reactions for the film pays off great. The lurching bodies and straining to not pass-out faces certainly raise the bar for future fighter-pilot movies. Orders-of-magnitude better than Star Trek stumbling around the bridge with shaky-camera effect! (And also explains why the writers had to add in the rather dumb trench run, dive-bomb, and steep-climb mission requirements)

Vangelis was an improvisational symphonic master, well known for waiting until the last minute, not because of procrastination, but simply to allow all his compositional ideas to coalesce. He had seen the film and wrote the four or so relatively brief themes that filled key races in the script – and the producers had chosen one of them to re-use for the title sequence, that infinitely parodied slow-motion jog along the beaches of Kent.

At the last minute, Vangelis thought of his recently deceased father, who was a keen amateur runner and followed the Olympics religiously. And so he composed one more theme, surprised the producers with it, saying it was a "Requiem For My Father". They of course realized it was more than perfect, a musical icon for the ages.

Nowadays it's no great surprise to switch from channel to channel and find multiple Kevin Costner/Tom Cruise/etc movies on at the same time. In this case, after the movie was over I flipped down a few channels and landed on Ragtime, a great adaptation by Milos Forman of the E.L. Doctorow novel. And right there, playing the role of 'Father', was James Olson.

He had a great career, though not one that hit big-budget stardom often. Plenty of stage work justly recognized and a hundred or so TV roles, series and movies. Just the kind of movie connection I find fascinating.

His IMDB bio notes that he died just over a month ago, April 17, 2022.  R.I.P.

Saw notice of new book Girls of Flight City concerning R.A.F. pilots that were trained in the U.S.A. during WWII. Quite the opposite of the usual yank soldiers in England story that's been told too much, e.g. in film.

Turns out this started as part of the Lend Lease program, and included many cities – Terrell and Sweetwater, Texas; Lancaster, California;  Mesa, Arizona; Clewiston, Florida; and Miami and Ponca City, Oklahoma.

The Terrell, Texas airfield boasts the "No.1 British Flying Training School Museum".

As in all wars, often forgotten are the troops who died in training accidents; there are apparently some 20 British cadets buried in Texas soil (and presumably near the other airfields).

And here's a short description of this non-fiction account of the Texas R.A.F. training, The Royal Air Force in Texas

Quick cut to many years later and Ratliff still hasn't come to terms with this. He's had some minor successes and moved between small roles in movies and tv and especially stand-up and improv. But to deal with the now decades old humiliation, he started a podcast to dive deep into the "Band of Brothers" universe to try and understand what happened a long time ago.

While trying to decide if this might be worth a valuable hour of my evening, I then find that Ratliff also does a hilarious George Lucas impression and for six or so years has put on The George Lucas Talk Show (and wikipedia entry).

OK, for me that means I need to listen to "Dead Eyes". There's been two seasons of the show (about 10 eps per) and rather than start at the beginning, I try just the last episode, #20 The Big Zielinksi  which tries to discover the real story of who that aide to Dick Winter was, Private John S. Zielinski. Helping him on this is Band of Brothers writer/producer Erik Jendresen.  Turns out the episode is more than a little fascinating, with its own rabbit-trails and twists, and by the end quite touching.

If you give the show a shot, you'll see how odd it is that this isn't a youtube show as they talk about various photographs a good deal - including the famous shot of Winter and Easy Company friends at Hitler's Eagles Nest  : John Zielinski may be the soldier kneeling on lower left

Will have to check out other episodes with guest like acting friends Jon Hamm, Seth Rogan, Ron Livingston, Judd Apatow, Elijah Wood, etc.

Nice, old-fashioned, big picture mess of a movie. Finch is dependably stern as Nobile but Connery is really in only 10 minutes of it. It does cover the dirigible crash in the Arctic that caused Amundsen to attempt a search mission, from which he never returned. Mostly plays out in the Arctic as the explorers try to survive and the amateur rescuers make a hash of things. (N.B. the title, though it makes literal sense once you see it, has absolutely no dramatic bearing on the story; and certainly nothing to do with the story of Jacob's daughter ).

Also, FWIW, the 2019 Amundsen biopic shows the bitterness the Norwegian explorer felt after Robert Scott's doomed South Pole expedition somehow turned in to national glory for England. Not a doctor, but I tend to trust the theory that scurvy was Scott's downfall: see https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm, only partially debunked by https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23734365/