WAR FILM OF THE 60'S

Clint Eastwood is 90 years old. The chains and platforms have programmed and are still programming a lot of their films to celebrate the anniversary. I have seen several again, and two have given me the clue to write this article: The challenge of the eagles (1968) and The violent ones of Kelly (1970), both directed by Brian G. Hutton , a director who forgot himself himself and contributed to making everyone forget about him: he left the cinema after directing nine films and devoted himself to ... real estate business. Cinema from the 60s on World War II, that's what we are going for. Eastwood was already a widely popular actor, especially thanks to his nameless man character in the "spaghetti-westerns" trilogy.by Sergio Leone. Its popularity was increased interpreting, from Harry the Dirty (1971, Don Siegel ), to the expeditious policeman Harry Callahan. The fame that this fascistoid character gave him was reversed by his crucifixion by progressive critics around the world. Eastwood has always been in favor at the box office, but the prestige didn't win him until, in 1985, he made The Pale Horseman , his eleventh film as a director. It seemed impossible that Eastwood could get the recognition of demanding moviegoers, as, incidentally, it also seemed impossible that Leone's trilogy of the West of Almería would ever have it. But this is an other history.

AN ADVENTURE TRILOGY

The challenge of the eagles and The violent ones of Kelly belong to a golden age - from the commercial point of view - of the war cinema about World War II, which flourished in the 1960s, almost a decade after the end of the Korean War and When the Vietnam War was in progress, it would take time to bear its -very different- cinematographic fruits. I propose a trilogy of films formed by the two mentioned and Twelve of the scaffold (1967, Robert Aldrich ). With the Germans as enemies and with very efficient casts of actors for the general public, these three films have in common the absorbing narration of a very difficult and dangerous plan or mission tackled by a group, by a small number of men. Unlike the films that recreate a great historical battle or those that star - even with their individual figures - by the whole of an army, regiment or company, these three accentuate the personal component of what, strictly speaking, is a adventure. Warlike adventure cinema, we could say, and, in two cases - Twelve of the gallows and Kelly's Violent - with a strong comedy ingredient. These films are associated, in the memory of the childhood and youth of many, with an era and a cinema that never returned: the one that was shown in schools and parishes, the one with a double program, the family cinema on Sundays.

ENTERTAINMENT AND SHOW

The tragedy and horror of the Vietnam War, together with information and politics, later made this type of cinema practically impossible, which also offered a show that would later guarantee better Science-Fiction and Fantastic films. But, in the 60s, the harvest of war, adventure, entertainment and show cinema about World War II was very rich: with the antecedents -with a humanistic touch- of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), we can remember -and I will forget many- The cannons of Navarone (1961), A taxi for Tobruk (1961), The great escape (1963), The heroes of the Telemark (1965), Tobruk (1967) and, even, openly humorous films like His best enemy (1961) or, above all, what did you do in the war, daddy? (1966). This latest film, by the great Blake Edwards , is already something else, and I would say that, secretly, it opened the way to MASH (1970) - set in the Korean War -, which, with its fierce antimilitarist comedy, made it difficult -in the following and with Vietnam in the lead - the warlike cinema of heroes.

FAR FROM PATRIOTIC HERO

Films like Twelve of the gallows and Kelly's Violent already included, in addition to a non-epic humor, the figure of the antihero. In general, the titles cited above depict an "adventure hero," not so much the patriotic hero of American war cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, often - though not always - a spokesman for a propaganda intention and fully immersed in the Warmongering logic. In those same 1960s, what we could call "institutional seriousness" is, however, much more present in films such as The Longest Day (1962), The Battle of the Bulge (1965), Is Paris Burning? (1966), The Battle of England (1969) or Patton (1969), a film that, by the way, seen today seems more complex to me than it was said in its day. His script, remember, was written by a thirtysomething Francis Coppola and won the Oscar.

VIETNAM CHANGED IT ALL

Far from the inaugural pacifism of Novelty on the Front (1929) and the forbidden anti-militarism of Pathways to Glory (1957), those war adventure films of the 1960s were certainly not entirely innocent. From its colorful, explosives and gaudy posters, studded with names such sound like Clint Eastwood proposed spending an exciting afternoon, basically based on an intriguing mystery: did you get ?, can they fulfill our "heroes" its very risky mission ?, Will they achieve their goal? Who among them will die in the endeavor? Starting with Vietnam and the cinema about Vietnam - The Return, Apocalypse Now, The Hunter ... -, these questions became frivolous, no longer made sense and stopped being asked. And Spike Lee knows it.

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