"Pearl Harbor" fallout

Flight Journal, Apr 2002 by Farmer, James H

"Pearl Harbor" fallout

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As this column was written, the boxoffice returns for Disney's $140 million summer epic "Pearl Harbor" were rapidly shrinking. Reviews were mixed at best, and more important, poor word-of mouth continued to contribute to the picture's disappointing performance. Nonetheless, the studio's wellfinanced pre-release publicity blitz pro- VP vided an ideal environment in May 2001 for the release of several long-awaited aviation film classics on DVD.

Not surprisingly, Fox Home Video chose to release a DVD of its 1970 Pearl Harbor epic, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" in May as well. And after seeing Disney's fictionalized version of events, the earlier effort seems both better and worse. When it was released, critics lambasted "Tora!" for its rather stale presentation and dramatically uninvolving-even stuffy-- characterizations, but the movie's scale and special effects were widely heralded. The film earned five technical Academy Award nominations, deservedly winning the Oscar' for "Best Visual Special Effects."

And though Disney's state-of-theart, computer-generated images are truly remarkable, especially those "shot" from above Battleship Row, a great deal of Fox's production-particularly the launch sequences and initial formation over-flights of the islands--is unequalled for its scope and visual veracity.

As for "Tora! Tora! Tora!"'s historically grounded dramatization, it can only be viewed today as superior to "Pearl Harbor"'s uninspired, perfunctory love story and abominably represented Doolittle Raid.

Aside from the DVD's crisp, widescreen rendition of the 1970 Fox epic, a number of extras strongly reinforce the product's superiority. A 20-minute documentary, "Day of Infamy," is also included. Far more intriguing, however, is the scene-by-scene commentary by director Richard Fleischer and Japanese-- fischer historian Stewart Galbraith. Among numerous interesting facts that emerge during the course of the film-length discussion is that one of the two directors of the film's Japanese sequences was a former kamikaze student pilot who flunked out of the program on political grounds. Equally interesting is the director's I tale of the P-40 mockup that unintentionally became airborne and was only moments from impact amid numerous extras on the Ford Island flightramp.

By any measure, this Fox Home Video DVD is a must-have for aviation film buffs.

Released in February 2001, also in anticipation of the Disney movie, was the two-DVD documentary, "Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941". Disc I includes the Pacific War documental "Kamikaze" and the wartime propaganda piece by Frank Capra, "Know Your Enemy." Disc II features director John Ford's Academy Award-winning wartime documentary short, "December 7, 1941," that recreated the Japanese attack on location in Hawaii some months after the actual event. Unfortunately, the short's scenes were later assumed to be authentic and were used by scores of documentary filmmakers, who recycled its bogus footage into their own flawed efforts, thereby suggesting they were real. Seen herein are those six infamous dive-bombing "Japanese" SBDs and "enemy" P-36s strafing flat, two-dimensional images of B-18s and P-40Bs. Unfortunately, none of this footage has been restored, and it is decidedly antiquated.

Also featured are "Pearl Harbor Newsreel" footage, "Formal Japanese Surrender" and the oft-seen wartime USAAF instructional film that features Ronald Reagan, "Recognition of the Japanese Zero Fighter."