The Fighting Lady
by William Wyler
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DVD details
Actor: Robert TaylorDirector: William Wyler
Brand: GT
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 62 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-05-15
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Good Times Video
DVD Reviews of The Fighting Lady
DVD Review: The Fighting Lady
Summary: 4 Stars
Released in late 1944, winner of an Academy Award as Best Documentary in 1945, William Wyler's THE FIGHTING LADY portrays life aboard a newly commissioned aircraft carrier as it wends its way southward from its eastern seaboard home port, crosses the Panama Canal, and streams westward to join the naval war in the Pacific theater of operations. Finally, we are on board planes and boat during a number of enemy engagements.
The War Office commissioned a number of these documentaries during the war. They were made by top-notch Hollywood directors, including John Huston, John Ford, and Wyler. Probably the best known of these is Frank Capra's early, five-part `Why We Fight' series, the first of which was released in 1942. I've read that audiences grew increasingly tired of them. War-weariness had set in, newsreels delivered much more current information, and the typical 60-minute run time was hard to fit onto a playbill. A Saint or a Boston Blackie or even a Blondie episode would have been a lot easier to sell than a war documentary depicting events that occurred over a year and a half ago.
That said, THE FIGHTING LADY is pretty good. The ship's real name is never revealed. I guess (wasn't told this, either) that it's a Yorktown-class carrier. The camera gets around fairly comfortably, imparting an idea of how enclosed and self contained life on an aircraft carrier was. Crewmen bake bread, shave steaks off whole quarters of beeves. The deck hangar is as huge as a cathedral. Early on the ship's captain exhorts the crew to greater efficiency, pilots are granted the luxury of pre-battle breakfasts of steak and eggs, and the mutt mascot wags around in a miniature life vest when the ship enters more dangerous waters. The approach is admiring, the tone (with voice-over narration by Robert Taylor) is determined, and the general impression, by 1943, is one of overwhelming material superiority. By 1945 the subject had changed from `why we fight' to `how we won.'
This is the first full color WWII documentary I've seen, and one of the few produced during the war. After the ship reaches the war zone we're shown a lot of footage of Japanese planes being shot out of sky by the ship's aak-aak guns, land and sea targets strafed and bombed via movie cameras strapped onto airplane guns, and that fellow with the flags on the flight deck guiding the planes in for the always hazardous deckside landings. Although cameras are smaller, lighter, and steadier today, TFL contains some of the supplest photography I've seen in a contemporary documentary. It's visually interesting, and not the worst of the lot by a long shot.
Description of The Fighting Lady
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