I recently saw advertised a DVD set of four or five movies. The theme of the set is that all of the films in it were "controversial." Frankly, I don't recall the other films, but one of them was The Americanization of Emily." I don't recall any controversy surrounding this film. Is there something I am missing?
shareDidn't it have some nudity in it? In 1964, that was a big deal in american movies. Also, its opinions on war were probably considered "unamerican" by some.
shareThe film was controversial for its satire of cowardice, sexual situations, and profanity (After all, Charlie does call Emily a "bitch").
shareThe cynicism voiced by the main character supports anti-Vietnam war movement views even though the movie is about WWII. Every argument against war is credibly aired. It suggests that military heroism is smoke and mirrors. Even the fact that it was nominated for only two Academy Awards speaks to its controversial viewpoints.
Yes, there is some nudity from the back and the women characters make no pretense of being virgins. "Mary Poppins" gets called a bitch. She is less upset about it than the audience was.
In 1964 The Americanization of Emily rattled the cage bars. Considering the timing it could be a contender for the most important war movie ever made. Big deal political players still refer to the movie in private conversations. For this reason alone it is still worth seeing. At least you will know what the person is refering to. It strongly and convincingly voices anti-war views.
Everybody's gotta see this simply for this exchange.
Because no one says this, even today.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison:
I don't trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs Barham.
It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is.
It's always the war widows who lead the memorial day parade.
Emily Barham:
That was unkind Charlie and very rude.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison:
We shall never end wars, Mrs Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or war mongering imperialist or all the other banal bogies.
It's the rest of us who built statues to those generals, name boulevards after those ministers.
The rest of us who make heroes of our deads, and shrines of our battlefields.
We wear our widow's weaves like nuns, Mrs Barham and perpetuate war by exulting its sacrifices.
To fully appreciate this, you'll have to see the movie and watch the whole scene. I can't help but think this would be an unacceptable message in today's wartime.
"We wear our widow's weaves like nuns, Mrs Barham and perpetuate war by exulting its sacrifices. "
The expression is widow's WEEDS, not "weaves." It refers to mourning wear.
It strongly and convincingly voices anti-war views.No, it strongly argues cowardice. Not anti-war views. There's a vast difference (although maybe not in the mind of a coward).
I can't help but think this would be an unacceptable message in today's wartime.Cowardice is shameful at any time.
Thank you for explaning the controversy. You've done a vastly superior job than I could ever do. Hope the OP's listening.
shareActually, despite what Madison calls himself, he actually isn't a coward. He states he is willing to risk his life, but only for valid reasons, not for mere glory. Furthermore, he is willing to risk prison time and ridicule in defense of his views...hardly the act of a coward.
The movie isn't so much anti-war as anti-glorification of war. In this sense, it is thematically similar to more recent films like Saving Private Ryan or Flags of Our Fathers: the former also argues that while war may be necessary, it is not pretty, the latter opposing false, media-created heroes (which, given the problems with the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman stories, is a lesson that still needs to be taught).
And another thing that is really amazing about it is that Chayevsky himself was a war hero! A war hero who didn't take heroism that seriously. That really stands out to me. I consider this a very important film, even if it is a comedy to some extent.
I don't particularly agree with the thesis that cowardice is a virtue, but I figure if a film like this could be made in 1964, America isn't all bad. Clearly, it wasn't cowardice for Chayevski to make it.
"Extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice."
I worked with a RAAF veteran who had done three tours in Europe during World War II. He said that was enough to make a pacifist of him.
shareWhich front are you currently fighting on?
shareNo, it strongly explains the Objectivist philosophy regarding war by Ayn Rand (which Paddy was reading alot of at the time). Just like the saying that greed is good, so cowardice is good if there is no personal profit in risking your life.
he cynicism voiced by the main character supports anti-Vietnam war movement views ...
Utter nonesense. Drivel. Dreck. Anachronistic too. This movie was released in October, 1964, and thus filming of it wrapped long before the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August, 1964. The war didn't escalate until after that. In 1964, especially before the G/T incident, there was no anti-war movement. At best you can say that the movie was ahead of its time.
So you think every shred of reaction to a movie happens within the year it is released?
shareThe film was made long enough after WW II, that a lot of people had forgotten about the degradation, torture, and mass murder in the Nazi concentration camps. They were not showing much any more the films of the piles of eyeglasses and baby shoes, or the starved, dehumanized inmates who were still alive when the Allied liberation came.
This film was very anti-war, and the script attempted to devaluate the necessity that impelled U.S. participation in WW II. I remember the film's treatment of the landing at Normandy. As I recall, they never mentioned the lives that were saved because of that terrible landing. To get men to face almost certain death in order to save many more than themselves, some degree of honoring bravery is necessary. To ridicule their sacrifice is unacceptable to many; therefore this film is quite controversial, although perhaps it does not seem so to those who do not know or remember the why's and wherefore's of WW II. There are necessary wars and unnecessary wars. Therein lies the difference, but, as I recall, this film seemed to treat all wars the same.
BTW, the Nazis had declared war on us, after Pearl Harbor was bombed; they were later found to have been planning to invade the U.S. by way of the Mexican border. Meanwhile, the Japanese Empire was printing stamps to be used after their intended conquest of the U.S., as amazing as that may sound. WW II was not an unnecessary military exercise. The U.S. had to fight in it. I consider the failure to differentiate among necessary and unnecessary wars, to be a serious philosophical error.
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The situation of a society can be summed up into these four categories, in order of desirability:
The Good Peace
The Good War
The Bad Peace
The Bad War
The good peace being essentially what we have (in the western world, at least) today - the peace of free societies.
The good war being certainly the war against fascism (WW2), as well as others according to ones viewpoint; any war fought to end the unjust suffering of others.
The bad peace being when you accept the bullying of others - the western world accepting Chinese occupation of Tibet, one could argue, or the negligence of the rest of Europe during the initial phase of Hitler's Anschluss.
The bad war being one fought for personal gain with no regard or compassion for the victims, essentially any war of conquest.
As for the controversy of this film... Besides the early attempt at arguing anti-war viewpoints (not because the film itself is anti-war, but because it puts forth arguments that war can be viewed from several angles), the film (certainly the book!) takes a pragmatic approach to the exchange of sexual favours for goods in times of hardship. Julie Andrews' character to some extent prostitutes herself, but never loses the audiences' sympathy because of it.
You saw a different film than I did, written by a man who was not the writer of the film I saw (Paddy Chayefsky). The fact is that the film is not "anti-war," and not advocating cowardice. The main character Charlie was not a coward, and Chayefsky was certainly not a coward.
To claim that the film devalues the necessity that impelled the U.S. to participate in WW2 is also simply false. Chayefsky was not only a WW2 veteran of ground combat who was severely wounded on the battlefield by a mine, but he was Jewish and certainly understood what was at stake for the U.S. and for the rest of the world. If you watch and listen to the movie closely, you'll see that the film is anti-hypocrisy and anti-glorification of sending young people to die in war and talking then about how wonderful it is for them to have given up their lives. It does not make the argument that war is unnecessary or always wrong.
My real name is Jeff
So you think every shred of reaction to a movie happens within the year it is released?
Is that a rhetorical question?
What I am saying is that the controversy of this film had little or nothing to do with Vietnam. Ant-war sentiments during WWII and about WWII would've had much more to do with it.
"What I am saying is that the controversy of this film had little or nothing to do with Vietnam. Ant-war sentiments during WWII and about WWII would've had much more to do with it."
Just to clear things up a little, the debate over involvement in S.E. Asia started shortly after Pres. Eisenhower sent "advisers" to the area in 1956, after the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu. Another Anti-War film, not a comedy, that came out around the same time was "The Victors" (1963). These, and other sobering films, followed a spate of releases that celebrated the U.S.'s WWII and Korean war efforts. They were definitely meant as a counterbalance to the jingoism and saber-rattling of the McCarthy era, the continuing uproar over the firing of MacArthur, and the growing U.S. involvement and body count in S.E. Asia. I can remember one of my classmates leaving H.S. as a junior in 1963 for the "adventure" of serving in Vietnam, before the Gulf of Tonkin fakery.
"Been there, lived that"
The movie was written against a backdrop of escalation in Vietnam. Even before Gulf of Tonkin, people were concerned about Vietnam. There were already demonstrations. And it is true that the need to defend against the Nazis?even the Battle of Britain?is largely forgotten. It is much more about the buildup to Vietnam than about WWII. I believe that there is more that contributes to bad war than "the morality of it", as Charlie claims; taking the lives of others seriously, as a sacred trust, would prevent the racket of war much more than becoming amoral about it (our leaders are evidence of that). But Vietnam was the craziness that was breathing down the necks of the filmmakers, not WWII.
shareI don't think you understand that it's a common strategy to address a theme (or put forward an opinion about a contemporary situation.
The fact that The Americanization of Emily was made in 1964 had nothing to do with WWII and everything about the politics of the time in which it was released.
It's the views about war and how we regard our heroes that makes it controversial. The hero admonishes a woman for honoring fallen soldiers. He also 'corrupts' a straight-laced, patriotic woman into seeing things his way. It propounds the virtue of cowardice and proclaims it evil to respect soldiers who die in military service. That's still pretty daring stuff.
"Now let's have an intelligent conversation. I'll talk and you listen."
The movie deals with how the individual and society relate to war. If we choose to stop glorifying it with memorials, statues and parades, we would be less likely to fight in the future. Taken even further, if everyone was a coward there would be no wars at all. By the way, Japan and Germany did not intend to occupy America. Their main goal in WW2 was to get us to bud out of their regions.
share"Their main goal in WW2 was to get us to bud out of their regions."
100% nonsense. Does 'their main goal' explain why Japan invaded Manchuria and Germany invaded Russia? Please.
Russia and America are separate countries.
share[deleted]
Actually you're the biggest moron on this thread and far dumber than Benji. Manchuria is in Japan's region and Russia is on the other side of the pond with Germany. Invading those countries had nothing to do with what their objectives were against America in WW2. It was actually a very simple point that I was making that you were too dumb to grasp.
shareI can't decide whether you are abysmally stupid AND morally degenerate or just one of the above.
sharePart of the controversy stems from its appearing to denigrate heroes and heroism, but it doesn't. The film is very sympathetic to the people who die in war, and those who mourn them.
It just expresses concern about two things; the way that glorifying death in war can lead to more war and more death, and people in power who use that power in unethical ways.
Charlie may call *himself* a coward, but we don't really know that he is one -- he makes it clear that he would fight and die for a real need. He compares the silly, PR-based "mission" he is assigned to do as being like bringing a lion into the house just so he could defend against it -- not a real need, just arbitrarily creating danger to show off.
So, why hasn't he volunteered for dangerous duty for a real need? It may be part of his personality that he is happy with an assignment that has kept him out of combat up to now -- does that make him a coward, or just a normal human?
He also makes it clear that he is trying to spare pain to others in his desire to stay alive. He tells how his mother's glorifying his brother's death has led to his other brother straining at the bit to get into the fight, and he clearly dreads the possibility that she will lose all of her sons.
And, he plans to marry Emily and would hardly want her hurt again. He wants to live on, commit to a real marriage, children, and the everyday problems of life. Emily is the one who is afraid -- afraid of loving a real live man, not a cardboard hero.
Charlie, and the film, put forth a very logical, normal idea, but one that sometimes gets lost in the craziness of war -- he wants to stay alive because he has something to live for.
Of course, so did the many men who died in the very necessary battles of WWII. The point is that their deaths were sad, not glorious. And, there may be some people in the military who care more about facade than substance, and people should not be dying for that.
Excellent reply, my friend. Bravo.
That's why you and I don't see eye-to-eye sometimes, Jack; because you're a man of science.
Excellent reply, my friend. Bravo.
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Thanks! I think this film deals with some very complex things, in a very watchable way.
yes, well said. Wish I had a copy of the script so I could get this right, but at some point Charlie does say essentially, sometimes war is necessary. Kind of reminded me of the Obama Nobel speech.
Also, I can imagine how shocking this film must have been in '64. Emily says, I hope I don't get pregnant. In '64 the only women having sex in movies were Bond girls! Doris Day was still a perpetual virgin, yet they were totally frank and adult in this movie.
>>Emily says, I hope I don't get pregnant. In '64 the only women having sex in movies were Bond girls! Doris Day was still a perpetual virgin, yet they were totally frank and adult in this movie. <<
And she talks frankly about her having slept with soldiers out of pity, after her husband died. She talked about that as being symptomatic of her being sentimental and idealistic, not slutty, after she asks the other young woman if she seems a prig.
Again, the film takes a detour from the stereotyped "whore, mother or virgin" choices for women, and portrays a woman who is upright and moral, but has gone through a period of giving herself to heroic boys who might be dying soon, out of a confused sense of what love, sex and war are all about.
Both characters are flawed, but people with whom we can be sympathetic. And they teach one another and grow. Not bad, for a comedy!
Yes- you are on target. Chayefsky was arguing against cheap sentiment in favor of sacrificing lives for no good purpose.
This perspective that the glorification of fighting for the sake of fighting, without a necessary purpose, is wrong is a logical outgrowth of Chayefky's personal experiences during World War 2 as a soldier. He was severely injured as a result of a mine explosion and bore the severe scars for the rest of his life. He knew about the futility of many missions, and the hubris of some commanding officers, from personal experience.
My real name is Jeff
Thanks, BobbyDupea.
The hero does not admonish his girlfriend's mother for honoring fallen heroes. He tries to shake her out of her illusion that her husband was still alive even though he had been killed in the blitz. The movie does NOT proclaim it is evil to respect soldiers who die in battle. Rather the movie says that we shouldn't try to glorify war through monuments, parades and the like.
shareI would like to suggest that like Dr. Strangelove, this movie is about the Cold War in general, including the insanity of both the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis, which used the globe for a game of brinksmanship by the major powers. At the time, the drum beat of "better dead than Red" and the hatred and fear promoted by all sides in order to "win" even if that meant that all we loved was destroyed or we were enslaved by our own leaders (the spirit of McCarthyism and J. Edgar Hoover wasn't yet laid to rest) was uppermost in our minds. There was never a time in history when humanity was so close to the edge of extermination by our own weapons and policies as we were then. And I would argue there was never a time when our own people were so readily used as guinea pigs for meaningless experiments, sent on covert missions to foreign locales for less reason, and treated with such contempt. Can anyone even name without resorting to the internet, all the countries we were occupying, arming, advising, and bombarding with propaganda in that era, let alone all the places where the Soviets were doing the same?
It would have been far less gutsy to make this move during the anti-war movement of the late 60s than to make it when Americans were still keeping their bomb shelters well-stocked. I would guess that if the lead had been anyone but charismatic nice guy James Garner, war hero, it wouldn't have gotten to the theaters. Clearly, with two films released with the same premise, the cultural shift was well underway and very soon the demonstrations and widespread civil disobedience would begin.
I think this movie is far braver than Dr. Strangelove, by daring to say that the sainted leaders and the noble sacrifices of WWII were subject to the same insanity and manipulations and lies that were so clearly evident after the peace treaties were signed. (It should be pointed out that after WWI there were anti-war films and books, too, saying pretty much the same thing.) One can see war as the failure of foreign policy or a tool of foreign policy. I think this movie sees it as a failure and holds us all responsible for that.
At the time, the drum beat of "better dead than Red" and the hatred and fear promoted by all sides in order to "win" even if that meant that all we loved was destroyed or we were enslaved by our own leaders (the spirit of McCarthyism and J. Edgar Hoover wasn't yet laid to rest) was uppermost in our minds. There was never a time in history when humanity was so close to the edge of extermination by our own weapons and policies as we were then. And I would argue there was never a time when our own people were so readily used as guinea pigs for meaningless experiments, sent on covert missions to foreign locales for less reason, and treated with such contempt. Can anyone even name without resorting to the internet, all the countries we were occupying, arming, advising, and bombarding with propaganda in that era, let alone all the places where the Soviets were doing the same?
Eric-62-2 said,
This whole "Cold War is insanity" message was disproved by the events of 1989-1991 when America WON the Cold War without firing a shot thanks to policies rooted in tough postures that began in 1948, then sadly went out of favor because people gave too much intellectual credence to the moral equivalence doctrine, but then got revived in the 1980s and paid dividends by daring to suggest that the totalitarian horror that was Soviet communism could be sent to the ash heap of history. That is what we should be remembering about the Cold War, and not the stale messages that were proved wrong as surely as those that pushed for appeasement of Adolf in the 1930s.
Wrong. The Cold War ended because the Soviet system was rotting from within for many years. Nobody in the Soviet Union was appeasing Nazism during the 1980s. Hitler died in 1945. Soviet citizens in the 1980s lived in the present.
As for this film, I hated it and found that James Garner playing Bret Maverick again in this kind of story was, in contrast to his TV show, totally off-putting.
His performance in this film has no trace of Bret Maverick.
You seem like a very angry person who has mental health issues. If you read my posts to other message boards, you will find that I don't beat around the bush.
The Cold War ended because the Soviet system was rotting from within for many years
Nobody in the Soviet Union was appeasing Nazism during the 1980s. Hitler died in 1945. Soviet citizens in the 1980s lived in the present.
What's so amusing when I hear this line of thought from the Left is how in the 1970s,
I'm not left-wing.
Anyone who wants to say the Soviet Union was ready to collapse in 1980 and that justified not taking a tough posture is rewriting history to suit their own agendas.
The decline became serious after the invasion of Afghanistan.
and that inspired a host of other bad movies with "anti-Cold War" themes in the 1980s like "The Day After".
The Day After was made for television. So was Amerika, which supported the idea that the Soviets could invade the United States at any time.
Reading comprehension 101 seems to be beyond your mental capacity.
This is the third time you have forced me to point out your tendency to attack. It's an example of extremism. If you don't seek professional help for your tendency, you can end up in a police station. I'm not going to set that in motion, but someone else will. You have attacked many people. An IMDb poster with the screen name hobnob53 seems to be friendly with you, but this person can't help you if you get in trouble.
The difference is that Bret Maverick is a charming character in a lighthearted fantasy version of the American West. Put a person of Bret Maverick attitudes in an allegedly serious story about a just war and mouth some platitudes about how its wrong to honor the war dead in celebration and you instead get something that is in so much bad taste that this is one movie I gladly will not revisit again.
Too late. Fifty years ago, Arthur Hiller created something that used up more than an hour of your time. When you watch a lot of old movies and type a lot of comments, you are risking the waste of your life. Hiller assumed viewers were intelligent enough to know that his movie was a fantasy, not a political platform.
Let's see now, you decide to unload a personal attack post on me because I challenged a silly post that spouted ultra-left-wing orthodoxy regarding the Cold War as an unjust struggle in which America had been held captive by J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy and you say you're not "left wing." Pardon me, if I find your declaration less than credible.
The decline became serious after the invasion of Afghanistan.
The Day After was made for television. So was Amerika, which supported the idea that the Soviets could invade the United States at any time.
This is the third time you have forced me to point out your tendency to attack. It's an example of extremism. If you don't seek professional help for your tendency, you can end up in a police station.
Eric-62-2, who is psychotic, said
You sir, are a repulsive jerk of the first order and as far as people with mental health problems go, you can take a good look in the mirror.
You're saying the same thing I said. I'm alerting the FBI that you are cyberstalking. You are a dangerous, antisocial nut. A traceroute indicates you are using an internet connection in Morristown, New Jersey. Nobody has defended you. Nobody is going to defend you. The FBI considers that evidence.
While I disagree with Eric-62-2 about his condemnation of this movie, I think he is absolutely right about you.
Your declared opinions disclose your personal politics. When a person parrots the opinions of the ignorant far left then it can hardly be a mistake to label him (or her) as "left wing."
Crack some books on history, preferably some written in "The West," rather than those on the reading list of the Comintern. Remember that they went away when the Soviet Union failed.
I don't think that the movie is about the "Vietnam War" (it wasn't a war, yet but rather the Southeast Asia Crisis o Problem), the "Cold War," or "World War II." It is about the moral complexity of war in general and how to treat it.
Wars ought never to be fought unless absolutely necessary, but when is that? I think it was in his "Foundation Trilogy" that Isaac Asimov has a pacifist character who insists that all war is unnecessary. He argues that an intelligent government can always find an alternative.
I think that's a nice idea, but I am not convinced of it. Whether or not it is possible to avoid all wars, I know that nations do not. I am also convinced that nations that lose wars or fail to fight at certain times suffer for it far more than nations than nations that fight too often. And when a shooting war starts, in fact, even in a cold war we've got to fight, and some of us are going to die.
I agree that war is a failure in foreign policy, and the government should be held responsible. We also need to look at ourselves and explore our own thoughts and actions.
I think that the movie is well worth watching and thinking about much more deeply than most are willing to do.
dannieboy20906 said,
I think that the movie is well worth watching and thinking about much more deeply than most are willing to do.
Then you are contradicting Eric-62-2. He says it's not worth watching. BTW, if you check his posting history, you find that he is psychotic. Right-wing versus left-wing doesn't matter when a person is psychotic.
David Henschel, the man of a million phony identities at imdb and multiple conversations with himself over the years is at it again.
I recommend dannieboy that you not feed this pathetic loser in life troll any longer.
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David Henschel, the psychotic loon shows up again under another of his many IDs. How boringly predictable.
There was no such thing as an "anti-Vietnam War" movement in the U.S. in 1964.
It did not exist.
Had "TAOE" been made in, say, 1968 or 69, the point would be very debatable. But in 1964 the number of people in the U.S. publicly opposing the Vietnam war was infiniesimal.
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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.
Some of the dialogue was borderlne 'controversial' for 1964 -- Julie Andrews' character openly saying, 'I hope I didn't get pregnant.'
In the early 1960s, unmarried characters were supposed to only very obliquely allude to the possiblity they may have had sex.
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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.
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Julie Andrew's character is a slut and the other girls nothing but prostitutes.
share