Art of Cinema/depiction of war

I was so looking forward to Ian Nathan and the Sky Arts film team appraising war films in this series but I was disappointed.

There were too many omissions and the emphasis was on British films like The Cruel Sea, an excellent film, but one featuring a merchant navy corvette, not the Royal Navy.

There were few non-British films featured although the German-made Das Boot (1981) is widely regarded as one of the best war films and there is a raft of American films some with a loose grip on the facts.

Other questions left unanswered were the difference in actors and acting between those that had fought in the war and those that did not.

Leading American actors like Rod Steiger, Les Marvin and Henry Fonda all fought in the WW2 Pacific naval campaigns and took advantage of re-training post-war to become stars.

Then there is the treatment of the Germans.

James Mason in Rommel gave a sympathetic portrayal only six years after VE Day and Darryl Zanuck’s The Longest Day gave the German side with lines delivered in German.

It was interesting to see my old school friend Jonathan Kydd interviewed.

A war film was not a war film without his father Sam Kydd, who made some 200 films, in the cast list.

Simon Heffer, the right wing journalist, knows his stuff and American historian Christina Newland is a welcome addition and less of a know-all than Dr Bonnie Greet.

Maybe the genre deserved more than one hour but the aftertaste was unsatisfactory.