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Hornets' Nest (1970)
This film deserved more respect than it got.
I saw this film many years ago when it was panned because children were being used in a war movie. That attitude reflected the times in which it was produced.
People wanted Anti War movies like "The Deer Hunter" or heroic battle epics like "Tora, Tora, Tora".
Movies that brought the stark reality of war too near were not well received.
"Hornet's Nest", was made in Italy and like the movie, "Two Women", made ten years before, it was not widely popular in the United States. Although "Two Women", gave Sophia Loren new respect as an actress and received an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, it did not receive favor from the public.
The patriotism of World War II had faded by the 1970's and the public demonstrations against Viet Nam were gaining force when "Hornets Nest" was released. It was seen as a glorification of war and a fading star like Rock Hudson could not save it.
Ironically one of the actors playing an SS officer in the movie was a French Partisan who spent a year in Buchenwald after the Nazi's captured him. The one female star, Sylvia Koscina, was a child in Yugoslavia, during the war and had memories of the Nazi occupation.
Sophia Loren began filming this movie and withdrew because it recalled too much of the trauma of her childhood in war time Italy.
The children who made this movie did a good job of showing the effect of war on young minds. In spite of being little more than amateurs the acting was capable. The one young actor who was professional, Mark Colleano, was particularly talented. He played Aldo , the leader of the partisan children. His last scene brought tears to my eyes.
It was not intended to be an easy picture to watch. Those reviewers who made snide remarks about Rock Hudson's sexual preferences and the nudity of the teen and child actors in the movie were simply revealing their own salacious nature. They deliberately missed the point.
In retrospect this film was made before it's time. Based on actual events where Nazi troops committed atrocities against entire villages it was meant to remind the world of the savagery of a totalitarian military that had absolute control over the lives of helpless populations. It foreshadowed the massacres committed by the Soviet troops who took over Eastern Europe and much of the territory bordering the USSR. Massacres in Hungary, and in Poland and the building of the Berlin Wall
Since then we have seen movies like "Schindler's List", "Hotel Rwanda", "The Killing Fields" and "Empire of the Sun", win awards. They all show the atrocity and dehumanizing effects of war in a much more graphic manner than does "Hornets Nest", as do many, many, other well respected films. Though "Hornet's Nest" can't compare in quality to them it did not have the budget nor the huge cast they had either.
In the years since " Hornets Nest", the world has been treated to Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, and Serbia, where women and children are victims and participants in total warfare. It prefaced the time of child soldiers who watch their families slaughtered and go on to commit unspeakable acts themselves.
All of these years later this picture is still relevant. Children become partisan fighters much like the boys in this film. Children turn themselves into human bombs or carry guns for ISIS. Boy soldiers live and die in the jungles of the Philippines or as pirates off the coast of Somalia.
Savage child soldiers in Africa showed the whole world how easy it is to create baby-killers and how hard it is to return them to what they once were, Children.
In Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, children are carrying weapons and fighting as adults. Boys and girls are being robbed of both their childhood and their future.
I watched "Hornets Nest" again tonight and it brought tears to my eyes. These children, dirty, ragged, hungry orphans, had managed to survive and had taken vengeance on their tormentors, but in doing so, they had lost something irreplaceable. They had lost their innocence and a part of their humanity. Although they survived they were truly victims of a terrible war.
Maybe watching this movie in todays context makes the point it did not when it was first released. War is bad for children and other living things.
Being safe and smug in a country free from these things, we can put our children to bed with out fear of bombs or machine guns waking them. But in many parts of the world that is not the case.
So is this movie so ridiculous? Is it so unrealistic? Is it a joke because Rock Hudson turned out to be a Gay man?
I don't think so. I think the movie deserves a respectful viewing and some recognition at long last.
See How She Runs (1978)
A woman decides to change her life. She does it by training for and completing the Boston Marathon.
This is not a movie about running. It is an excellent performance by Joanne Woodward about s lonely discontented forty year old teacher who needs to change her life. Joanne played spinsters in several movies and this one shares plot elements with them. However Joanne received a well deserved Emmy for her performance in this version of the role. Betty Quinn is a divorced teacher, mother of two girls whose husband left her for a younger woman. She dreams of far away places and talks about someday traveling when she retires and her girls are grown. One day she accepts the fact that she will never do any of the things that she dreams of and falls into a depression. To avoid despair she decides to jog and lose a few pounds. Everyone she knows laughs at her and tells her she will quit. For once she defies them and slowly begins to lengthen her runs. Running she says, "makes me feel good." As she meets and overcomes obstacles she becomes stronger and finds a new dream. This one she is determined to reach. She runs the Marathon and although she comes in long after the race has finished for the rest of the runners, she does finish and finds support from her family and friends. She has met her goal and has given her girls a role model at the same time. The movie ends with her looking forward to the future instead of dreading it. I was inspired by the movie. I also enjoyed the humor and the excellent supporting cast. Many of the final scenes were actual Marathon footage so we got to see a lot of Boston. That was a plus. I wish this movie was available now. It was one of the better Hallmark movies.
The Unforgiven (1960)
A troublingly realistic look at racial bias in 19th century Texas!
I have read the comments posted about this remarkable movie and have to wonder if the writers watched the movie. If they did it reflects an appalling lack of historical knowledge. Audrey Hepburn plays Rachel Zachary, a Kiowa Indian girl stolen during a raid on a Kiowa camp. Abe Kelsey,(Joseph Wiseman)says it was a vengeance raid because renegade Indians had massacred some settlers. He says, "we killed and we killed til we had to lay down tired of the killin." It did not matter whether the village they raided had anything to do with the killing of settlers, or not. Will Zachary, who does not appear in the movie, prevents Abe from killing a tiny Indian girl and takes the baby to his wife who is grieving the loss of her own newborn girl. Will is later killed by the Kiowas in an attempt to retrieve the baby. Rachel is raised as a white girl by Matilda Zachary, (Lillian Gish) a cultured Southern woman who hates the desolate North Texas ranchland where she has finally settled after many moves to escape the vengeful Abe Kelsey. He "rides vengeance" on the Zachary's because Will would not give him the girl to trade for a son that he refuses to believe is dead and not captured. Matilda, in an effort to hold back the ugliness of the country and it's people, has taught all of her children to read and to have an appreciation for classical music. Cash brings her a piano when he returns from a cattle drive, which she later plays to "make Medicine" against the Indians. Ben Zachary (Burt Lancaster) and his brothers, Cash (Audie Murphy) and Andy (Doug McClure) have made themselves and their neighbors rich by rounding up the plentiful supply of wild cattle that roamed Texas after the end of the Civil War and driving them to the railheads in Kansas. All of the people of the region share a common hatred of Indians and half-breeds. That is where the title "The Unforgiven" comes from. A vicious back and forth war has been waged for the vast amount of land along the Red River and the Indians have been defeated and placed on Reservations in Southern Oklahoma. Up until the early 1900's there is a legal bounty on Indians just as there is on coyotes. The Kiowas and the Comanches in particular are considered by the settlers to be less than human. With no real knowledge of the culture and traditions of their enemies there are a lot of mistaken ideas about Indians. This is evidenced when the women are told to strip Rachel and look at her body. The belief at that time was that Indians had no body hair. Ben and his brothers do not know that Rachel is not their sister until they find a buckskin page from the Kiowa Book Of Days in their dugout cabin after they return home from the hanging of Abe Kelsey. Mother confesses, and Cash, who is an extreme example of the local hatred toward Kiowas, leaves his family to face the Indians alone. Rachel, who has hidden a guilty love for Ben, who she believed was her brother, tries to go out to her Indian brother and stop the killing. Knowing that there is no way that Rachel can fit in as a native, and realizing that he loves her, Ben prevents her from going by killing a messenger from the Kiowas who is under a white flag. The story ends with the death of Matilda, atoning for her sin of first stealing and then concealing the origins of her adopted daughter, the return of Cash to aid his family and the death of Rachel's true brother by her hand. All of the family has made their choice. Rachel will marry Ben, there is no other possible match for her now that it has been revealed that she is Indian, and the Zachary family will stand alone until times and attitudes change. The only flaws I found in the movie were minor. There was no explanation of how Ben was able to read the Indian signs on the buckskin page left in the cabin. There was not enough development of the character of the Kiowa Chief so that the expending of blood for the sake of one girl seemed excessive. One had to assume that the Indians were trying to regain some of their pride by retrieving the stolen girl and were willing to die for that reason but that was not explained in the script. The movie is beautifully filmed. The supporting cast was exceptional. Audie Murphy gave the performance of his life. A movie well worth watching if taken at face value.