New Dunkirk movie to be made

I would have assumed that Dunkirk is constantly inundated with French folk visiting the sites of the French rearguards that they are all seem so passionate about...

Unfortunately we've lost our family connection to that corner of the world which would have made visiting that neck of the woods a bit easier, but we really ought to do Dunkirk sometime.

 

Does anyone need a visa any more, anywhere?
I thought you simply show up and claim to be refugee.

 

I agree about the CGI...........at the end when he flies over the full length of the beach they should have shown all of the equipment that they have to leave behind, the trucks, tanks artillery etc. That would have really hit it home for me.

 

I have just managed to get back online after some weeks after a being hacked so I thought I'd add my bits. I have recently watched the new film DUNKIRK and was vaguely aware of the way it had been shown ie opening sequence in the town. There has been a number of fairly extensive articles and reviews the newspapers about the film and it's production. I personally was somewhat disappointed overall but was relieved as I was expecting two thirds of the film to be just about the Mole. The film seemed to show all the dogfights over water when I understand the RAF concentrated on stopping the German planes reaching the beaches hence the saying "Where the bloody hell is the RAF" I may be showing my age but the three actors picked for the main parts are all have similar appearances so I had trouble in deciding who was who. This was also a comment by a critic in as newspaper.
I would commend the film in that I attended the showing with my daughter and 10 year old grandson who watches many monster films etc. My daughter said he was gripping her hand tightly through most of the film.He knows my father was at Dunkirk.
Some of the newspapers particularly my local Manchester Evening News have published a couple of two page spreads concentrating on the retreat to the beaches and concentrating on The Wormhout Massacre.
There was also an article in The Mail on Sunday which talks about the massacre and shows a photo of the barn. It also and says the film director evidently visited the memorial site at Esquelbeq turning up on a push bike wearing shorts.
My father was in the rear guard action and in the battle at Wormhout narrowly escaping the massacre and eventually being evacuated from Bray Dunes. I have attached a couple of newspaper cuttings written by my father and mother.
Charlie Bentley

 

Just to add to may last post. I wonder if they are going to make a prequel like they have in Star Wars etc. There must be enough for at one full length film.
Charlie Bentley

 

I don't know if this has been brought up by anyone else yet, but the sea seemed a bit rough in the movie. I remember in an episode of the World at War one of the veterans saying something like "we were lucky as the sea was like a millpond, otherwise we would never have got them off the beach".

 

One of the members above has mentioned how films such as this tend to influence for good or bad people's view of history.

The success of the new Dunkirk film in the US is interesting. It has certainly prompted a flurry of previous Dunkirk releases on the home video market. Members of this forum might be interested in how marketing people have treated historical accuracy based on DVD covers for various Dunkirks:

Item 1 - UK blu-ray release of 1958 film - John Mills looking determined in black and white - no problems there.

Item 2 - UK release of 2005 BBC drama production - looks pretty authentic, perhaps better than the Nolan film gets it.




Item 3 - US version of 2005 BBC drama production - this becomes what appear to be US troops facing the wrong way at what looks like a scene from D-DAY!



Item 4 - Operation Dunkirk - of course, it really was a victory for the American army, wasn't it? - BASED ON TRUE EVENTS!

 

Well, even on the UK ones, John Mill's two-piece webbing would probably have been better off hidden and the second chap's Royal Signals arm of service flash didn't exist in 1940..but you're right, the covers of the US releases are just diabolical.

 

For the record Operation Dunkirk is nothing to do with Dunkirk in 1940.

 

I must confess I haven't seen Operation Dunkirk (no surprise)! It is certainly being marketed as a Dunkirk 1940 film. The official product description on Amazon says: "A band of soldiers left behind in the last hours of the evacuation of Dunkirk must battle their way through dangerous Nazi territory if they ever hope to return home again. Operation Dunkirk tells a remarkable story about the battle for freedom against unimaginable horror."

 

I'd rather watch Manos Hands of Fate again.

 

Oh my! That looks like it would induce a brain haemorrhage in any self-respecting WW2 buff. I'm far from an expert but the glaring inaccuracies were jumping out the screen at me along with accents straight from "Allo, Allo"

 

Thoroughly enjoyed the movie on am IMAX screen.
I thought it was very well done.

 

We went to see the film last week, Mel Snr. didn’t want to; he said it would only disappoint him. He said he would be looking for things that weren’t there. I suppose it’s your own film that stays with you and a re-make will always be just that. Saying that, the DVD will be out by Christmas with extra bells and whistles and I guess he will give it a look then.

Here are just my thoughts on the film not necessarily from a Forum point of view;

A film has to make a return for its investors.

So it has to appeal to the widest cross-section of the film going population. (Bums on seats)

Audiences want to be informed (and not necessarily accurately – just informed).

They want to be an observer of something that stimulates their emotions; love, hate, anger – whatever.

They want their senses stimulated, shocked, saddened –stretched outside the normality of day-to-day life.

I suppose Dunkirk, the film, ticks those boxes.

As a vehicle for the Directors ego it looks towards recognition and awards for its style and the way it tells the tale. The overlong air ballet and multi-angle roll back of scenes seemed contrived toward impressing Oscar nomination panels.

As a cinema-goer you learned that men were trapped near the sea, little ships came to rescue them, and an R.A.F. pilot sacrificed his freedom to save some of them.

I didn’t enjoy the film, the characters were one-dimensional, the narrative was poor. The 1958 film tells the same story in more depth while covering a similar time-line and succeeds in linking the various plot lines together.

That said, the cinema was full when we watched it and my partner (ex-services) said she enjoyed it and would go to see it again.
(But then, I was paying!)

 

I thought it was truly dreadfully bad , even Atonement did so so much better

 

I went to watch the film when it first came out - just to set the scene I'm in no way at all an expert on anything war related and rely on the expertise of this forum to help me understand my relatives war records. So I was oblivious to any inaccuracies!

My Grandad was evacuated from Dunkirk on 31st May and the film really brought home to me the reality of what he went through. I found it deeply disturbing to watch as my Grandad was a 21 year old lad just like the boys portrayed in the film. Who knows the horrors of what he went through on the days waiting on the beach before he was rescued. Naively I hadn't appreciated that some had been rescued only for their ship to be destroyed and to end up back on the beach. Again naively I hadn't really thought about how they had got to the beach in the first place and the opening scenes struck a chord - in fact in most of the scenes I just kept thinking ' that could have been happening to Grandad'.

At one point during the film I said to my husband that I didn't think I could watch it any more. He said to me ' if your Grandad lived it, you can at least watch it'. How right he was. I was glad I persevered to the end. About 8 or 9 years ago I applied for my Grandads service records, joined this forum, but I had a baby and life got in the way of more research and I forgot about it. The film has awakened that interest again and now I'm back on here pestering people for help! So for that reason alone I think it was a great film

 

Same as all the new re inventions it keeps people interested simple as that.

 

I'd planned to go and see it tonight. Now I'm having second thoughts. Perhaps I should stick to Joshua Levine's 'Forgotten voices: Dunkirk'. (Random House 2011) The back cover describes the book as

'Drawing on a wealth of material from the Imperial War Museum's sound archive, Forgotten voices: Dunkirk presents in the words of both rescued and rescuers an intimate and dramatic account of what Winston Churchill described as a 'miracle of deliverance'.

Vitellino

 

Looks like I'll be waiting for the Blu ray