Seeing is Not Believing

There are certain films which tend to turn up over and over again on the free-to-air streaming services, many are from the late seventies and eighties and fall into the category of movies which look like they were big in their day but, in reality, underperformed, only gaining a cult following after the event.  The time travel drama The Final Countdown falls into this category, as does Capricorn One, a film which seems to be showing on one or other of Pluto TV's film channels every five minutes, (along with the pre-Bond Pierce Brosnan action thriller Taffin).  I have to say that Capricorn One is a film I hate with a vengeance.  Quite apart from being poorly cast, badly structured and lacking in any concept of pace, let alone delivering any suspense or thrills, I hold it responsible for helping to popularise and sustain the idiotic conspiracy theory that the moon landings were faked.  Most people's ideas on the subject - the TV studio landing site (faking Mars rather than the moon in this case), the idea of NASA being some kind of sinister organisation employing hit men rather than being a scientific agency and the whole concept of the US government being so ruthless that it is prepared to engage in a massive hoax and murder its own citizens in order to cover up a technical error - seem to have been informed by this misbegotten piece of cinema.

But Capricorn One isn't unique in perpetuating, or even creating, myths which then enter the  popular consciousness.  Patton, for instance, in presenting a fictionalised account of the eponymous US general's World War Two service, has informed most casual observers' view of the man.  A frightening number of people believe, for instance, the scene during the battle for Sicily, where Montgomery's triumphant arrival in Messina is disrupted by the fact that Patton has taken the town already, against orders, actually happened.  It didn't - Montgomery actually requested Patton take he town as he was being delayed by fiercer than expected resistance in his advance along the opposite side of the island.  Damn it, these same people also believe that Patton, in real life, sounded like George C Scott's gravelly voiced interpretation of the man - just watch actual newsreel of Patton and you'll find that he sounded nothing like that.  But at least Patton is a good film whose makers' intent was to use the historical figure to try and explore the mind sets of the kind of people who make successful war leaders, thereby justifying, to some extent, its fabrications and historical inaccuracies.  

Another seventies war film, A Bridge Too Far, has no such excuses.  Despite having a British director and stars it seems intent upon using its re-telling of the Arnhem Campaign to pursue an Anglo-phobic agenda,  This reaches a crescendo when we see British tank crews stopping and brewing tea rather than advancing after Robert Redford and his heroic US paratroopers had just taken the bridge they had crossed.  A completely fabricated scenario - the real life officer Redford played hated the sequence claiming it bore no resemblance to what had actually happened, while the British tanks had been sent across the bridge specifically to secure that end of it and dug in to defend it against possible counter attacks.  Yet many people take it as being true.  It is a pity, as in most other respects A Bridge Too Far strives for greater realism and accuracy than most other World War Two movies.  As it stands, though, it serves as another warning that viewers should never believe anything they see on screen - especially when it is being presented as history.