Dunkirk
- Thread starter Insidious Von
- Start date
I think it will easily make $150M in the States/Canada. It's alternative to the GOTG2 and Wonder Women films of the summer. Hey, Interstellar made $188M in the States/Canada and that was a mess of a film!
The Grand Fleet sitting stern to prow in a line of battleships a half-mile off the beach would have wrecked the panzer divisions completely - perhaps at the cost of the Grand Fleet. But the RN would have done it in a second to save the army's ass. That's why the panzers didn't attack.
The Germans also though the French Army was in better shape than it was and the Battle of France would have taken a few more months. So they needed the panzer divisions to fight the French.
A movie will be very interesting in that it will need to identify many actual historical characters. Most of the senior generals in command leading up to and including Dunkirk were the same crew who finished WW1 and the lack of competence in the British General Staff is pretty well documented for WW1. In Montgomery's biography he really blasts the British generals and says that the General officer in command had a virtual breakdown during the battle. He also says the Belgians stabbed the Brits in the back by surrendering one or two days early which seriously exposed the Brits. There is quite a lot on Dunkirk in Monty's biography and some on Dieppe as well.
The amphibious assault on the British mainland was never to be attempted and just as well. Monty was assigned quite a stretch of the British coast to defend (I believe he was by then a divisional commander) and he was appalled when he saw the plan to defend. It would have been a disaster. Essentially the Brits had foolishly planned to string their troops out in a thin line along the coast. In less than a week Monty withdrew his division out of France, intact, completely replanned his defensive position, built his fortifications and fully occupied his position.
A lot of the causes of Dunkirk lie with the general staff.
The amphibious assault on the British mainland was never to be attempted and just as well. Monty was assigned quite a stretch of the British coast to defend (I believe he was by then a divisional commander) and he was appalled when he saw the plan to defend. It would have been a disaster. Essentially the Brits had foolishly planned to string their troops out in a thin line along the coast. In less than a week Monty withdrew his division out of France, intact, completely replanned his defensive position, built his fortifications and fully occupied his position.
A lot of the causes of Dunkirk lie with the general staff.
^ Not always, but quite frequently the opening stages of any war are a mess. What unfolds tactically is not what was expected.
Another huge factor leading to Dunkirk is that the French Army did not fight. There is a book by an American whose name I cannot recall. He was a journalist in Berlin and the Germans put him in a staff car and drove him along the route taken by the German Army. He states there was no sign of serious battles. Hence the old joke about the antique French Army Rifle offered for sale. "Never fired and dropped only once".
Thus the British were pretty much on their own.
Thus the British were pretty much on their own.
Ok, except that Joe the fisherman is Mark Rylance one of Britain most respected stage actors, he won an Oscar (much deserved) for Bridge of Spies. And the soldier he saves is Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Peaky Blinders, Batman Returns). It would depressing indeed if the film were ignored in North America. As long as Nolan doesn't treat it as a passion project, word of mouth will carry the film.
Update: Sir Mark Rylance.
Been a Nolan fan ever since Memento, but I don't understand why he's never worked with Guy Pearce again?
Thank you! Someone knew the answer or at least looked it up!
Remember that Guderian was a hot head. He roamed far out n front of the main German forces in Barbarossa and was being continually pulled back and reined in. He eventually got fired. And un-fired. And fired again.
Tanks need continual maintenance and the panzers had just raced across Belgium and northern France and needed overhaul.
Remember there is always "Fog of War". The German didn't know that the French weren't going to counter attack and would eventually cave in and sue for peace. They needed the panzers - they assumed - to fight a long war in southern France.
There are a bunch of reasons why they didn't send their armour straight into Dunkirk.
Guderian was fired by Hitler after the initial invasion of Russia stalled at Moscow. Unlike Paulus he went against Hitler's order to stand his ground during the Soviet counter-attack in the winter of 41.
The French made a tactical decision, they did not cave, to spare Paris from Nazi bombings. The command structure, including Charles de Gaulle, was transported to England to lead the resistance.
Nolan has kept the identity of his characters a secret. It's not known who exactly Kenneth Branagh is portraying in the movie. He's wearing the uniform of The Royal Navy, I'm guessing Rear-Admiral Bertram Ramasy who orchestrated Operation Dynamo. Did he take a hands on approach? Tom Hardy's character is based on RAF Group Captain Douglas Bader. That's as much as I've been able to gather.
The French made a tactical decision, they did not cave, to spare Paris from Nazi bombings. The command structure, including Charles de Gaulle, was transported to England to lead the resistance.
Nolan has kept the identity of his characters a secret. It's not known who exactly Kenneth Branagh is portraying in the movie. He's wearing the uniform of The Royal Navy, I'm guessing Rear-Admiral Bertram Ramasy who orchestrated Operation Dynamo. Did he take a hands on approach? Tom Hardy's character is based on RAF Group Captain Douglas Bader. That's as much as I've been able to gather.
No, they caved. Badly.
Read some stuff about WW2 France. Start with The Fall of the Third Republic.
The French Righties and neo Nazis coalesced around WW1 war hero Marshall Petain and sold the country out to their hero, Hitler. De Gaulle and those who wanted to fight told their own traitor rightie government to "tire-toi, conasses!" and got the British to get them out of France. Petain and the rightie collaborationist government declared De Gaulle a traitor to kiss the ass of their new hero, Hitler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France
Vichy sought an anti-modern counter-revolution. The traditionalist right in France, with strength in the aristocracy and among Catholics, had never accepted the republican traditions of the French Revolution. It demanded a return to traditional lines of culture and religion and embraced authoritarianism, while dismissing democracy.[6] The Communist element, strongest in labour unions, turned against Vichy in June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Vichy was intensely anti-Communist and generally pro-German; Payne finds that it "was distinctly rightist and authoritarian but never fascist".[7] Paxton analyzes the entire range of Vichy supporters, from reactionaries to moderate liberal modernizers, and concludes that genuine fascist elements had but minor roles in most sectors.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Pétain
Not really when it come to de Gaulle and the French Army Command.
Charles de Gaulle was but a général de brigade (Brigadier General), when he and a number of other officers who disagreed with Marshal Pétain's decision to surrender fled to the U.K. from Bordeaux (whence the French Government had fled), however, most of the senior french commanders in metropolitan France joined the Vichy Regime.
By the way what really helped the Free French were the 100,000 gold francs which prime minister Paul Reynaud had given him from secret funds before his resignation.
For IV's benefit, I might also mention that the Free French actually fought Vichy French army units in Syria in 1941-42 and De Gaulle's defection remained controversial in the French army for a few years.
It was not the last time that De Gaulle would come into conflict with ultra right wing elements of the French Army. I would also recommend Frederick Forsythe's "The Day of the Jackal" as a riveting thriller about maverick elements of the French military's attempts to kill De Gaulle in the early 1960's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Jackal
The book begins in 1962 with the (historical) failed attempt on de Gaulle's life planned by Col. Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart: Operation Charlotte Corday. Following the arrest of Bastien-Thiry and other conspirators, the French security forces wage a short but extremely vicious "underground" war with the terrorists of the OAS, a militant right-wing group who have labelled de Gaulle a traitor to France after his grant of independence to Algeria.
The French secret service, particularly its covert operations directorate (the "Action Service"), is remarkably effective in infiltrating the terrorist organisation with their own informants, allowing them to capture and neutralise the terrorists' chief of operations, Antoine Argoud. The failure of the Petit-Clamart assassination, and a subsequent attempt at the École Militaire, compounded by Bastien-Thiry's eventual execution by firing squad, likewise demoralise the antagonists.
Argoud's deputy, Lt Col Marc Rodin, carefully examines their few remaining options and determines that the only way to succeed in killing de Gaulle is to hire a professional assassin from outside the organisation, someone completely unknown to both the French authorities and the OAS itself. After inquiries, he contacts an Englishman (whose name is never given), who meets with Rodin and his two principal deputies in Vienna, and agrees to assassinate de Gaulle for the sum of US$500,000 (about $3.9 million as of 2016). The four men also agree on his code name, "The Jackal." The three OAS leaders then take up residency on the top floor of a Rome hotel guarded by a group of ex-legionnaires to avoid the risk of being captured or killed like Argoud.
Petain got lucky, he didn't face the might of Hinderburg's Russian Divisions, the Austrians needed help in the Alpine war. The kicker was that Italy never declared war on Germany, their No.1 trading partner.
Interesting read on Paul Reynaud he was as anti-Hitler as Churchill and wouldn't accept an armistice. As Prime Minister he introduced austerity measures to get France prepared for war. For helping the rebels escape to Britain, Petain had Reyound arrested and spent the remainder of WW II in jail.
Marcel Marceau was also part of the French Resistance most of which was not known until recently.
http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/marcel-marceau-holocaust-hero/2015/07/02/
Interesting read on Paul Reynaud he was as anti-Hitler as Churchill and wouldn't accept an armistice. As Prime Minister he introduced austerity measures to get France prepared for war. For helping the rebels escape to Britain, Petain had Reyound arrested and spent the remainder of WW II in jail.
Marcel Marceau was also part of the French Resistance most of which was not known until recently.
http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/marcel-marceau-holocaust-hero/2015/07/02/
However, the Alpenkorps of the Imperial German Army - actually all from the Royal Bavarian Army joined with the Austro-Hungarian (Austrian) Landesschützen in fighting against the Italian attack in the Alps.
Of course this was all back in World War I not in the Battle of France in 1940.
I'll take that bet. I say it opens to 30M, and has a domestic gross of 80M. And it's competition on July 21 isn't even that strong.
Interstellar had the hype of being Nolan's first post Batman project, along with the star power of McConaughey and Hathaway. Dunkirk was about an event that most North Americans won't give two shits about, and is relying on the drawing power of Tom Hardy and the singer from One Direction.
