5 Movies for an American History Class

I think that if you were to go back and look at that particular scene, you'd see that the first view of a knife is when Fonda pulls it from his jacket pocket and tells the other jurors that he bought it while they were all out of the courthouse for lunch. The way I remember it, the jury never asks the court for the original murder weapon or any other evidence or instruction.
Having served on Texas juries, I know jurors are taken to lunch together and eat as a group and then return as a group to the courthouse, all under the watchful eyes of baliffs after being instructed by the judge not to talk about the case among themselves or with others. During voir dire and in instructions from the judge, jurors are told they cannot consider any "evidence" not presented in court. All of that means that Fonda could not have obtained the knife or presented it to other jurors in the jury room. The baseball fan could have made his game simply by reporting the improper action to the baliff who would have reported to the judge who would have declared a mistrial. That's how it would have worked in Texas. I'm sure the rules in your state are much the same.

We agree that Beagley's character was racist from start to finish--he was convinced that violence was what one could expect from "those people." And in viewing that movie, I never got the feeling that anyone ever convinced him otherwise. Nine of the jurors are persuaded one by one that there is evidence supporting a reasonable doubt of the boy's guilt. Even the baseball fan finds some justification for going along with not guilty. But from what I see in the movie, Beagley's character never sees anything that truly undermines his prejudice or raises a doubt about the boy's guilt. The other jurors turn away from him in disgust over his prejudicial spewings, and then he changes his vote. I just don't think that's in keeping with the character of someone who has carried that prejudice some 50 years and likely would carry it another 50. It was dramatic, but it just didn't ring true to me.

Cobb, for my money, was the outstanding member of that very talented cast, so I agree that his final outburst of anger was as you said "the best material in the entire film and the most realistic." It's the key scene in the whole picture and I understand why the playwright and director resolved the conflict in that manner.

As I see it, however, his real anger with his own son has been redirected all through the film toward the young man on trial. Cobb is mad and he wants to see someone suffer as he has suffered. We learn only at the last that his son is the cause of his suffering and anger but we never learn why. More important, we don't know if that anger is resolved when he tears up the photo and bursts into tears. Does he realize that moment that he's been taking his anger out of a kid that he thought all along might be innocent? Is he crying because he realizes that despite his anger, he still loves his son? Does he change his vote because he believes the boy is innocent, or as a symbol of forgiveness for his own son, or out of frustration because he knows there will never be any relief or reconciliation? Or does it really matter why he changes his vote?

Despite what I see as a couple of flaws of fact and character motivation, it's still one hell of a story and a great performance by all. And like my wife keeps reminding me, "They aren't shooting a documentary!"

Not seeing Network talked about much, save HP's listing. I feel that the media is an incredibly powerful entity that, clearly, has had massive influence on recent history. I believe Network is the best film in this category, as well. Some might list Clooney's recent Good Night, and Good Luck, or perhaps All the Presidents Men...

Alas, the foresight possessed by the creators of Network make it a shoe-in for me. Whatever crystal ball they were gazing into during production....

Thoughts?


Oh and, Hi Viddy! Long time no see.... Hope all is well.

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Well, not exactly. I do agree that if you interview eyewitnesses to an event, you're likely to get some discrepancies, but most people will agree about the main things they saw. If you're talking about a political or social event, there likely will be written records, speeches delivered, news reports of the event, invitations and instructions, photographs. If it's a battle, there is evidence of troop movements in the paths left behind by marching feet or hundreds of horses or vehicles. Equipment is lost, trash is discarded. And again there are written reports, supply requested, troop movements ordered, plans drawn up, drawings, photos. After the battle reports are made by commanders of companies, battalions, regiments, groups, armies. Casualties are reported and treated, prisoners are disposed of, arms are recovered, news is reported, diaries are written, as are memoirs after the war. All of these things are studied and reviewed, debated and disputed by historians for years and years, and in the end they usually have a good idea of what really occurred.

No, they won't know everything that happened to every soldier, but historians will have a good feel for the ebb and flow of a battle or the decisive issues in an election or the turning point in a political campaign They certainly will know when repeating rifles were first used and how long it would take to load and fire a muzzle-loading musket. A lot of reenactors were laughing as they counted how many times Mel Gibson fired without reloading his single-shot musket in The Patriot. Many Scotsmen also giggled at Gibson wearing kilts and painting his face blue in Braveheart, which was not historically accurate for that period. I grant you, that's not going to bother most moviegoers. Yet it needlessly alienates a lot of us who know better, when the producer/director could just as easily done it correctly from the start.


Now that's a valid reason for using movies to illustrate history. But only as illustration. And only if the teacher first tells students, "Now look for these historical elements in the film and notice these inaccuracies and mistakes."

The Right Stuff
Band of Brothers
12 Angry Men
Hotel Rwanda
Saints and Soldiers

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

I've never seen Network so I can't comment on it. From what I understand, it is to television news what Metropolis is to modern manufacturing. I wasn't impressed with All the President's Men: Watching it was like another day in the office, except I've never known a real working newsman who had a secretary fielding his calls. Except for the scene where they call a secretary out of her office so they can look at a file on her desk, I've used every other trick for getting information before that film was ever made. Good Night and Good Luck was a good recreation of Edward R. Murrow's takedown of "Tail-gunner Joe."

I gotta disagree with you about the media as "an incredibly powerful entity" with "massive influence on recent history." Speaking as an insider, it's too divided on one hand and too homogenized on the other. For instance, there are thousands of daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, wire services, television, radio, and online sources for any one group or type to dominate news reporting. Although there are no longer competing major dailies in any of the major US cities anymore, the remaining dailies compete with radio, television, magazines and wire services in reporting the news. Wire services like the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuthers, Dow Jones and others report the same events to all of the competing media, so the story you read in one newspaper generally agrees with what you hear on radio or see on TV. And even as the big daily papers have died off, the number of news sources available through TV and the internet have proliferated. If you think the traditional media isn't giving you the "real" story, you can hear competing versions on talk radio or read in in Internet blogs. The problem now is that there are so many news sources that it is harder than ever to process the news. You now can choose to hear only the news you want.

Malcom X
Amistad
JFK
Gettysberg
Casino

Right. My point is that everything is media driven, and people's lives, to some extent, are defined by it. I am talking the media in general. I know people whose entire vocabulary consists of media references of one type or another. I mean, I go to have a drink at a bar, and people will spend the entire time I am there talking about favorite Seinfeld episodes, etc.

I really think the media in general is just a massive juggernaut that dominates every facet of many people's lives; obviously not mountain men, or Amish folk, but, you get my drift.

Hey Sedai. Yeah Network is a good call, but I need to see that again, as it's been about 4-5 years since I have.

Also, I hope to stop back from time to time. I'm mostly on at www.moviejustice.com and occasionally at RottenTomatoes, but I really do like MoFo. And student teaching is keeping me busy beyond what I enjoy, but it goes with the territory I reckon.

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Okay, I see where you're coming from now. I thought at first you were making the usual argument by conspiracy theorists and others that the media feeds out this Wag the Dog misinformation to influence our political outlook and votes.

Over the weekend, I watched one of my favorite films that is the essence of the electronic media's political influence--A Face in the Crowd, the best thing Andy Griffth ever did.

However, I realize now you're talking about about the wider preponderance of the general media that gives us our sports, news, music, fashion, politics, education, religion, you name it. Obviously most of the things we think about or talk about is based on information at least provided, if not also shaped, by the media, be it radio, television, print, film, or computer program.

It was remarkable to see how fresh and modern A Face In the Crowd still is today. Walter Mathau's closing remarks to Andy Griffith as "Lonesome" Rhodes. could have been a prediction for Don Imus. "Oh, you'll be back on the air," Mathau says. "After things cool down, someone will take a chance on you again because you'll still have a certain following. But this time it won't be quite as big or as upscale. You'll have lost something. And there will be more competition, younger versions of 'Lonesome' Rhodes anxious to make their market. And finally someday someone will say, 'Whatever happened to--what was his name? You know, the guy who was so popular a few years ago! How could I forget the name of someone who used to be as big as he was!"

Okay, I realize I haven't posted on here in forever, but I have to weigh in:

He didn't buy it during a lunch break, he specifically says that he went out walking the night before in the boy's neighborhood (the trial had gone on for nearly a week before, I believe), went into a pawnshop, and bought the knife; it cost $5 dollars. Now, one could argue that he might not have been allowed to enter the court with a switchblade, but I have a feeling that security was probably a lot less strict back then, and for obvious reasons.

Edit:

They brought the murder weapon in: One of the jurors stabbed it into the table, and then Fonda opened his own knife and stabbed it down in next to it; you can tell which one's which because the murder weapon has a tag attached to it.

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"I bet one legend that keeps reoccurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye."

The Last of the Mohicans (1992 - Michael Mann)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940 - John Ford)
The Thin Red Line (1998 - Terrence Malick)
The Corporation (2003 - Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott)
La Battaglia di Algeri (1966 - Gillo Pontecorvo)

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

The Fog of War
Welcome to Dongmakgol
This is England
Mississippi Burning
The Grapes of Wrath

Christine, i've seen Welcome to Dongmakgol on DVD and read good things, not sold on it yet though. It good then?

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you mean you've seen it and not liked it or seen that it's on dvd but not bought it yet?
Anyway yeah, I really liked it . You've read the storyline yeah? well I had too but I wasn't prepared for being quite so entranced by the villagers and their other-worldliness. Kind of a naive world in total contrast to the brutality of the war outside which is dividing their country and which they know nothing of.
Nice, charming humour too, and some maybe unintended with the stilted dialogue of the American characters.
Well worth seeing imo

Meant i've seen the DVD in shops. I've got an exam with a question on Korean cinema so reckon i'll hunt this one down, cheers. Btw, seen Sopyanje (sp?)?

Now that you mention it, I recall the evidence tag. It's been a long while since I saw that film and my recollection was that the case had just gone to the jury and that the Fonda character had gotten the duplicate switchblade when they had gone to lunch before being sequestered in the jury room. (It's hard to believe it would have taken a week to try the case with only a couple of witnesses. When I used to cover the police and court beats, this was what we then referred to as a "misdemeanor murder" with a victim and suspect of no particular social "importance" always poor, usually a minority, who usually would plead out for a lighter sentence. Even when such a case made it to court, it usually was tried and decided in one day, sometimes one afternoon.) Regardless of where or when he got the switchblade, the rules of evidence stipulate that jurors can consider only evidence introduced into the courtroom during the trial, which would rule out the knife Fonda's character brought in. In Texas (and likely the other 49 states as well), that would have been grounds for a mistrial.

I'm absolutely positive that he said he bought it during a walk in the boy's neighborhood at night. I'm not sure why the case took so long, although it might have something to do with the fact that if the boy was found guilty, he'd be executed.

Anyway, I realize that technically speaking, if someone wanted to tip over the whole case, they could've made a fuss about Fonda using the knife as a form of evidence, but the only person I can imagine wanting to do that is the guy who wanted to get to his ballgame, and it's a possibility that he didn't know. The rest either wanted the boy acquitted or killed enough not to do anything about it, I think. What I'm basically saying is that it's entirely possible that they just plainly broke the rules, and it's very possible, considering Fonda bought a switchblade, illegal at the time.

Many--perhaps even most--movie plots hinge on something that couldn't, wouldn't, or shouldn't happen in real life and that requires some "suspension of disbelief" on the part of the audience in order to make the movie work. Fonda's character bringing in the duplicate switchblade is just such a device. Courtroom procedure always takes a beating in the movies. You always see the defense attorney or the prosecutor call a witness to the stand, ask some questions, and then tell the witness to step down. Wrong! Once a witness takes the stand, both sides get an equal chance for examination, but only the judge can excuse the witness when testimony is finished. But movies are make-believe and don't have to stick to the rules.

My daughter and I watched All's Quiet On the Western Front this year specifically as part of the study she did of WW1.

It's been remade more than once but we watched the original. I honestly expected her to find it unpleasantly anachronistic. As it turned out we really got into it. It's a great film and a wonderful story.

It's also one of the few films we felt that the extras were actually worth watching. The notes on the cast were great!

This film was recommended to me, the book too by a high school history teacher I met while on jury duty.

My daughter also read the book because she wanted to after seeing the film.


We also watched Good Night and Good Luck. It was surprisingly indicative of the current atmosphere living under the Bush Administration.

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Bleacheddecay

Very interesting post. I'd like to recommend 'Tintypes'. This was a photographed Broadway play shown on an educational program on a PBS channel. Mostly, satire with music it depicted life in America during the period 1890 - 1920. Not a nice play it was critical of different groups and individuals. On the plus side, it featured some very talented performers and the music ( songs from that period ) was good.