The Battle of Midway

Starring: Henry Fonda (narrator), Jane Darwell (narrator), Donald Crisp (narrator)
Directed by: John Ford
Rating: TV-PG
Genre: Documentary, Short, War
Length: 18 minutes
1942

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: The Japanese attack at Midway is filmed by soldiers on the ground.

Review:

Tim: I find The Battle of Midway fascinating for a few reasons. First and foremost, it features footage taken during the actual battle. That's amazing and I could barely believe that John Ford and cinematographer Joseph H. August were at Midway island and filming while the attack occurred. The fact that this footage exists at all feels like a minor miracle and I truly appreciated getting to see a firsthand account of such an important military battle.

While the scenes of the battle and the aftermath are stunning, the movie as a whole combines additional footage in ways I didn't always love. Some of the footage was taken days earlier, but it's edited to make it seem like it was filmed during the same time. That felt just slightly disingenuous and it's somewhat confusing as you're watching the film. You can tell it's not all filmed at the same time. That gives it more of a propaganda feel than an actual documentary. This was a minor complaint, because the rest of the footage is so good. The immensity of the black smoke billowing out of the bombed areas was quite memorable. I appreciated some of the scenes where the film goes out of frames as a result of the explosions. It gave you a sense of the brutality of the battle. The fact that Ford captured all this impromptu is hard to believe.

I also find this film fascinating because it was among the inaugural winners of the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In an incredible twist, there was a four-way tie for the award. That's never happened before or since. At the first awarding of this category, short and feature-length films competed in the same category. So, you have this interesting scenario where this documentary short won Best Documentary. The next year they created the Best Documentary Short. So, in this situation, you have a short film that won Best Documentary. That's unique.

For that reason, I will have to give this film a rating (since I like to calculate the average score of those films). I enjoyed the movie, but the splicing of different scenes felt a bit jumbled, so while it's a good movie, I don't know if it's more than that.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: N/A (7)



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