Spy Smasher

Technically this is a Gyro Raider mini from Pulp Figures, but something compelled me to paint him in Spy Smasher colours. I think he makes a pretty good Spy Smasher.

Here's one of the images I used as a reference. 

Universal Soldiers

Some Thoughts on Bright Victory

 

In Mark Robson's Bright Victory (1951), Sergeant Larry Nevins (Arthur Kennedy) is blinded by a Nazi sniper and returns home to adjust to an entirely new way of living. Kennedy is great in the role, believably bitter in the first act, but growing in confidence as he learns how to navigate without sight. 

Of course there's a family waiting at home, and his girl, Chris Paterson (Julie Adams). But romantic complications arise during Larry's rehabilitation, when he strikes up a friendship with the beautiful and compassionate Judy Greene (Peggy Dow). He also forms a close relationship with another blinded solider, Joe Morgan (James Edwards), who happens to be black. These intersecting relationships - along with, in the second and third acts, his parents, Judy's family, and Chris' family - inform Larry's journey through blindness, his shifting ambitions, and his growth as a human being. 

I was ready for Nevins to have to choose between Peggy and Chris, and that particular love triangle plays out as you might expect--but it's not pat, and for part of the film I thought my expectations might have been subverted. More interesting is the relationship between Nevins and Joe Morgan during rehabilitation; both men were raised Southern, and, well, Nevins was raised with some racist ideology, and he unthinkingly uses the n-word while palling around with Joe--not knowing, of course, Joe's race. This predictably ruins the friendship, and I was, frankly, shocked not only by the use of the slur, but the frank and honest reaction to it and even Larry's insistence that he didn't do anything wrong. It takes the rest of the film for Larry's guilt and embarrassment, and the fact that he misses Joe, to percolate, and when he's finally reunited with his parents, the film is just as frank in showing how he became racist--via his parents, of course, revealed through some offhand comments from his mother, which somewhat sours the family reunion. 

And yet, this touchy subject matter is handled well, with Larry getting know know his parents better, his parents - or at least, his father - recognizing that the world is changing or at least needs to change. And it's not just about the racism; his parents try to hide it, but they're not exactly delighted that their son has come home blind. There's a lot of talk in the film's first act about how love will overcome everything, but Robson's direction, the screenplay, and the performances demonstrate that none of this is easy for anyone involved. 

In the end, Larry and Joe make amends and Larry and Peggy get together, with Larry going off to law school to begin the next chapter of his life. Yes, it's a happy ending, but it feels earned. 

Oh, Rock Hudson appears in the opening minutes of the film as a sadly doomed soldier, felled during the same attack that blinded Larry Nevins. Even with just a few lines, Hudson's charisma and presence shine through. He's very natural even in this bit part. 

And as a fan of Gilligan's Island, it was lovely to see Jim Backus in a solid supporting role as Peggy's brother-in-law and supportive friend to Larry. It's always a thrill seeing one of the Castaways in their earlier roles, before the island typecast them forever. Hmmm--typecastaways? 

One final thought--how lucky was Arthur Kennedy to have Julie Adams and Peggy Dow play his love interests? Both women are stunningly beautiful, inside and out. Must have been something. 

The Hell of Hell Is for Heroes

Don Siegel's Hell Is for Heroes (1962) is the bleakest, starkest war movie I've ever experienced, with an ending that leaves you as sick and empty as you should feel after watching a film about possibly the greatest humanitarian calamity of our age, if not all our shared history. Steve McQueen is one of a handful of American soldiers who stumble across an entire platoon of Nazis. The only reason the Americans aren't wiped out instantly is because the Nazis think they're facing a force of equal size. What follows is a hushed cat-and-mouse game as the Americans use a number of clever tricks to fool the Nazis into thinking that assumption is correct. 

It goes about as well as it can, which is to say that one by one the Americans die badly. One man has his hands blown off by a land mine; another has his intestines torn out and lives long enough to scream "My guts! My guts!" for a few minutes before dying in the midst of his comrades, who are completely unable to save him. 

In the closing minutes, McQueen's character makes a last-ditch attempt to save the day by throwing satchel charge into a pillbox. He manages it, but is shot in the back as he retreats, and the Nazis toss the satchel back out of the firing slit. Knowing he's going to die anyway, McQueen uses his dying breath to grab the satchel charge, cradling it like a baby, and roll into the pillbox, killing himself and the Nazis within. 

In the meantime, a platoon of American troops has finally arrived, and the film ends with the battle still raging. Every main cast member is gone; only the anonymous masses are left, fighting over some worthless hills. It's as disturbing an image as I've seen in film, and an instructive one. 

Bogart's Oasis

Sahara (Zoltan Korda, 1943) is a taut, well-crafted war flick with a fiendishly simple but incredibly effective plot: a ragtag mixture of Allied tank crew and medics are nearly surrounded by Nazi forces in Libya, with only one way to escape: through the unforgiving sands of the Sahara desert. With water already in desperately short supply, they encounter a Sudanese soldier with an Italian prisoner and shoot down a Nazi pilot, further stretching their resources. Humphrey Bogart is the tough sergeant who has to make the even tougher decisions about their shared predicament, and in the end there's a very well-staged last stand at an old ruin with the only well for hundreds of miles around. The thrilling climax is a true surprise, but it's earned, and the good guys don't all pull through. Highly recommended.

Aldon Gray

Mom sent me some old pictures of her first cousin Aldon Gray (left), of whom she says: "He landed at Normandy and walked all the way to Germany with the South Saskatchewan Regiment. He was lucky to survive, as he was in the infantry and was under fire a lot. As he was single, he stayed in Germany to help with the displaced people until he came home in 1946. He was a quiet person, but very smart. He died in Deer Lodge (a military hospital) in Winnipeg at the age of 97. Your dad and I went to his funeral."

I appreciate Mom letting us know this slice of family history. I cleaned up the photograph she sent a little bit. I wonder what that piece of equipment is to Aldon's right; it looks like either a spotlight or one of those signal lights with the shutters. 

A Gaggle of Germans

By painting this assortment of WWII German troops, I have finished painting all of the pieces for Fortune and Glory, in plenty of time for the next Gaming and Guinness. As you can see, I experimented with different uniform colours. I Googled "German infantry World War 2" and got a whole bunch of different results. So I made some tan, black, grey (that turned out more like silver), and one green plastic Nazi. The tan ones are sort of cool, the black nice and sinister, but the grey/silver ones show off the most detail. The green one just doesn't feel right at all. All in all, though, I think these turned out pretty well. 

Five Came Back

Many film buffs know that some of Hollywood's most famous directors went overseas to capture the tragedy of the Second World War on film, resulting in propaganda shorts like Frank Capra's Why We Fight series or documentaries like John Ford's The Battle of Midway, which you can watch on YouTube below:

I've seen a few of the films that resulted from the wartime experiences of these five filmmakers, but I don't know much about the stories behind the stories, so I'm really looking forward to this. 

Perspective

Like many progressives, I've been down in the dumps for much of the year, with my gloomy funk accelerating after the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the USA. Given those events, the continuing catastrophic decline of journalism, rising nationalist fervor in Europe and closer to home, plus the seeming willingness of a growing segment of the population to ignore evidence based decision making, coupled with an outright rejection of science and rising acceptance of racism and xenophobia...

...well, it's made for some sleepless nights, and I mean that almost literally. I've had nightmares about the end of civilization with a frequency I haven't endured since I was a teenager during the Cold War. It's been a long time since I've been plagued by such persistent feelings of hopeless despair.

But over the last couple of days, even in the wake of a never-ending tide of bad news, I've somehow managed to find some perspective. While I don't seek to minimize the current tide of existential threats, it soothes me a little to recall that human beings have persevered and even triumphed over circumstances almost as dire. You only have to look back less than a century, to the generation that lived through the Great Depression, through the rise of fascism in Europe and totalitarian governments in Asia, ultimately climaxing in a war that killed millions upon millions of people and practically destroyed an entire continent's infrastructure.

I wish I weren't seeing so many parallels between the world situation now and that of the 1930s. It's not much solace, except in that there was a light at the end of that long, dark tunnel. The generations before us found the light because they fought for it, literally and figuratively, at staggering cost.

Those of us who believe in human rights, science, and generally working to end human misery, have some fighting ahead of us. We have to show that progressive solutions bring the greatest happiness to the largest number of people, and we have to use arguments that the disenfranchised and the fearful will understand and embrace.

We also have to recognize, much as it pains us, that there are people of ill will who fight dirty and without remorse for their own selfish interests. I don't advocate stooping to their level. But we do have to be ready to refute their lies and bad ideas with the facts and better ideas. And we have to do it with a passion that matches - exceeds - theirs.

2016 has proven that the march of progress can be halted and even reversed. It's happened before, and maybe it's happening now. Those of us who dream of a better world for everyone can't take its arrival for granted. We have to build it, even if others want to tear it all down. 

This Is Not The World's Largest Oil Can

Here I am posing in front of the world's largest oil can in my dad's birthplace, Rocanville, Saskatchewan, sometime in 1981. For some reason the composition of this photo reminds me of something Dali or Magritte might have painted, so I used Photoshop's filtering tools to clumsily transform it into something painterly:

Is this somewhat surreal, or am I crazy?

On Backstabbing

Harper's has posted a fascinating article on how the USA's right wing has used an old German myth explaining the outcome of World War I - that of disloyal elements "backstabbing" patriotic Germans - to win elections and divide the American public. According to the article, they've been doing it since the Second World War, and the chickens may finally be coming home to roost.