Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Ladies and gentlemen: another disaster from Artisan!, December 19, 2003
By A Customer
The back of the box says Full Screen Format! What? This is a CinemaScope picture? So I put it in my player just to check it out. And what do I see? Some kind of letterbox image (about 1:2) far from the correct aspect ratio, but better than full screen. Alas, it is not enhanced for anamorphic playback, and the colors are washed out and fuzzy! So is the focus, and there is some kind of "net" pattern so obvious and distracting most of the time, that I finally decide to rate this DVD as unwatchable! Sad, indeed! Yet another disaster from Artisan, one of many DVD distributors that you cannot rely on. Sure, they have given us some pretty nice transfers, but most are far below acceptable standards. When will these people learn that quality means happy consumers, and happy consumers means better sales?
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The man who predicted the Pearl Harbor attack!, March 24, 2003
I am reviewing the movie "The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell", and not the VHS copy of it. Gen. Billy Mitchell was the Army/Air Force General who in the 1920's; said, and showed, that aircraft bombers could sink battleships. He also said,(under oath), in the 1920's that the Japanese could launch a Sunday morning aircraft carrier attack on Pearl Harbor, and devestate the USA Army and Navy units stationed there. ENDING SPOILER-Gen. Mitchell was court martialed and forced to resign his commission more for the way he said what he did, than for what he had to say. Seeing this film with it's great cast, especially Gary Cooper in the title role, makes me think about what might have been IF Gen. Mitchell been a little more tactful, or had his higher ranking officers been a little more willing to listen to him. Citizen Billy Mitchell died in the 1930's, so he was not alive in 1941. This is an outstanding film about the only person a US military aircraft was named for; the B-25 Mitchell, and I think it should be shown every Dec. 7th, along with "Tora, Tora, Tora".
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Billy's Universal Choice: Obedience or Integrity, July 24, 2003
The events of December 7, 1941 may have come as a total surprise to nearly all Americans, but not to Billy Mitchell, who years earlier had predicted with astonishing accuracy the details of an attack that would cripple United States naval powers for more than two years. In THE COURT MARTIAL OF BILLY MITCHELL, director Otto Preminger dramatizes the dilemma of Billy Mitchell, who had to struggle with his sense of duty that ran counter to a conscience that refused to let his fellow airmen die in preventable air crashes. Gary Cooper as Billy Mitchell was 54 when he made this film and his true life weariness and evident age did not detract from a performance that did not differ materially from the laid back roles he had earlier showed as Lou Gehrig and Alvin York. As disgraced Colonel Billy Mitchell, Cooper uses his stone face and immense dignity that allows him to maintain his purpose while others lose theirs in the heat of the moment. Colonel Mitchell has seen too many trusted comrades die when he and they knew that their deaths were caused by the criminal negligence of his military superiors. Mitchell does the unthinkable. He goes public with his accusations and is court martialed.The first half sets up this courtroom drama with sterling performances by Jack Lord, Elizabeth Montgomery, and Darren McGavin. As his friends die, you can sense that Mitchell's iron-bound duty not to break the chain of command is beginning to rust. The dramatic center of the first half is internal, as Cooper portrays a man who knows what he wants to do but is forbidden to do. The second half is the trial itself. Although Cooper has to share center stage with Charles Bickford as the presiding judge and a young and arrogant Rod Steiger as the prosecuting attorney, Cooper manages a rare balancing act. He successfully keeps the military jury's and the audience's attention on the need for aviation reform while not allowing the film to sink into a 'message' movie, that might otherwise have been literally true but less interesting. One of the reasons that enabled Cooper to be the megastar that he was was his ability to say commonsense things in a straightforward way that never let the audience forget that a fully-fleshed character truly believed in the veracity of his words. No matter how hard Steiger tries to make Cooper look foolish on the witness stand, it is Steiger--and by implication the army--that was foolish for not heeding Colonel Mitchell's many warnings about the need to upgrade the American air force. The movie ends rather abruptly with no hint that Mitchell's foresight would one day be vindicated. And if the audience is denied the pleasure of seeing Colonel Mitchell vindicated, then, by contrast, the integrity of a man who had only his gut feelings to guide him stamps him as the rarest of men: one who has strong convictions and is unafraid to place his job and character on the line to express them.
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