Product Details

• Actors: Walter Huston, Harry Davenport, Dana Andrews, Paul Hurst, George O'Brien
• Directors: Gregg Toland, John Ford
• Writers: Budd Schulberg
• Producers: John Ford
• Format: Black & White, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Vci Video
• VHS Release Date: April 24, 2001
• Run Time: 104 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005AABU
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,033 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

In 1943 John Ford gave the great cinematographer Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, The Grapes of Wrath) an opportunity to direct his first film. What was intended to be a short documentary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor grew into a veritable epic, framed by a debate between Walter Huston's Uncle Sam and Harry Davenport's Mr. C on the true nature of the Pacific paradise. Hawaiian history, rah-rah patriotism, and arguments over the loyalty of the Japanese-American population are capped by a stunning re-creation of the battle so convincing that feature films borrowed footage from it for decades. Arch and dated, it's a fascinating slice of history that until a few years ago was never seen by the public. Toland's criticisms of the American Navy caused it to be withheld until Ford could cut the 82-minute feature into a half-hour short, removing the history and analysis and concentrating solely on the battle and the recovery.

VCI's release features Toland's original cut as well as Movietone News and Universal newsreels of the attack and an unusual Japanese TV newscast covering the 1995 debut of this restored version in Japan.

The DVD also features Ford's Oscar®-winning 34-minute version, audio commentary by four Pearl Harbor survivors, and Frank Capra's 60-minute 1945 documentary Know Your Enemy: Japan, a more traditionally jingoistic piece of wartime propaganda that was narrated by Walter Huston. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two Good Documentaries on One DVD, January 3, 2006

By 

Jeffrey T. Munson (Dixon, IL) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: December 7th - The Fleet that Came to Stay (DVD)

This DVD contains two documentaries. The first is John Ford's film about the attack on Pearl Harbor. I had mixed views about this film. I thought the original scenes from the attack were very interesting, and there were some scenes which I've never seen before. However, the scenes which included the plastic models were very poorly done. I realize this film was made over fifty years ago, but I was still disappointed with the poor use of the replicas of the American battleships. It was very easy to tell that they were not real.

The second documentary on this DVD was much better. It deals with the kamikaze attacks against the American fleet off Okinawa. The footage in this documentary is all actual. The viewer gets a true sense of what it was like to fight against an enemy fully intent on diving their plane into an American ship. The skies were literally full of anti-aircraft shells, yet the kamikazes kept on coming. Most never made it to their targets, but some did manage to break through, but thanks to the heroic efforts of the ships' crews, most of the ships were operational after the attack. However, some ships, such as the USS Franklin, suffered a much worse fate.

Overall,I gave this DVD 4 stars; the Pearl Harbor documentary gets 3, while the Okinawa documentary gets 5. Some parts of the Pearl Harbor documentary were very interesting, but I thought the poor use of the models greatly detracted from the overall quality of the film. On the other hand, the Okinawa film was excellent. The footage is all authentic, and the viewer gets a real sense of what it was like to be in a kamikaze attack.

I recommend this video highly. Both documentaries describe two important parts of World War II; one at the beginning of the war, and one at the end. Watch this video and see what it was like to fight the Japanese attackers at Pearl Harbor and survive a kamikaze attack in the waters off Okinawa.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good documentary, June 30, 2005

By 

Micheline Montreuil "Micheline Montreuil" (Quebec, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: December 7th - The Fleet that Came to Stay (DVD)

This movie is a good documentary about what happened in Pearl Harbor, Hawaï, on December 7, 1941. It is curious to still see the word "CENSORED" on the screen of the radar more than 60 years later; there are no more secrets about radar. So, if you wish to remember December 7, 1941 or to try to understand what happened, it is a good DVD to buy.

5.0 out of 5 stars this is the one to see about Pearl Harbor, December 23, 2011

By 

Ron Munkacsi - See all my reviews

This review is from: December 7th - The Pearl Harbor Story (DVD)

Kept from the public for many years, this documentary tells about the attack like you've never seen. The propaganda films added are a must to see, especially for history buffs. One can see how complacent we were about the Japanese and how the military screw-ups contributed to the devestation we received.