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Where history and movies meet
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  • Featured Movies
    • 12 Years a Slave (2013)
    • 1941 (Spielberg) >
      • 1941: Part 2
    • Affair of the Necklace
    • Alice's Restaurant: best of the American counterculture movies?
    • Army of Crime
    • Army of Shadows
    • The Artist >
      • 'The Artist':2
    • Anthropoid: the Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, 1942: Four Very Different Movies >
      • Hangmen Also Die: Hollywood meets emigres from Nazi Germany
    • Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
    • Battle of the Rails ( La bataille du rail)
    • Belle (2014)
    • Bhowani Junction
    • Blackboard Jungle >
      • Blackboard Jungle Pt.2
    • Carry On Up the Khyber
    • Charlie Wilson's War
    • The City Across the River
    • The Counterculture : best movies about the American counterculture era
    • Custer - two contrasting movie portrayals: "They Died With Their Boots On" and "Little Big Man" >
      • They Died With Their Boots On
      • Stalin and the Movies >
        • Stalin, Disney, Eisenstein, & Ivan the Terrible
      • Death of Stalin
      • Little Big Man (1970)
    • Dark Knight Rises >
      • Dark Knight Rises Pt.2
    • The Deceivers
    • Diplomacy / Diplomatie (2014) movie
    • Dunkirk: Christopher Nolan's epic movie
    • El Cid
    • The Enigma Machine : four movies about the Enigma machine
    • Generation War >
      • Generation War: Jazz and the Swing Kids
      • Generation War: German women and the war
    • The Great Gatsby On the Big Screen
    • Gunga Din
    • A Hard Day's Night: Influences on the Movie
    • Hemingway & Gellhorn >
      • Martha Gellhorn >
        • Women war correspondents
    • Hyde Park on Hudson
    • The Imitation Game (2014) >
      • The Imitation Game Part 2: the truth about Turing and the Bletchley 'Bombe'. >
        • The Imitation Game: Turing, Bletchley and the Colossus >
          • Imitation Game: Turing, Bletchley Park and the Soviet spy
    • The Inner Circle (1991)
    • Is Paris Burning? >
      • Is Paris Burning? General von Choltitz
    • KIng of the Khyber Rifles
    • Kim
    • Léon Morin, Priest
    • Les Miserables (2012) >
      • Les Miserables in Movies: Fantine the grisette >
        • Les Miserables 3: guide to some historical references
    • "Les Misérables": Claude Lelouch updates a classic
    • Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
    • The Long Duel
    • Looking at Lincoln - Spielberg's "Lincoln" & its predecessors and influences >
      • Spielberg's Lincoln
      • Abraham Lincoln: D.W. Griffith's version
      • Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
      • Abe Lincoln in Illinois
    • Mandingo (1975) Dir: Richard Fleischer
    • The Man Who Would Be King
    • Marie Antoinette (2006)
    • Marie-Antoinette / Shadow of the Guillotine
    • Farewell, My Queen
    • Marie Antoinette (1938) >
      • Marie Antoinette (1938) Pt.2
    • Mayerling
    • Midnight in Paris >
      • Midnight in Paris:2 >
        • Midnight in Paris:3
    • The Monuments Men (2014) Dir: George Clooney
    • North West Frontier / Flame Over India
    • La Nuit de Varennes - a post-modern take on a key episode in the French Revolution
    • Le Pere Tranquille (The Quiet Father) 1946
    • Peterloo: MIke Leigh's New Movie >
      • Peterloo2
    • Pompeii in the movies >
      • Pompeii (2014) Paul W.S. Anderson director
    • Rebel Without a Cause
    • Ridicule
    • Scott Fitzgerald Goes to Hollywood
    • Sergeant Rutledge
    • Silence of the Sea
    • Swing Kids (1993)
    • The Train
    • Train to Pakistan
    • Stranglers of Bombay
    • Tonka
    • Tulip Fever
    • Viceroy's House
    • The Vikings
    • Vietnam Westerns: western movies and the Vietnam war
    • Wee Willie Winkie
    • The Wind and the Lion
    • Woman in Gold >
      • Woman in Gold Pt.2: the Vienna Scene in early 20th Century Vienna
    • Un village française: French TV series
    • Waterloo: the movie about Napoleon's final battle
    • Zabriskie Point
  • Places
    • Settings: the North West Frontier
    • Movies Set in the North-West Frontier >
      • Thuggees
    • Movies Set in Paris and Versailles
  • Events
    • Events That Inspired Movies 2
    • French Resistance and Collaboration in World War II: Selected Movies
  • People
    • People Part 2
  • Music
    • Rock Around the Clock
    • Don't Knock the Rock
    • The Girl Can't Help It >
      • Pt2:The Girl Can't Help It
  • Free State of Jones
  • Great Wall (2017)
  • Rogue One & World War 2
  • Hollywood and anti-Americanism in a small country: Amercan movies & their critics in New Zealand 1916 - 1956
    • New Zealanders' Love of Movies 1900s-1956
    • Campaign against Hollywood movies in New Zealand
    • Campaign against HollywoodPt 2
  • Hollywood versus Pinewood Pt2
  • New Zealanders and Movies: the Enigmatic Gordon Mirams: film critic, film censor and public intellectual
  • Aryan Papers: Stanley Kubrick's Proposed Movie

Music and Movies

Les Misérables

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The concept album that, a few decades ago, started the incredible fuss over the musical.
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Scene from the original Paris production of the stage musical, before Cameron Mackenzie realised its potential. Unfortunately, his version (with a new lyricist) increased the sentimental and dirge-like content of the original.
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The all-singing, over the top 2012 movie version of the London - Broadway musical.

A Hard Day's Night: what it appropriated from earlier pop music movies

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Riachard Lester's first Beatles' musical A Hard Day's Night is rightly regarded as a landmark in 1960s moviemaking in general and movie musicals in particular. However, the movie is not as revolutionary as it first appears. Lester used many of distinctive features of Hard Day's Night in a pop musical he made a year earlier - the unheralded It's Trad, Dad (Ring-a-Ding Rhythm in the USA). The rapid cutting, gritty settings, rapid pace, and above all, the fascination with the relationship between fans and their musical idols are all on display in the earlier film. An even earlier film, 1957's Expresso Bongo, had also focussed on pop stars and their interaction with fans, and, like, Hard Day's Night, emphasised the unglamorous surroundings of the pop music world.

Jazz and Swing Under the Nazis

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1938 exhibition condemning 'unGerman' music and musicians.
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Greta, the ambitious aspiring cabaret singer in "Generation War".
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Charlie and his Orchestra - a German swing band established with the support of Josef Goebbels.
The 2013 German Tv series Generation War, released in the USA  and some Europeran countries  in cinemas, places considerable emphasis on the appeal of jazz/swing music to its five main characters. One of them is, initially, a jazz musician; another is determined to become a successful vocalist in the torchy Marlene Dietrich style. The only problem was that in the Thrid Reich jazz and swing was officially prohibted as inferior music associated with negroes and Jews. Yet such music remained popular throughout the war.

Rock Around the Clock and its musical, social and cultural significance

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A Juke Joint, one of the vital sources of rock 'n' roll. Sometimes called a Barrelhouse. Juke Joints were houses, sheds, or outbuildings in the southeast USA, offering drinking, music and companionship. Supposedly run for and by African-Amercians, but the young Elvis Presley and other white musicians were known to attend or at least listen to the performances.
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The movie headlined a mix of white, black and Latino performers.
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The Platters, a black vocal group featured in 'Rock Around the Clock'. Their blend of too-wop and r &b became increasingly popular with white audiences. They were part of the movement of 'race' music across color lines.

Don't Knock the Rock: a benign view of rock 'n' roll & the generation gap

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This movie was from the same producer and director of 'Rock Around the Clock'.
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Bill Haley and his Comets had an even bigger role,musically and dramatically, in this attempt to take advantage of the popularity of 'Rock Around the Clock'.
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Black performers such as Little Richard figired prominently in this movie, which significantly emphasized their popularity with white audiences.

The Girl Can't Help It - the best rock 'n' roll movie ever?

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Paul McCartney insists that 'The Girl Can't Help It' is the best rock 'n' roll movie ever made. McCartney joined John Lennon's band after Lennon was impressed by McCartney's performance of a song from the movie, which Lennon also admired.
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The movie contains brilliantly-filmed performances by such rock 'n' roll greats as Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran, Gne Vincent and Little Richard.
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Capitol Records used the movie to advertise the singers and groups its featured.

Spielberg's 1941 and the jitterbug / swing dancing craze

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The jitterbug dance competition in '1941' highlighted Spielberg's virtuosity.
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Harshly condemned at the time, the jitterbug /swing contest is frequently cited as the highlight of '1941'.
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Swing dancing

`Maurice Jarre's music for Is Paris Burning?

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Album cover.
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Jarre in the 1960s, when he wrote the music for the film.
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Jarre's music for "Is Paris Burning?" capture both the sense of romantic liberation of the events and the ominous danger that preceded the scenes of triumph in Paris.
 Réne Clément's movie about the liberation of Paris in 1944 received a hostile reception that iMaurice Jarre's intriguing music for the  1966 film has remained relatively neglected. However, many admirers of the composer's work regard the soundtrack album as shamefully neglected and regard it as worth ranking alongside  his work for Dr Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia.  The music is a successful blend of the martial and the romantic. It has wistful snatches of Parisian popular ballads alongside stirring marches, best exemplified by the Overture. The music includes a lilting waltz - one of Jarre's best compositions.

Les Misérables - the movie of the musical

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The origins of the 2012 movie of the stage musical Les Misérables can be traced back to 1980, when the French ream of composer Claude-Michel Schonberg and lyricist Alain Boublil  (above right) produced a best-selling concept album (above left),which was then transformed into a atage musical  that ran for some months in Paris. It was not until 1985 that the reworked English-language version was staged, with new lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer.