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good back-story, and good acting

Dreadfully Boring

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

Victory Through Air Power (1943)*** (out of 4) With WWII going full strength, everyone in Hollywood did what they could to bring attention and information to the screen and that includes Disney. This animated feature is pretty entertaining in its own right as we learn about the history of aviation and then go into details on how planes are playing a major role in the war.If you've seen any of the documentaries from this era then you're really not going to learn anything new here. The "Why We Fight" series pretty much covered this stuff in much greater detail but of course the one difference is that this film is animated. The Disney crew really did a terrific job with the animation as it's up to their usual high standards. Fans of Disney will certainly enjoy the animation but WWII buffs will also like the way the documentary shows the bombings at Pearl Harbor and the animated maps on the various issues America faces going up against Japan and Germany.

It's hard to endorse a film about a war involving such blood, sacrifice, and hatred when it comes to us in the form of a cartoon. Elmer Fudd is the proper subject of a cartoon, and Mickey Mouse, and The Flintstones.Yet this is probably the most famous cartoon to come out of World War II, made by the Disney people in a style, about a subject, far different from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." There is no newsreel footage at all, and virtually no still photographs. The whole thing is a cartoon. And the cartoons are both informative and reasonably accurate. A Stuka looks like a Stuka, not like a generic "airplane." Even a lesser known airplane like the Japanese G-4 "Betty" looks like what it's supposed to be.And our chief source of information, aside from Art Baker's narration, is Alexander P. de Seversky, aviation expert, industrialist, and military strategist. It was his company, Republic, that gave us the P-47 Thunderolt.Here, the live interludes, are lectures from Seversky outlining his thesis in his Russian accent, which goes something like, "Trow avay da bettleships and built airoplens instead." He doesn't argue that air power is an important means of winning the war. To him, it seems to be the ONLY way. His presentation is very simple and clear but in case you don't get his point, the cartoons spell it out for you in lurid color. A chimpanzee would get it.Of course this was released in 1943, a year during which the major turning points of the war began -- new Allied anti-submarine defenses, Stalingrad, the fall of Italy, and a tremendous outpouring of American military equipment. Seversky's logic points up the importance of air power but, without a crystal ball and without access to classified information, he made claims that weren't true.Just a few examples, because he doesn't make that many mistakes. The British and French troops weren't successfully evacuated from Dunkirk because the RAF ruled the skies. The Nazis weren't building ever bigger and more potent submarines. The RAF and USAAF attacks on factories were good at tearing up cities but not at destroying the ability to produce weapons or at breaking the will of the victims. He proudly describes the terrific hammering of a city like Köln without mentioning that our own losses in attacks like these were so appalling that they needed to be temporarily suspended. The guy is full of belief and passion, though, so much so that one wouldn't want to argue with him.He's certainly right about one thing. The longer your supply lines, the less secure your position. It was illustrated in the battles between Rommel and the British in North Africa. Each army would drive the other back until its supplies were unsteady, then they in turn would be driven back to their source. In 1943, Japan's empire covered a vast amount of territory. Seversky examines each possible approach to reaching Japan and rules all of them out. Island hopping? Nope. Too many islands to conquer one by one. Meanwhile Japan would be siphoning off the necessary materials of war from its own conquered territory.But it was that approach that we finally used successfully, once we realized that we could skip many of the stronghold and leave them to "wither on the vine." The two B-29s that dropped the big ones and ended the war took off from Tinian Island, one of the Ryuku chain, that we had reached by island hopping. And the Japanese never did continue siphoning off enough war materials because our own submarines (that is, the USN, not the USAAF) made the sea routs impassable to shipping.I don't mean to be too harsh on Seversky. It's certainly no fault of his that he didn't predict thermonuclear bombs and jet engines. Perhaps his presentation was flawed but his reasoning sound. In 1943, even if you knew about our losses over France, Germany, and Romania, would it have been wise to publicize them? The film is almost like a peek into the past and almost renders our current problems minuscule.

Disney like most other Americans in the early 1940s wanted to find some way to contribute to the war effort short of actually fighting. This film - along with the other wartime shorts on the DVD that contains it - stems from that impulse.On one level, the film is meant to educate general audience in the scenarios of the history of flight, aerial combat and the (then) global crisis regarding the Allies vs. the Axis powers.It does its job, entertaining when possible, affirming destruction and American/Allied dominance at critical points.During my most recent viewing of it, I found that it almost seemed to make the case for nuclear warfare. Not outright, mind you, but through its continued emphasis of how Allied airstrikes, because of their remote points of origin, can/could not possibly inflict enough damage to Axis supply lines to shut them down. The film and its military authority Major Seversky propose that long range bombers are the answer - after which a presumably innovative animated version of just such a long range bomber is shown on screen: its long, clumsy-looking, with several large gunwales pointing out all over the plane's body. After seeing that, i could only surmise that military officials of the 1940s saw the folly in trying to build bigger and better airships to do in the Axis. Instead, per the film's rhetoric, the more logical solution seems/seemed to be: "Forget about trying to send a volley of superplanes; instead, send only one plane - but design its cargo to deliver Armageddon!"

This film will change the way you look at cartoons. The power possessed by the cartoon to simplify and in this case "Disney-fy" the bloody politics of war, grows ever more chilling the more charming this cartoon gets. Victory Through Air Power is the crown jewel of this gem-laden Disney DVD called Disney Goes to War. I love it because it is such a simplified and clear teaching of the mid-WWII strategies intended by the powers employing Mr. Disney. Goebbels in the area of devastating propaganda, comes to mind while watching. America's fortunes could have been vastly different if Walt's talent's had been captured by the Nazis. See for yourself what a mix of emotions this film causes in you. To see that the same studio which produced Snow White and Bambi could so quickly and effectively recalibrate their drawing tables for War is spooky and makes you wonder what other messages lie hidden in the vast Disney canon.