1941 (film)

''1941'' is a 1979 American war comedy film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. The film stars an ensemble cast including Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Lee, Tim Matheson, Toshiro Mifune, Robert Stack, Nancy Allen, and Mickey Rourke in his film debut. The story involves a panic in the Los Angeles area after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Co-writer Gale stated the plot is loosely based on what has come to be known as the Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942, as well as the bombardment of the Ellwood oil refinery, near Santa Barbara, by a Japanese submarine. Many other events in the film were based on real incidents, including the Zoot Suit Riots and an incident in which the U.S. Army placed an anti-aircraft gun in a homeowner's yard on the Maine coast.

''1941'' received mixed reviews and was not as financially successful as many of Spielberg's other films, but was still a moderate box office success. It received belated popularity after an expanded version aired on ABC in the 1980s, with subsequent television broadcasts and home video reissues, raising it to cult status.

Plot

On Saturday, December 13, 1941, at 7:01 a.m. (six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor), an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine, commanded by Akiro Mitamura and carrying Kriegsmarine officer Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt, surfaces off the Californian coast. Wanting to destroy something "honorable", Mitamura decides to target Hollywood. Later that morning, a 10th Armored Division M3 Lee tank crew, consisting of Sergeant Frank Tree, Corporal Chuck Sitarski, and Privates Foley, Reese, and Henshaw, are having breakfast at Malcolmb's Café, where dishwasher Wally Stephens and his friend, fry cook Dennis DeSoto, work. Wally plans to enter a dance contest at the Crystal Ballroom that evening with his girlfriend, Betty Douglas. The extremely short-tempered Sitarski humiliatingly trips him, instigating a scuffle. Once the soldiers depart, the owner, Mr. Malcolmb, fires Wally and Dennis.

As United States Army Air Forces Captain Wild Bill Kelso chaotically searches for Japanese forces in his Curtiss P-40, Major General Joseph W. Stilwell holds a press conference at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, where his aide, Captain Loomis Birkhead, meets his old flame Donna Stratton, Stilwell's new secretary. Aware that she is sexually aroused by airplanes, Birkhead coaxes her into the cockpit of a B-17 bomber and unsuccessfully attempts to seduce her; he accidentally releases a bomb, which collides with the grandstand and explodes, though Stilwell and the crowd escape unhurt.

At the Santa Monica oceanside home of Ward and Joan Douglas, Betty and her friend Maxine Dexheimer, who have just become USO hostesses, tell Wally that servicemen are now the only male patrons allowed in the Ballroom. As Wally hides in the garage from Ward, Sgt. Tree arrives with his team and orders an anti-aircraft battery to be installed in the Douglas's front yard. Sitarski hits on Betty and Wally falls from the loft where he was hiding. Tree's crew, including Sitarski, eject Wally from the premises into a passing garbage truck.

Meanwhile, as the Japanese submarine has suffered from a malfunctioning compass, a landing party goes ashore and captures lumberjack and Christmas tree salesman Hollis "Holly" Wood. Back aboard the sub, the crew discovers a small toy compass in Wood's box of caramel-popcorn, which he swallows. After forced to drink prune juice in order to pass the compass, Wood manages to cause chaos on the sub and successfully escapes.

Ward's neighbor, Angelo Scioli of the Ground Observer Corps, installs his friends Claude Crumm and Herb Kaziminsky (and Herb's ventriloquist dummy) in the Ferris wheel at the Ocean Front Amusement Park to scout for enemy aircraft. While General Stilwell attends a screening of Dumbo at a theater in Hollywood, Birkhead determinedly drives Donna to the 501st Bomb Disbursement Unit in Barstow, where the mentally unstable Colonel "Mad Man" Maddox lends them a plane. Finally aroused, Donna begins to ravish Birkhead during the flight.

At the Crystal Ballroom, Sitarski drags Betty into the USO dance, but a disguised Wally sneaks in and reunites with her and they win the Jitterbug contest. An enraged Sitarski punches him out, igniting a brawl between soldiers, sailors and zoot suiters. Tree and his team breakup the melee, just before anti-aircraft batteries open fire on the unarmed plane carrying Birkhead and Donna. Kelso pursues and downs it, causing it to crash into the La Brea Tar Pits. Claude and Herb then mistake Kelso's passing P-40 Tomahawk for a Japanese Zero and shoot it down; crashlanding on Hollywood Boulevard, Kelso informs Stilwell about the Japanese submarine he spotted off the pier near the amusement park. Wally assumes command of the tank once Tree is accidentally incapacitated, and rescues Betty from Sitarski before heading for the pier with Dennis and the tankers, followed by Kelso, Sitarski and Maxine, on a motorcycle.

In Santa Monica, Ward locates and begins firing at the surfaced submarine, consequently wrecking his whole house. The submarine retaliatorily strikes the Ferris wheel, which rolls off the pier and into the ocean. When Kleinschmidt attempts a forced early retreat, Mitamura throws him overboard. The tank arrives and then sinks when the submarine torpedoes the pier. Kelso jumps off and swims to the submarine, where he is captured by the Japanese. Deeming the mission an honorable success, Mitamura departs. The next morning, Stilwell arrives with soldiers at the damaged Douglas residence, where the other protagonists have gathered. Ward symbolically nails a Christmas wreath to his front door, causing the remains of his unstable house to collapse down the hillside. Stilwell, observing the disheveled crowd arguing and fighting, informs Sgt. Tree, "It's going to be a long war."

Cast

Production

According to Steven Spielberg's appearance in the documentary '' Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures'', Kubrick suggested that ''1941'' should have been marketed as a drama rather than a comedy. The chaos of the events following the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 is summarized by Dan Aykroyd's character, Sgt. Tree, who repeatedly states, 'If there's one thing I can't stand seeing, it's Americans fighting Americans."

Robert Zemeckis originally pitched the concept to John Milius as a serious depiction of the real-life 1942 Japanese bombardment of Ellwood, California; the subsequent false alarm of a Japanese air raid on Los Angeles; and the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, titled ''The Night the Japs Attacked''. After development of the film transferred from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to Universal Pictures, executives insisted that the title be changed to ''Rising Sun'' to avoid the use of the derogatory term "Jap." The story became a comedy after Steven Spielberg became involved as director, and the script was rewritten during the production of ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' in 1977. The characters of Claude Crumm and Herb Kaziminsky were originally written with ''The Honeymooners'' co-stars Jackie Gleason and Art Carney in mind. Hollis P. "Holly" Wood and "Wild Bill" Kelso were originally minor characters before Belushi and Pickens were cast.

''1941'' is also notable as one of the few American films featuring popular Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. It is also the only American film in which Mifune used his own voice in speaking Japanese and English. In his previous movies, Mifune's lines were dubbed in English by Paul Frees.

John Wayne, Charlton Heston, and James Stewart were originally offered the role of Major General Joseph Stilwell, with Wayne still considered for a cameo in the film. After reading the script, Wayne decided not to participate due to ill health, but also urged Spielberg not to pursue the project, as both he and Heston felt the film was unpatriotic. Spielberg recalled, " aynewas really curious and so I sent him the script. He called me the next day and said he felt it was a very un-American movie, and I shouldn't waste my time making it. He said, 'You know, that was an important war, and you're making fun of a war that cost thousands of lives at Pearl Harbor. Don't joke about World War II'.""John Wayne - John Wayne Urged Steven Spielberg Not To Make War Comedy."
''contactmusic.com. '' 2 December 2011. Retrieved: December 2, 2011. Initially Spielberg wanted Hollywood agent Meyer Mishkin to portray himself, but had to cast Iggie Wolfington because of Screen Actors Guild regulations barring film agents from working as actors.

Susan Backlinie, the first victim in Spielberg's '' Jaws'', appeared as the woman seen swimming nude at the beginning of the film. The gas station that Wild Bill Kelso accidentally blows up early in the film is the same one seen in Spielberg's 1971 TV film, ''Duel'', with Lucille Benson appearing as the proprietor in both films. Inadvertent comedic effects ensued when John Belushi, in character as Captain Wild Bill Kelso, unintentionally fell off the wing of his airplane and landed on his head in the scene where Kelso encounters Col. Maddox
and his men. It was a real accident and Belushi was hospitalized for several days, but Spielberg left the shot in the movie as it fit Kelso's eccentric character.

During the USO riot scene, when a military police officer is tossed into the window of a restaurant from the ladder of a fire engine, Belushi is seen eating spaghetti, in makeup to resemble Marlon Brando in ''The Godfather'', whom he famously parodied in a sketch on ''Saturday Night Live''. Belushi told Spielberg he wanted to appear as a second character and the idea struck Spielberg as humorous. At the beginning of the USO riot, one of the uncredited "extras" dressed as a sailor is actor James Caan. Mickey Rourke makes his first screen appearance in the film as Private First Class Reese of Sgt. Tree's tank group.

The M3 tank ''Lulu Belle'' (named after a race horse) and fashioned from a mocked-up tractor, paid homage to its forebear in Humphrey Bogart's 1943 movie ''Sahara'' where an authentic M3 named ''Lulubelle'' was prominently featured.

Renowned modelmaker Greg Jein (best known for his work in the ''Star Trek'' franchise) received his second Academy Award for Best Visual Effects nomination for his work on the film; he would later use the hull number "NCC-1941" for the starship USS ''Bozeman'' in the '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'' episode "Cause and Effect". Paul De Rolf choreographed the film.

''1941'' is dedicated to the memory of Charlsie Bryant, a longtime script supervisor at Universal Studios. She had worked on both ''Jaws'' and ''Close Encounters'', and would have reprised those duties with this film had she not unexpectedly died.

Special effects

The Oscar-winning team of L. B. Abbott and A. D. Flowers were in charge of the special effects on ''1941''. The film is widely recognized for its Academy Award-nominated special-effects laden progressive action and camera sequences.

Trailer

The advance teaser trailer for ''1941'', directed by the film's executive producer/co-story writer John Milius, featured narration by Aykroyd as Belushi's character Kelso (here erroneously named "Wild Wayne" and not "Wild Bill"), after landing his plane, gives the viewers a pep-talk encouraging them to join the United States Armed Forces, lest they find one morning that the country has been taken over (for instance, "the street signs will be written in Japanese!").. Retrieved: October 10, 2012.

Music

The musical score for ''1941'' was composed and conducted by John Williams and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony. The titular march is used throughout the film and is perhaps the most memorable piece written for it. (Spielberg has said it is his favorite Williams march.) The score also includes a swing composition titled "Swing, Swing, Swing" composed by Williams. In addition, the score includes a sound-alike version of Glenn Miller's "In the Mood", and two original 1940s recordings by The Andrews Sisters, "Daddy" and "Down by the Ohio". The Irish tune " The Rakes of Mallow", is heard during the riot at the USO.

The LaserDisc and DVD versions of the film have isolated music channels with additional cues not heard on the first soundtrack album.

The ''1941'' soundtrack album was originally released in 1979 by Arista Records.
In 2011, La-La Land Records, in conjunction with Sony Music and NBCUniversal, issued an expanded 2-CD soundtrack of the complete John Williams score as recorded for the film, plus never-before-heard alternative cues, source music, and a remastered version of the original album. Disc One, containing the film score, presents the music as Williams originally conceived based on early cuts of the movie.

Release

The film was previewed at approximately two and a half hours, but Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures, which both had a major financial investment, felt it was too long to be a blockbuster. The initial theatrical release was edited down to just under two hours, against Spielberg's wishes. Additionally, after a preview screening to investors in Dallas received negative reviews, the release of the film was delayed by a month to allow Spielberg to reedit the first 45 minutes of the film.

The film premiered at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood on December 13, 1979, before opening to the public the following day.

Home media

After the success of his 1980 "Special Edition" of ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'', Spielberg was given permission to create his own "extended cut" of ''1941'' to represent his original director's cut. This was done for network television (it was only shown on ABC once, but it was seen years later on The Disney Channel). It was first released on VHS and Betamax in 1980 from MCA Videocassette Inc. and from MCA Home Video in 1986 and 1990. A similar extended version (with additional footage and a few subtle changes) was released on LaserDisc in 1995. It included a 101-minute documentary featuring interviews with Spielberg, executive producer John Milius, writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, editor Michael Kahn, composer John Williams and others involved. This set also included an isolated music score, three theatrical trailers, deleted scenes, photo galleries, and reviews of the movie.

This cut was later released on VHS in 1998, and later on DVD in 1999 and was rereleased on DVD again in May 2002. The DVD includes all features from the 1995 Laserdisc Set. It was released again on DVD in 2000 in a John Belushi box set along with the collector's editions of ''Animal House'' and ''The Blues Brothers''.

On October 14, 2014, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released ''1941'' on Blu-ray as part of their Steven Spielberg's Director's Collection box set. The disc features both the theatrical (118 minutes) and extended version (146 minutes) of the film, a documentary of the making of the film, production photographs (carried over from the LaserDisc collector's edition), and theatrical trailers, although the isolated score that was included on the Laserdisc and DVD releases is not present on the Blu-ray. The standalone Blu-ray version was released on May 5, 2015.

Comics adaptation

'' Heavy Metal'' and Arrow Books produced a magazine-sized comics tie-in to the film, by Allen Asherman, Stephen R. Bissette, and Rick Veitch, which rather than being a straight adaptation, varies wildly and humorously from the film. Spielberg wrote the book's introduction.

Reception

Box office

During its theatrical run, ''1941'' earned $23.4 million in theatrical rentals from the United States and Canada. Because ''1941'' grossed significantly less than ''Jaws'' and ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'', the film has been erroneously thought to be a box office disaster, but in actuality, ''1941'' grossed $90 million worldwide and returned a profit, making it a success.

Critical reaction

Gene Siskel of the ''Chicago Tribune'' gave the film two and a half out of four stars and applauded the film's visual effects, but stated " ere is so much flab here, including endless fistfights and huge dance production numbers that become meaningless after a few minutes." In his review for ''The New York Times'', Vincent Canby wrote "There are too many characters who aren't immediately comic. There are too many simultaneous actions that necessitate a lot of cross-cutting, and cross-cutting between unrelated anecdotes can kill a laugh faster than a yawn. Everything is too big...The slapstick gags, obviously choreographed with extreme care, do not build to boffs; they simply go on too long. I'm not sure if it's the fault of the director or of the editor, but I've seldom seen a comedy more ineptly timed." Similarly, ''Variety'' labeled the movie as "long on spectacle, but short on comedy," further stating that "''1941'' suffers from Spielberg's infatuation with physical comedy, even when the gags involve tanks, planes and submarines, rather than the usual stuff of screen hijinks. Pic is so overstuffed with visual humor of a rather monstrous nature that feeling emerges, once you've seen 10 explosions, you've seen them all."

Roger Ebert of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' gave the film one and a half stars out of four, writing that the film "feels forced together chaotically, as if the editors wanted to keep the material moving at any cost. The movie finally reduces itself to an assault on our eyes and ears, a nonstop series of climaxes, screams, explosions, double-takes, sight gags, and ethnic jokes that's finally just not very funny." He labeled the film's central problem as having been "never thought through on a basic level of character and story." Charles Champlin, reviewing for the ''Los Angeles Times'', commented "If ''1941'' is angering (and you may well suspect that it is), it is because the film seems merely an expensive indulgence, begat by those who know how to say it, if only they had something to say." Dave Kehr of ''The Chicago Reader'' called it "a chattering wind-up toy of a movie hatblows its spring early on. The characters are so crudely drawn that the film seems to have no human base whatsoever...the people in it are unremittingly foolish, and the physical comedy quickly degenerates into childish destructiveness."

Years later, the film would be re-appraised by critics like Richard Brody of ''The New Yorker'', who claimed it was "the movie in which pielbergcame nearest to cutting loose" and "the only movie where he tried to go past where he knew he could...its failure, combined with his need for success, inhibited him maybe definitively." Jonathan Rosenbaum of ''The Chicago Reader'' would hail ''1941'' as Spielberg's best film until 2001's ''A.I. Artificial Intelligence'', writing that he was impressed by the virtuosity of ''1941'' and argued that its "honest mean-spiritedness and teenage irreverence" struck him as "closer to Spielberg's soul" than more popular and celebrated works like ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' and ''The Color Purple, director Stanley Kubrick allegedly told Spielberg that ''1941'' was "great, but not funny." Spielberg joked at one point that he considered converting ''1941'' into a musical halfway into production and mused that "in retrospect, that might have helped."Bonham and Kay 1979 In a 1990 interview with British film pundit Barry Norman, Spielberg admitted that the mixed reception to ''1941'' was one of the biggest lessons of his career, citing personal arrogance that had gotten in the way after the runaway success of '' Jaws'' and ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind''. He also regretted not ceding control of ''1941''s action and miniature sequences (such as the Ferris wheel collapse in the film's finale) to second unit directors and model units, something which he would do in his next film, ''Raiders of the Lost Ark''. He also said "Some people think that was an out-of-control production, but it wasn't. What happened on the screen was pretty out of control, but the production was pretty much in control. I don't dislike the movie at all. I'm not embarrassed by it — I just think that it wasn't funny enough."

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 39%, based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10. The critical consensus reads, "Steven Spielberg's attempt at screwball comedy collapses under a glut of ideas, confusing an unwieldy scope for a commensurate amount of guffaws." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 34 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Accolades

The film received three nominations at the 1980 Academy Awards.

American Film Institute nominated the film in AFI's 100 Years...Laughs.

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

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{{DEFAULTSORT:1941
1979 films
1979 action comedy films
1970s Christmas comedy films
1970s screwball comedy films
1970s war comedy films
American action comedy films
American Christmas comedy films
American screwball comedy films
American World War II films
Columbia Pictures films
1970s English-language films
Films scored by John Williams
Films directed by Steven Spielberg
Puppet films
Films set in 1941
Films set in Los Angeles
Films set on the United States home front during World War II
Films shot in Oregon
Pacific War films
Pearl Harbor films
Films with screenplays by Robert Zemeckis
Films with screenplays by Bob Gale
American slapstick comedy films
Universal Pictures films
Films adapted into comics
Japan in non-Japanese culture
Films produced by Buzz Feitshans
1970s American films
English-language action comedy films
English-language war comedy films
English-language Christmas comedy films