The Dirty Dozen

Last night, a close friend of mine, who was brought up in East Germany, came round for dinner, and we ended up watching The Dirty Dozen, for some reason. This may sound insensitive on our part, but we always joke about the war, to the point where even I'm totally bored of it. It was interesting to watch it with a Kraut, not least because he was able to tell me which German-speaking characters were actually German. I get the feeling he was less than impressed by the semi-propoganda, American chest-beating on show.

The Dirty Dozen was one of those films which was very popular when I was growing up in the 70s. It had that classic war film status and took turns with The Great Escape as the safe bet for Christmas TV schedulers.

I never liked it. Don't know why, but somehow it left me cold. And, as a pre-teen boy who collected toy soldiers and loved his Action Man (with gripping hands!), I loved war movies. As a side note: my mother made knitwear for a living. Once I'd learnt to use her knitting machine, I made my Action Man trendy pure-wool pullovers. I even started a small business selling them alongside my mother's stuff at Camden Market - strangely, my sweaters were only bought by young, female, Sindy Doll owners. Don't know why...

Watching it now, The Dirty Dozen seems confused. On the one had, it has a macho and jovial attitude to war. But this is mixed, uncomfortably I think, with a determination to show grim reality. I don't mind them "showing it like it is". It's just they weren't. Our heros are anti-heros, who, as murderers, religious psychos, and open rascists, become the cliched, romantasized heros and the German army is shown, typically, as being made up of the usual, dim-witted cannon-fodder, typical of pre-70s war movies.

What interests me, though, is how unrealistic war movies were for the 20 or so years after the event. They were almost always one-sided accounts. Why? Surely the most accurate representation of World War 2 would be found being produced during and immediately after the war, as people's memories were freshest.

Not so. The war movies of the 40, 50s and 60s reflected how people who had lived through, and often fought in, the war wanted to view the war. They wanted to be told they were right to fight, to kill and/or to sacrifice their loved ones. They wanted to be told the German army (you rarely see the people) was made up of unsympathetic characatures, as depicted in war-time propoganda.

This is why, when you are looking back in history, you have to remember the people closest to the action are most likely to be prejudiced in its retelling. The Dirty Dozen, to me, is a reflection of it's audiences' increasing confusion. Made in 1967, the idea that "the war was good" is beginning to fade, eventually to be replaced by the reality that "all war is grim".

If the Jewish people in 1st century Plalestine were involved in a violent rebellion, they would want to be told they'd done it for good reason. One thing that hasn't changed over the centuries: story tellers always try tell stories their audience want to hear.