HOLLYWOOD FILMS

Ludlow to Lubitsch

In 1914, one of the most influential, though tragic, incidents in United States labor history occurred in Ludlow, near Trinidad, Colorado. The coal miners of Colorado Fuel & Iron Company demanded raise and improvement in working conditions. They made a list of seven demands and went into strike in 1913. The Rockefellers, the owner family of the company, simply ignored the worker’s demand, brought in the detective agency to intimidate and terrorize the strikers. In the following April, the Colorado National Guard was brought in and the strike ended in violence. More than twenty people including 10 children were killed. …

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JAPANESE FILMS

Sound of War (Part 5)

Though the sound recording and reproduction technologies had improved in the Allied countries by 1940, Japanese movie industry miserably lagged behind on all counts. Sadly, the engineers and technicians had to live with it, knowing their technologies were utterly out of date. Propaganda filmmaking demanded not-so-ideal conditions not only in terms of subject matters, but also in terms of actual filming itself. One of the most demanding projects was aviation filmmaking.

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UK FILMS

Sound of War (Part 4)

William Walton composed the impressive Elgerian music for “The First of the Few (1942, U.K.)“. Leslie Howard directed and starred in the film, as (somewhat fabricated) R. J. Mitchell, the creator of Supermarine Spitfire, one of the most resilient fighter planes during WWII. The engine sound in the film is so realistic that you could almost feel the hot exhaust from the nozzles.

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