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Midway (1976 film)

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Midway
Original theatrical release poster
Directed byJack Smight
Written byDonald S. Sanford
Produced byWalter Mirisch
Starring
CinematographyHarry Stradling Jr.
Edited by
Music byJohn Williams
Production
company
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release date
  • June 18, 1976 (1976-06-18) (United States)
Running time
131 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$4 million
Box office$43 million

Midway, released in the United Kingdom as Battle of Midway, is a 1976 American war film that chronicles the Battle of Midway, a turning point in the Pacific Theater of Operations of World War II. Directed by Jack Smight and produced by Walter Mirisch from a screenplay by Donald S. Sanford,[2][3] the film starred Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda, supported by a large international cast of guest stars including James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Ed Nelson, Hal Holbrook, Robert Webber, Toshiro Mifune, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, Pat Morita, Dabney Coleman, Erik Estrada and Tom Selleck.

The film was made using Technicolor, and its soundtrack used Sensurround to augment the physical sensation of engine noise, explosions, crashes and gunfire. Despite mixed reviews, particularly involving the use of stock footage and an unnecessary romance between an American and Japanese couple, the music score by John Williams and the cinematography by Harry Stradling Jr. were highly regarded,[by whom?] and Midway became the tenth most popular movie at the box office in 1976.

Plot

On April 18, 1942, a squadron of B-25 bombers from the USS Hornet launches a raid on Tokyo. The strike stuns the Imperial Japanese Navy and its commander Admiral Yamamoto. With hard evidence of the threat posed to the Japanese home islands by the carriers of the American Pacific Fleet, Yamamoto is permitted to use his plan to invade Midway Island. At Pearl Harbor, Captain Matt Garth is tasked with gauging the progress of decryption efforts at Station HYPO, headed by Commander Joseph Rochefort, which has partially cracked the Japanese Navy's JN-25 code, revealing that a major operation will soon take place at a location the Japanese refer to as "AF". Garth is asked by his son, naval aviator Ensign Tom Garth, to help free his girlfriend Haruko Sakura, an American-born daughter of Japanese immigrants, who has been interned with her parents, by calling in favors to have the charges against the family dropped. Yamamoto and his staff present their plans for Midway to the commanders who have been chosen to lead the attack, Admirals Nagumo and Yamaguchi of the Japanese carrier force and Admiral Kondo of the invasion force.

After the inconclusive Battle of the Coral Sea, Rochefort uses a simple ruse to confirm that "AF" is Midway. Knowing the location of the attack, Admiral Nimitz and his staff send the carriers USS Enterprise and USS Hornet, augmented by USS Yorktown, hastily-repaired after being damaged at Coral Sea, to a point north of Midway and lie in wait for the Japanese fleet. Meanwhile, Matt has been unsuccessful in freeing the Sakuras, infuriating Tom.

On June 4, the Japanese fleet is spotted by scouts; the American carriers launch their planes in response. Nagumo's carrier force launches its air attack on Midway Island. The American base is damaged but the airstrip remains usable, meaning Midway can still launch aircraft. Nagumo learns of a sighting by a scout plane of the Yorktown, disrupting his plans for a second strike on Midway; he orders that his planes be rapidly re-armed with torpedoes for an attack on the American carrier. Torpedo bombers from Hornet are the first American planes to locate the Japanese fleet. They attack without fighter protection and are destroyed by the Japanese Combat Air Patrol. Admiral Chūichi Nagumo commends the American pilots' bravery and remarks, "They sacrifice themselves like samurai, these Americans." Tom is severely burned when gunfire starts a fire in his cockpit. The Japanese fighters are drawn down to wave-top altitude by the low-flying torpedo planes, leaving them out of position when dive-bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown arrive. As the Japanese are preparing to launch their second wave, the American bombers attack and reduce three of the Japanese carriers – Akagi, Kaga and Sōryū – to burning wrecks within minutes. When the Akagi is bombed, Nagumo suffers a concussion. As he is tended by Genda, the captain asks, "Admiral, you must transfer your flag. The cruiser Nagara is close by." Nagumo, disheartened, says "Advise Admiral Yamaguchi."

Yamaguchi, aboard the remaining Japanese carrier Hiryū immediately launches aircraft. Following the returning American bombers, they soon discover Yorktown and inflict severe damage. The crew manages to bring the fires under control as a scout plane reports that Hiryū has been spotted. Below decks, Matt meets Tom and reconciles with him. Due to a shortage of pilots, Matt joins the counterattack against Hiryū just before its second wave of aircraft strikes. Yorktown is crippled and the order is given to abandon ship. Hiryū is heavily damaged, and Yamamoto, during a general withdrawal, takes responsibility of apologising for the failure to the Emperor. American planes return to Enterprise and Hornet but Matt, his plane badly damaged, is killed during landing. As Enterprise docks at Pearl Harbor, the injured younger Garth is carried off the ship, seen by Haruko, as Nimitz reflects that Yamamoto "had everything going for him", asking "were we better than the Japanese, or just luckier?"

Cast

Allies

Actor Role Notes
Charlton Heston Captain Matthew Garth
Henry Fonda Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Henry Fonda had played an unnamed admiral (based on Admiral Nimitz) in the 1965 film In Harm's Way.
James Coburn Captain Vinton Maddox
Glenn Ford Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance
Hal Holbrook Commander Joseph Rochefort
Robert Mitchum Vice Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey Jr.
Cliff Robertson Commander Carl Jessop
Robert Wagner Lieutenant Commander Ernest L. Blake
Robert Webber Rear Admiral Frank J. Fletcher
Ed Nelson Rear Admiral Harry Pearson
Monte Markham Commander Max Leslie
Biff McGuire Captain Miles Browning
Christopher George Lieutenant Commander C. Wade McClusky
Kevin Dobson Ensign George H. Gay Jr.
Glenn Corbett Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron
Gregory Walcott Captain Elliott Buckmaster
Edward Albert Lieutenant Thomas Garth
Dabney Coleman Captain Murray Arnold
Erik Estrada Ensign Ramos "Chili Bean"
Larry Pennell Captain Cyril Simard
Phillip R. Allen Lieutenant Commander John S. "Jimmy" Thach
Tom Selleck Aide to Capt. Cyril Simard
Kurt Grayson Major Floyd "Red" Parks
Steve Kanaly Lieutenant Commander Lance E. Massey

Japanese

Actor Role Notes
Toshiro Mifune Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (voiced by uncredited actor Paul Frees)
James Shigeta Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo
Pat Morita Rear Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka
John Fujioka Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi
Dale Ishimoto Vice Admiral Boshirō Hosogaya
Clyde Kusatsu Commander Yasuji Watanabe
Sab Shimono Lieutenant Jōichi Tomonaga
Conrad Yama Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondō
Robert Ito Commander Minoru Genda
Seth Sakai Captain Kameto Kuroshima
Lloyd Kino Captain Takijirō Aoki
Yuki Shimoda Captain Tomeo Kaku

Civilians

Actor Role Notes
Christina Kokubo Haruko Sakura

Production

Development

John Guillermin was reportedly hired to direct but was replaced by Jack Smight before filming began.[4] Naval aviator Lieutenant Richard "Dick" Best and Joseph Rochefort served as consultants; George Gay, the only survivor of Torpedo Squadron 8, visited during filming.[5][6]

Filming

Nine members of the cast pose with a Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter on the flight deck of USS Lexington

Midway was shot at the Terminal Island Naval Base, Los Angeles, California, the U.S. Naval Station, Long Beach, California, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida and San Diego, California.[7] The on-board scenes were filmed in the Gulf of Mexico aboard USS Lexington. Lexington, an Essex-class aircraft carrier, was the last World War II-era carrier left in service at that point, although the ship was completed after the battle. She is now a museum ship at Corpus Christi, Texas. Scenes depicting Midway Island were filmed at Point Mugu, California. "Point Mugu has sand dunes, just like Midway. We built an airstrip, a tower, some barricades, things like that," said Jack Smight. "We did a lot of strafing and bombing there."[8] A Consolidated PBY-6A Catalina BuNo 63998, N16KL, of the Commemorative Air Force, was used in depicting all the search and rescue mission scenes.

Sound

The film was the second of only four films released with a Sensurround sound mix which required special speakers to be installed in movie theatres. The other Sensurround films were Earthquake (1974), Rollercoaster (1977), and Battlestar Galactica (1978). The regular soundtrack (dialog, background and music) was monaural; a second optical track was devoted to low frequency rumble added to battle scenes and when characters were near unmuffled military engines.

Action

Many of the action sequences used footage from earlier films: most sequences of the Japanese air raids on Midway are stock shots from 20th Century Fox's Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Some scenes are from the Japanese Toho film Hawai Middouei daikaikusen: Taiheiyo no arashi (1960) (which also stars Mifune). Several action scenes, including the one where a Mitsubishi A6M Zero slams into Yorktown's bridge, were taken from Away All Boats (1956); scenes of Doolittle's Tokyo raid at the beginning of the film are from Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). In addition, most dogfight sequences come from wartime gun camera footage or from the film Battle of Britain (1969).

Cast member Henry Fonda (Admiral Nimitz) had been one of the narrators of the 1942 John Ford documentary The Battle of Midway, some footage from which was used in the 1976 film. This was the third film dealing with the aftermath of Pearl Harbor with which Henry Fonda had been involved. Fonda first narrated the 1942 film The Battle of Midway and starred in the 1965 film In Harm's Way. The only actress with a speaking part in the original film was Christina Kokubo as Haruko. In the TV version of the film Susan Sullivan appears playing Matt Garth's girlfriend. Later video versions dropped Sullivan to emphasize the essentially all-male cast and wartime action.

Japanese carrier hit by US bombs (for this scene, Midway editors used stock footage from the Japanese movie Storm Over the Pacific (太平洋の嵐 Taiheiyo no arashi), 1960).

As with many "carrier films" produced around this time, the US Navy Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Lexington played the part of both American and Japanese flattops for shipboard scenes.

Television version

Shortly after its successful theatrical debut, additional material was assembled and shot in standard 4:3 ratio for a TV version of the film, which aired on NBC.[9][10] Although having nothing to do with the plot, a character was added: Susan Sullivan played Ann, the girlfriend of Captain Garth, adding depth to his reason for previously divorcing Ensign Garth's mother, and bringing further emotional impact to the fate of Captain Garth. Ann is seen in the final scene as Hornet docks at Pearl Harbor.

The TV version also has Coral Sea battle scenes to help the plot build up to the decisive engagement at Midway.[11] The TV version was 45 minutes longer than the theatrical film and aired over two nights. Mitchell Ryan was added as Rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch. The TV version restored a cut from the theatrical release that clarifies that Garth suffered a hand injury at Pearl Harbor that's kept him out of flying action up to this point, and this has big ramifications for his death.

The Coral Sea sequences added new footage aboard the USS Lexington, which was sunk at Coral Sea with Mitchell Ryan called in to play the Lexington task force commander.

James Shigeta as Nagumo also had new scenes involving Takeo Koda, a Japanese pilot (played by Jim Ishida) he meets before Coral Sea, to whom he expresses doubts that Japan is fighting a war. Koda gets killed in the battle, and later, prior to the Midway battle, a new TV scene shows Nagumo ruminating on Koda to Genda.

Jack Smight directed the additional scenes.[9]

The end credits of the TV version use the song, "Men of The Yorktown March" (which is more prominent in the film's underscore), instead of the "Midway March".[12]

In June 1992, a re-edit of the extended version, shortened to fill a three-hour time slot, aired on the CBS network to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Midway battle. This version brought in successful ratings.[9]

Part of this additional footage is available as a bonus feature on the Universal Pictures Home Entertainment DVD of Midway. The full version was finally given a dual-format release by Powerhouse Films in 2021.[13]

Reception

Box office

Midway proved extremely popular with movie audiences, and opened at number one at the US box office with an opening weekend gross of $4,356,666 from 311 theatres.[14][15] It went on to gross over $43 million at the box office, becoming the tenth most popular movie of 1976 with theatrical rentals of $20,300,000.[16]

Critical response

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "The movie can be experienced as pure spectacle, I suppose, if we give up all hopes of making sense of it. Bombs explode and planes crash and the theater shakes with the magic of Sensurround. But there's no real directorial intelligence at hand to weave the special effects into the story, to clarify the outlines of the battle and to convincingly account for the unexpected American victory."[17] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that "the movie blows up harmlessly in a confusion of familiar old newsreel footage, idiotic fiction war movie clichés, and a series of wooden-faced performances by almost a dozen male stars, some of whom appear so briefly that it's like taking a World War II aircraft-identification test."[18] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety thought that the film "emerges more as a passingly exciting theme-park extravaganza than a quality motion picture action-adventure story ... Donald S. Sanford's cluttered script, while striving for the long-ago personal element, gets overwhelmed by its action effects."[19] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that "[t]he battle scenes run hot and cold." He praised Henry Fonda as "absolutely convincing" but stated that Sanford "deserves a year in the brig for inserting amid the battle scenes a stupid subplot involving a young American sailor in love with a Japanese-American girl."[20] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it a "tired combat epic" and wrote, "Hollywood may mean well, or imagine it does, but it's a little appalling to think that authentic acts of bravery and sacrifice have become the pretext for such feeble, inadequate dramatization. There is no serious attempt in 'Midway' to characterize the young men who fought on either side of this pivotal battle."[21] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times was mixed, describing it as "a disaster film whose disaster is war," with its principal strength being that it "keeps the lines of battle both straight and suspenseful in the viewer's mind." He too faulted the romance subplot as "hokey even beyond the demands of the form."[22] Janet Maslin panned the film in Newsweek, stating that it "never quite decides whether war is hell, good clean fun, or merely another existential dilemma. This drab extravaganza toys with so many conflicting attitudes that it winds up reducing the pivotal World War II battle in the Pacific to utter nonsense."[23]

Robert Niemi, author of History in the Media: Film and Television, stated that Midway's "clichéd dialogue" and an overuse of stock footage led the film to have a "shopworn quality that signalled the end of the heroic era of American-made World War II epics." He described the film as a "final, anachronistic attempt to recapture World War II glories in a radically altered geopolitical era, when the old good-versus-evil dichotomies no longer made sense."[24]

On the amateur online review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 41% score based on merely 17 amateur opinions, with an average rating of 5.9/10.[25]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

Historical accuracy

More flag officers took part at the decision making and planning before the battle, not just Nimitz, Fletcher and Spruance. All the same, commanding officers' staffs were generally bigger than the one or two men portrayed in the movie. Admiral Ernest King, commander-in-chief of the navy, approved the Midway battle plan propounded by Nimitz. They were regularly in contact, so there was no need of sending fictional Capt. Vinton Maddox to consult Nimitz. There were numerous air attacks by Midway-based bombers on approaching Japanese fleets omitted by the script; these had the same effect as later carrier-based torpedo bombers destroyed by Japanese fleet air-defenses portrayed in the movie. The failure of the initial raids by land-based bombers only convinced Japanese commanders of their own invincibility and incompetency of the US military.[27]

During the American torpedo attacks, Admiral Nagumo remarks on the American pilots' bravery, "They sacrifice themselves like samurai, these Americans." Similar to Isoroku Yamamoto's sleeping giant quote from the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, there is no evidence that Nagumo made this statement. When the Akagi is bombed, Nagumo suffers a concussion, and is tended to by Genda. In reality, according to accounts, Nagumo stood near the ship's compass looking out at the flames on his flagship and two other carriers in a state of shock. Nagumo's chief of staff, Rear Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka, was able to persuade him to leave the critically damaged Akagi. Nagumo, with a barely perceptible nod and tears in his eyes, agreed to go.[28]

The film omits that the Japanese destroyer Arashi that inadvertently guided US dive bombers to the carriers had attacked U.S. submarine Nautilus, which had tried to attack the battleship Kirishima.

Later studies by Japanese and American military historians call into question key scenes, such as the dive-bombing attack that crippled the first three Japanese carriers. In the movie, American pilots jubilantly report that there are no fighters and the carrier decks are loaded with ammunition. As Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully write in Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (2005), aerial photography from the battle showed nearly empty decks. Japanese carriers loaded armament onto planes below the flight deck, unlike American carriers (as depicted earlier in the film). The fact that a closed hangar full of armaments was hit by bombs made damage to Akagi more devastating than if planes, torpedoes and bombs were on an open deck.[29] During the attack on the Japanese carriers, an American pilot reports, "Scratch one flat top!" This is a famous radio transmission but it was made a month earlier during the Battle of the Coral Sea by Lieutenant Commander Robert E. Dixon after his dive bomber squadron sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Shōhō.[30]

While most characters are real people, some are fictional though inspired by actual people. Captain Matt Garth and his son, Ensign Thomas Garth, are fictional. Garth's contribution to planning the battle is based loosely on actual work of Lieutenant-Commander Edwin Layton.[31] Layton served as Pacific fleet intelligence officer, spoke Japanese and was key to transposing raw outputs of cryptography analysis into meaningful intelligence for Nimitz and his staff.[citation needed] Layton was an old friend of Joseph Rochefort.[citation needed] Matt Garth's further exploits were pure fiction and resembled deeds of at least two more persons: first, an intelligence officer on Fletcher's Task Force 17 staff, and then the leader of the last attack made by dive bombers from USS Yorktown. The latter was actually performed by VB-3 dive bomber squadron led by LCDR Maxwell Leslie.

Historical footage and atelier shots of warplanes action are mostly inaccurate in the movie. Most of the original footage portrays later and/or different events and thus planes and ships that were not operational during the battle or did not take part. Among the first aircraft shown taking off to defend Midway are two Army P-40 Warhawks. There were no P-40s stationed at Midway, only Marine F4F Wildcats and F2A-3 Buffalos. In the second air attack on Yorktown, the movie shows two Japanese planes crashing into the aircraft carrier. There were no plane crashes into ships in this battle. In addition, Yorktown was damaged beyond saving by Japanese torpedoes fired from a submarine which had penetrated the destroyer screen rather than the air attack seen in the film. This attack also sank a nearby destroyer, USS Hammann, which exploded, sending more than 100 men into the sea and sinking in just four minutes. One of the most flagrant moments is Garth's collision at the very end of the movie, which is followed by the recording of a Grumman F9F Panther jet plane crash which actually occurred on USS Midway in 1951. Like the USS Lexington used in filming, USS Midway is also preserved as a museum.

See also

References

  1. ^ "MIDWAY (A)". British Board of Film Classification. April 23, 1976. Archived from the original on March 13, 2016. Retrieved March 12, 2016.
  2. ^ Variety film review; June 16, 1976, page 18.
  3. ^ Harrison, Alexa (February 15, 2011). "'Midway' writer Donald S. Sanford dies at 92". Variety. United States: Variety Media, LLC. (Penske Media Corporation). Archived from the original on April 12, 2020. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  4. ^ John Guillermin Pollock, David. The Scotsman; Edinburgh (UK) [Edinburgh (UK)]03 Oct 2015: 34.
  5. ^ "AFI|Catalog". catalog.afi.com. Retrieved June 19, 2023.
  6. ^ "George H. Gay, 77, Was Sole Survivor of Midway Attack". The New York Times. October 24, 1994.
  7. ^ (1983-12-01). Spotlight on filming in SD County. Daily Times-Advocate, 52, 56-57.
  8. ^ Newspaper Enterprise Association, "Filming of 'Midway': Making War for the Movies", Playground Daily News, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, Wednesday 8 October 1975, Volume 30, Number 209, page 5B.
  9. ^ a b c Mirisch, Walter (2008). I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 338–339. ISBN 978-0299226404..
  10. ^ "Midway". Archived from the original on April 12, 2020. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  11. ^ https://archive.org/details/midway-the-lost-version
  12. ^ "Midway". MCA Home Video. Los Angeles: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Archived from the original on April 12, 2020. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  13. ^ Fish, Rory (November 24, 2021). "POWERHOUSE FILMS RELEASE "MIDWAY" (1976) SPECIAL BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION". Top 10 Films. Retrieved August 31, 2023.
  14. ^ "50 Top-Grossing Films". Variety. June 30, 1976. p. 11.
  15. ^ "Make Way For Midway (advertisement)". Variety. June 23, 1976. p. 1.
  16. ^ Byron, Stuart (March–April 1977). "SECOND ANNUAL GROSSES GLOSS". Film Comment. Vol. 13, no. 2. New York. pp. 35–37.
  17. ^ Ebert, Roger (June 22, 1976). "Midway". RogerEbert.com. Archived from the original on May 22, 2019. Retrieved December 12, 2018.
  18. ^ Canby, Vincent (June 19, 1976). "On Film, the Battle of 'Midway' Is Lost Archived December 6, 2019, at the Wayback Machine". The New York Times. 11.
  19. ^ Murphy, Arthur D. (June 16, 1976). "Film Reviews: Midway Archived February 26, 2020, at the Wayback Machine". Variety. 18.
  20. ^ Siskel, Gene (June 21, 1976). "Decisive U.S. sea battle flounders in Hollywood". Chicago Tribune. Section 3, p. 4.
  21. ^ Arnold, Gary (June 19, 1976). "Bombs Away". The Washington Post. B1, B7.
  22. ^ Champlin, Charles (June 18, 1976). "'Earthquake' Goes to Sea". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 1.
  23. ^ Maslin, Janet (June 28, 1976). "Sinking Ship". Newsweek. 78.
  24. ^ Niemi, Robert. History in the Media: Film and Television. Archived January 1, 2014, at the Wayback MachineABC-CLIO, 2006, p. 119. Retrieved on April 9, 2009.
  25. ^ "Midway (1976)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Archived from the original on March 2, 2016. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  26. ^ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers Nominees" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on April 2, 2019. Retrieved August 14, 2016.
  27. ^ Prange, Gordon W. (1982). Miracle at Midway. Goldstein, Donald M., Dillon, Katherine V. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070506728. OCLC 8552795.
  28. ^ Groom, Winston (2005). 1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls. Grove Press. p. 238. ISBN 9780802142504.
  29. ^ Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully (2005). Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (pp. 431–432). Potomac Books, Washington, DC. ISBN 978-1-57488-924-6.
  30. ^ "Adm. Robert E. Dixon, Hero of a Naval Battle". The New York Times. October 24, 1981. Archived from the original on June 27, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2020.
  31. ^ Downing, Taylor (December 10, 2019). "Midway on film". Military History Matters. Retrieved May 15, 2023.
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