Every Monday and Wednesday night in April, Turner Classic Movies will broadcast 34 movies dealing with the Civil War to celebrate (if that’s the right word) or commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the beginning of the war (April 12, 1861, 4:30 a.m., bombing of Fort Sumter, S.C.).
Check out the schedule here: http://www.tcm.com/
The first two movies on Monday night, April 4 (also, the same day Dr. King was shot in 1968), at 8 pm, the granddaddy of them all, Gone With the Wind. After that, a 1957 film called Raintree County which is about “a willful southern belle goes mad out of fear that she may be part black.” Sounds ridiculous, but check out the film for yourself. However, I sense a trend, b/c on Wednesday, another 1957 movie called Band of Angels deals w/ a similar topic, but this time, the story focuses on the southern belle surviving after the war and she discovers that her mother is part black. Maybe it’s anxiety over integration brought on by the Civil Rights Movement manifesting itself in movies?
On April 11, you’ll get to watch the silent film classic that jump started the KKK in 1915, Birth of a Nation at 8 pm. In fact, the whole evening is devoted to the earliest silent films on the war. Wednesday night April 13 includes two comedies about the war, The Southern Yankee starring Red Skelton and Advance to the Rear. Sandwiched in between those two is a Shirley Temple “classic” called, The Littlest Rebel. After those three is a musical number called Golden Girl and then another comedy called General Spanky that includes some of the cast from a TV show called The Little Rascals.
What you really might learn from these movies is not a true accurate portrayal of the war but you’ll probably get a glimpse into how Americans wanted to view this conflict and the racial strife that tore the country apart. You’ll also see unflattering stereotypes of African Americans, sometimes played by Black actors themselves.
On Monday, April 18, the schedule finally gets better with a Clint Eastwood classic from 1976, The Outlaw Josey Wales followed by Major Dundee with Charleton Heston and Richard Harris (the first Dumbledore) made in 1965. A John Wayne epic called Horse Soldiers follows those two, and then Escape from Fort Bravo and A Time for Killing.
Wednesday, April 20 brings a few interesting movies including Virginia City, in which suave ladies’ man Errol Flynn poses as a dance hall girl to become a rebel spy. The other movies shown on this day deal with tensions created by the CW out West.
On the last week of April, Monday April 25, we see (in my humble opinion) one of the best CW movies in Glory followed by what many consider to be one of the best, Gettysburg. The source material for the movie is the great book, Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, but the movie is too long, has terrible acting and dialogue, and repetitive scenes. It’s a case of the director going for accuracy over drama.
On April 27, the director of Birth of a Nation returns 15 years later with a biography pic on Abraham Lincoln. I’ll hold off judgement until I see it. After that is a bio pic of Vice President Andrew Johnson called Tennessee Johnson. The last film of the evening (and of the month) is Drango, in which a Union soldier encounters animosity while he tries to help Southerners rebuild their town.
Also, Twitter has an ongoing hash tag (#cw150) where you can check out anything to do w/ the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. A lot of these tweets are news on re-enactments, newly available digital archives, book announcements, and day-by-day tweets as to what was going on at that time.
Enjoy.
