The Guardian 15 March, 2006
TV programs worth watching
Sun March 19 — Sat March 25
For Germany in WW2, Blitzkrieg or "lightning war" was the equivalent of the Pentagon’s "shock and awe" tactic used against Iraq and Afghanistan: crushing firepower used against military and civilians alike.
The tactic was trialed in Spain as part of the Luftwaffe’s aid to Franco; it was later used to powerful effect in the crushing of the Low Countries (the destruction of Rotterdam became a byword for warfare against civilians).
The Blitz: London’s Firestorm (ABC 7.30pm Sundays) is a two-part program dealing with the German attempt to use this tactic on London. A mixture of dramatised re-creation and actual reminiscences by participants, the program concentrates on the great incendiary raid on the night of December 29, 1940.
Tens of thousands of incendiary bombs were dropped on the central heart of the city, followed by hundreds of pounds of high explosive.
However, although the ordinary people of London were understandably and rightly terrified by the destruction and loss of life of "the Blitz", as they quickly renamed Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, they did not succumb to "shock and awe" any more than people in more recent times.
The program attempts to present a view of the Blitz of 1940 that is free of the propaganda of the time, but ironically manages to replace the war-time propaganda with a mixture of cynicism and modern "revised history".
To the makers of this series, the Blitz on London was unique, and yet only a year later far greater destruction was being wreaked on innumerable Soviet cities. Yes, the German air war against Britain failed to subdue the troublesome island, but had the Nazis continued striking at RAF airfields and radar stations instead of being suckered into attacking cities, the outcome might have been quite different.
As it was, the air war against England ended six months later when the German air-force was transferred to the east for the war against Russia, where it was eventually largely destroyed.
Nevertheless, there are many acts of bravery and everyday courage in this well made series. Ironically, despite the use of computerised imagery instead of newsreels, the best films about the Blitz remain two war-time documentaries by Humphrey Jennings, 1940’s London Can Take It (co-directed by Harry Watt) and 1943’s tribute to London’s volunteer fire service, Fires Were Started.
If you ever get the chance to see them, seize it!
Ahead Of The Class (ABC 8.30pm Sunday) is based on Dame Marie Stubbs’ book about her experiences as a headmistress of some stature who came out of retirement to save an inner-city London school from closure as a "hopeless case".
Five years before the headmaster at the time had been murdered by a pupil; now the staff were allegedly too fearful to leave the staff-room at break or to walk down the corridors except in pairs.
I found the film frankly incredible: that is, I did not find it believable. These kids are allegedly "out of control". Fighting on the staircases is routine.
Marie Stubbs’ solution is to have a green stripe painted up the centre of the staircase, and the kids told to "keep to the left". Lo and behold, they all do it perfectly, problem solved.
I was also put off by discovering that this is a story of a Catholic school, St George’s School in West London, where the idea of the Headmistress going to the Diocese for a religious heavyweight to back her up is considered right and proper.
As played by Julie Walters, Maries Stubbs is relentlessly middle-class, with aspirations perhaps to being upper-class.
She calls her pupils, who appear to be high school age, "children" even to their faces. "Good morning, children" she trills at them in morning assembly, to which they have to reply "Good Morning Mrs Stubbs".
Nothing is more humiliating to those on the verge of young adulthood than to be made to acknowledge their standing as "children".
As a "tough school", St George’s seemed to me to be all hype.
Remember the "iceman" whose body, frozen in a glacier in the Italian Alps, was uncovered in 1991 — 5,000 years after he died?
For a decade it was assumed that he had simply been overtaken by bad weather while making a crossing of the mountains. But a recent x-ray revealed an arrowhead in his back.
The iceman, known to scientists as "Otzi", thus became the subject of a forensic investigation — coldest "cold-case" ever.
The Iceman Murder (ABC Monday 9.35pm) is a fascinating account of scientific investigation (and a fair bit of conjecture), but each of the now dominant theories are re-enacted with convincing skill, which tends to leave it up to the viewer.
American director Sidney Lumet’s 1975 feature Dog Day Afternoon dramatised the events of a hot August afternoon in 1972 when John Wojtowicz (played by a young Al Pacino) attempted to rob a Brooklyn bank.
He committed the crime to finance a sex-change operation for his suicidal trans-sexual "wife". Cornered by police, his motive triggered a two-day media circus.
In Based On A True Story (SBS 10.00pm Tuesday), Dutch director Walter Stokman has made an 80-minute reconstruction of the bank robbery, combining original news footage, clips from Dog Day Afternoon and the recollections of hostages, police and FBI agents who were involved in the siege of the bank.
Stokman interviewed all the key players including, in a rare appearance, Wojtowicz himself. Wojtowicz was unhappy with Lumet’s interpretation, accusing Hollywood of exploiting his story and failing to explain his motive. (What, not Hollywood! They wouldn’t do that, would they?)
But what of Stokman? How honorable is he? "In many ways", he says, "I was lucky to deal with a crazy robber; again he turned a film into a circus sideshow."
An unpopular war based on suspect intelligence by-passing the UN to introduce a regime change in the Middle East. No, not Iraq 2003 but the story of the 1956 Suez Crisis, as told in The Other Side Of Suez, screening in the As It Happened timeslot (SBS 7.30pm Saturday).
The program says Anthony Eden, British Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957, deeply resented President Nasser’s championing of Egyptian independence. The upper crust Eden particularly resented Nasser’s determination to secure Egyptian control over the Suez Canal.
Eden’s government actively encouraged plots to fabricate dissent in Egypt, turned a blind eye to several assassination attempts on Nasser and eventually connived with the French and the Israelis to manufacture a "war" as an excuse for sending in British troops to "act as a buffer" between the Egyptians and the Israelis and to "protect Western interests" as represented by the Suez Canal.
All sounds very familiar, really, doesn’t it?