Midway (1976 film)

Midway, released in the United Kingdom as Battle of Midway, is a 1976 American Technicolor war film that chronicles the June 1942 Battle of Midway, a turning point in World War II in the Pacific, directed by Jack Smight and produced by Walter Mirisch from a screenplay by Donald S. Sanford.[2][3] The film features an international cast of stars including Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Ed Nelson, Hal Holbrook, Toshiro Mifune, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, James Shigeta, Pat Morita, John Fujioka, Robert Ito and Christina Kokubo.

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

The music score by John Williams and the cinematography by Harry Stradling Jr. were both highly regarded. The soundtrack used Sensurround to augment the physical sensation of engine noise, explosions, crashes and gunfire. Despite mixed reviews, Midway became the tenth most popular movie at the box office in 1976.

Plot

On April 18 1942 during the Second World War, a squadron of B-25 bombers from the USS Hornet launches a lightning raid on Tokyo. The strike stuns the Imperial Japanese Navy and its commander Admiral Yamamoto. With hard evidence of the threat posed by the carriers of the American Pacific Fleet to the Japanese home islands, Yamamoto devises a plan to destroy the American fleet once and for all — the invasion of 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, indicating that a major operation will soon take place at a location the Japanese refer to as "AF". Garth is also 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 with law enforcement 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 determine the identity of "AF", confirmed to be Midway itself. Now knowing the location and roughly the date of the attack, Admiral Nimitz and his staff prepare a trap of their own. The carriers USS Enterprise and USS Hornet, augmented by a hastily-repaired USS Yorktown that had been damaged at Coral Sea, will sail 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, who ships out on his carrier.

The battle begins on June 4 as Nagumo's carrier force launches its air attack on Midway Island. The American base is routed but the airstrip survives, meaning Midway can still launch aircraft. The Japanese carriers are then spotted by American scouts. A massive aerial force is launched from the American carriers. Meanwhile, Nagumo is shocked to learn of a sighting by a scout plane of an American carrier, throwing his plans into disarray as he orders that the next strike wave be rapidly re-armed for an attack on the carrier.

Torpedo bombers from Hornet are the first American planes to locate the Japanese fleet. They attack without fighter protection and are slaughtered by the Japanese Combat Air Patrol. Tom is severely burned when gunfire immolates his cockpit during a dogfight. As the Japanese are preparing to launch their second wave, dive-bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown arrive. With the CAP out of position, the bombers attack and reduce three of the Japanese carriers — Akagi, Kaga and Sōryū — to burning wrecks within minutes.

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 the Hiryu has been spotted. Below decks, Matt meets the wounded but recovering Tom and reconciles with him. Due to a shortage of pilots, Matt joins the counterattack against the Japanese carrier just before its second wave of aircraft strikes. The Yorktown is soon burning and the order is given to abandon ship.

Matt leads the attack against Hiryu, which succeeds in destroying the final Japanese carrier and dealing a fatal blow to the invasion. The American planes return to Enterprise and Hornet but Matt, his plane badly damaged, is killed during landing. At sea, Yamamoto's main force receives news of the loss of their carriers. The admiral orders a general withdrawal as he contemplates how he will apologise for the failure to the Emperor. Back at Pearl Harbor, 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
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 (voiced by Paul Frees) Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
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 Watanabe Yasimasa
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 replaced by Jack Smight before filming began.[4]

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 and Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. 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."[5] 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. Henry 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 Kobuko as Horuko. 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 carriers USS Lexington and USS Boxer played the parts of both American and Japanese flattops for shipboard scenes.

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.[6][7] 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.[8]

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."[9] 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."[10] 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."[11] 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."[12] 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."[13] 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."[14] 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."[15]

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."[16]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 54% score based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10.[17]

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.[18][19] A major 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. The TV version also has Coral Sea battle scenes to help the plot build up to the decisive engagement at Midway. 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.[20] Jack Smight directed the additional scenes.[18]

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.[18]

Part of this additional footage is available as a bonus feature on the Universal Pictures Home Entertainment DVD of Midway.

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 invincibility and incompetency of US military.[22]

During the American torpedo attacks, Admiral Chūichi Nagumo and his subordinates are shaken by the American pilots' unexpected bravery. Nagumo remarks "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 is stunned by the force of the bomb's blast and is unable to get up, being tended to by Genda. Witnesses saw Nagumo standing 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.[23]

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.[24] 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 sunk the Japanese aircraft carrier Shōhō.[25]

While most characters portray real persons, some of them 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 rather faithfully on actual work of Lieutenant-Commander Edwin Layton. 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. Layton was an old friend of Joseph Rochefort. 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 hitting the aircraft carrier. There were no plane crashes into ships in this battle. 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 post-war Grumman F9F Panther jet plane crash which actually occurred on USS Midway. 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. 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). Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  4. John Guillermin Pollock, David. The Scotsman; Edinburgh (UK) [Edinburgh (UK)]03 Oct 2015: 34.
  5. 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.
  6. "50 Top-Grossing Films". Variety. June 30, 1976. p. 11.
  7. "Make Way For Midway (advertisement)". Variety. June 23, 1976. p. 1.
  8. Byron, Stuart (March–April 1977). "SECOND ANNUAL GROSSES GLOSS". Film Comment. Vol. 13 no. 2. New York. pp. 35–37.
  9. Ebert, Roger (June 22, 1976). "Midway". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved December 12, 2018.
  10. Canby, Vincent (June 19, 1976). "On Film, the Battle of 'Midway' Is Lost". The New York Times. 11.
  11. Murphy, Arthur D. (June 16, 1976). "Film Reviews: Midway". Variety. 18.
  12. Siskel, Gene (June 21, 1976). "Decisive U.S. sea battle flounders in Hollywood". Chicago Tribune. Section 3, p. 4.
  13. Arnold, Gary (June 19, 1976). "Bombs Away". The Washington Post. B1, B7.
  14. Champlin, Charles (June 18, 1976). "'Earthquake' Goes to Sea". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 1.
  15. Maslin, Janet (June 28, 1976). "Sinking Ship". Newsweek. 78.
  16. Niemi, Robert. History in the Media: Film and Television.ABC-CLIO, 2006, p. 119. Retrieved on April 9, 2009.
  17. "Midway (1976)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved March 12, 2016.
  18. Mirisch, Walter (2008). I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 338–339. ISBN 978-0299226404..
  19. "Midway". Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  20. "Midway". MCA Home Video. Los Angeles: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  21. "AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved August 14, 2016.
  22. 1910-1980., Prange, Gordon W. (Gordon William) (1982). Miracle at Midway. Goldstein, Donald M., Dillon, Katherine V. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070506728. OCLC 8552795.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  23. Groom, Winston (2005). 1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls. Grove Press. p. 238. ISBN 9780802142504.
  24. 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.
  25. "Adm. Robert E. Dixon, Hero of a Naval Battle". The New York Times. October 24, 1981.
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