Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Book Review: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

by 6 Comments

My original reason for picking up this novel was to glean a little local color about shipboard life during WWII. But apparently you don’t dive into a 560-page, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and come out with nothing more than a little local color—not if the novel is halfway worth its salt, anyway. I started reading it in November, finally finished it in early January, and needed a few weeks to chew over and sort out the thoughts I wanted to get into my review.

Where to begin?

I suppose it’s logical to begin with the movie—where most people’s acquaintance with the story lies; where my acquaintance with it began. It is a good movie, with an interesting script, fine performances, and just a couple of howling flaws. But here’s the thing: if you asked somebody to give you a brief synopsis of The Caine Mutiny, the answer would probably be something like this: “It’s a WWII drama where the ship’s captain is crazy.” But when you read the novel, you find that is not the whole story or even the true story. [Read more…]

The Letter

by 3 Comments

I wrote this bit of flash fiction back in September for a challenge, and I’m re-posting it here by popular request. The original challenge was hosted by Yvette at in so many words, with inspiration drawn from a picture—participants got to choose from three vintage illustrations Yvette posted at the beginning of the challenge, and the idea was to write a short bit of fiction to go along with the picture of their choice. Mine was the one seen here, by artist Robert George Harris, and here’s what I imagined lies behind it:

 

I closed the door behind me. The warm, quiet dimness of the room seemed to be standing still and listening, and I stood still for a minute too. I felt like I had shut out the clamor and chaos that had followed me all day, just as if I had cut off a clamor of sound by shutting a door. It had been a strange, tense day, with the consciousness of what was going on in the world lending a distracted edge to everything. Word of a naval battle was filling the news, in stark black headlines on the newsstands; in the tinny, stentorian voices of the war correspondents coming over the radio, with an undercurrent of tight excitement to every word that made you feel like you might hear the boom of the guns in the background at any moment.

I had read all about it in the newspaper at the counter of a drugstore at lunchtime, and then had gone on through my afternoon with a with a feeling of unreality in everything I did and looked at—as if this everyday life was only show, and the real thing outside had intruded on it and turned it hollow. It was a relief to be back in the quiet, comfortingly familiar embrace of my own room—I felt normal again, but still with a lingering, more acute sense of that world outside.

I went over to the desk and took out the letter that I had slid away there before supper, so I could come up and read it in peace and quiet afterwards. I slit the envelope and took out the sheets of paper, and walked over to the fireplace. There was just enough of a flicker coming from the coals that I could see the words on the paper, so I curled up into the comfortable corner of the big flowered armchair, tilted the letter toward the glow, and settled down to read. The letter was the same as always: brisk, practical, bantering; mixing incidents of service life with answers to what I had written. I read it through slowly, quietly enjoying it, a faint smile touching my face now and then.

When I finished, I put the sheets back in order, and my eye traveled up to the heading in the corner of the first one. The date on it stopped me. It was the day after the fleet had been in action, according to the newspaper. I fingered the letter slowly, my eyes drifting upward from it to look into space. It had been written after that battle, only hours after the action. And it was the same as always. I’d always known where the letters were written from, sensed the things they left out. But I’d never made the connection so strongly before to the things not said, as I did now with the black-headlined newspaper containing the account of the battle still lying on a table in the same room. The feeling of something dark and threatening loomed up at me out of the shadows beyond the firelight.

I sat very still and stared out from the depths of the armchair across the room, and in my mind I heard the guns thundering, growing louder till the echoes quivered in the dark corners around me. I saw the hot sun and the violently sparkling blue sea and the metal of the decks, shaken with impact and veiled in black smoke. Behind all the cheerful teasing and anecdotes traded back and forth in our letters, this was the reality; this was the danger that he had to live through. It was always there, though it only became real to me in brief moments of clarity, like this night.

Something broke gently in the fire. I looked at the letter, and then I folded it slowly, the paper crinkled where my sweaty fingers had left spots of dampness. I was about to get up, to put it back in the desk, but I stopped. I leaned my head against the back of the chair and stayed there, very still, the folded letter clasped beneath my hand.

 

Classic Movie Horseathon: Miracle of the White Stallions (1963)

by 12 Comments

Walt Disney seems to have been a little ahead of the curve when it came to Austria. Just a few years before The Sound of Music captured the hearts of the world, Disney went on location in Austria to make a pair of films with plots built around two ancient and beloved Viennese institutions: the Vienna Boys’ Choir in Almost Angels (1962) and the Spanish Riding School in Miracle of the White Stallions (1963). Both of these movies are quite different from the typical live-action Disney film of the period, with their Old World setting, more leisurely pace and somewhat less familiar casts—in fact, quite a lot of the crew and supporting players are European. I’d love to know what it was that sparked Disney’s interest in Vienna, and led to the creation of these movies.

I hadn’t seen Miracle of the White Stallions for quite a while before watching it in preparation for writing this post, and I was more impressed with it than I remember being before. Not necessarily of the acting, or even the technical aspects of the film. I think it’s the nuances of the wartime setting that intrigued me more than they did years ago. This is a glimpse of a different Austria, one that came after the events of The Sound of Music, a glimpse of what it was like for some of the people who could not leave—or chose not to leave—before it was too late. The supporting character of General Tellheim (Curt Jurgens) is the direct opposite of Georg von Trapp: an officer who acquiesced to German authority in spite of not being a Nazi by ideology—musing, in a meditative scene midway through the film, on his own weakness of character in doing so.
The film begins with a voiceover narration from star Robert Taylor, telling a little about the history of the Spanish Riding School and the training of the horses. Some lovely shots of mares and foals running through the pastures of the Lipizzaner stud at Piber, and then of the young stallions frolicking and sparring as they gradually grow to maturity, accompany the opening credits. And as the scene changes to Vienna, there’s an overhead shot of the stallions being led through the streets from the stables to the Riding School—this scene always reminds me of Marguerite Henry’s book White Stallion of Lipizza.

The story opens in the closing days of World War II—the Allies are approaching, Vienna is increasingly subject to air-raids, and the Spanish Riding School’s director, Colonel Alois Podhajsky (Taylor), is growing desperate to evacuate the Lippizaner stallions to safety. But German commanders refuse permission, on the grounds that evacuating such a prominent cultural institution would signal to the people of Vienna that the forecast for the city is bleak. Eventually, the sympathetic General Tellheim is able to offer a loophole of escape, and the Riding School embarks on the risky evacuation.

Strangely enough, the scene where Podhajsky and his wife Verene (Lilli Palmer) bid farewell to the dark and empty riding hall at the beginning of the journey almost foreshadows similar scenes in The Sound of Music—the Captain and Maria’s farewell look around their house, and their walk from the concert spotlight in another riding hall, Salzburg’s Felsenreitschule.

I’ve always thought this early section to be one of the most interesting parts of the movie, as Podhajsky and his staff struggle to get the horses safely out of the bombed city and through a perilous railway journey fraught with official red tape, refugee-crowded stations and air-raid strikes. “Until a few days ago,” says Verene as they wait in a half-deserted railway station, between air-raid sirens, “the war was just radio reports, and a few inconveniences. And suddenly, now! And it still seems unreal to me.”

The final days of the war are spent at refugee-filled St. Martin in the Austrian countryside. Here, too, eventually, come the occupying American forces. With the encouragement of a young American officer (James Franciscus), Podhajsky arranges a short-notice performance of the stallions for Third Army commander General George Patton, hoping to convince him to take the Riding School under American protection—and to help rescue the Lipizzaner mares, which are across the border in Czechoslovakia and likely to fall into the hands of the less sympathetic Russians. (The real Alois Podhajsky was still head of the Riding School when Miracle of the White Stallions was made, and he directed their performances in the film.)

From here on out the film follows the progress of “Operation Cowboy,” the expedition by the U.S. army to rescue Allied prisoners and retrieve the horses. As with many true stories adapted for film, Miracle of the White Stallions took considerable liberties with the facts. Although the evacuation to St. Martin, the performance for Patton and the rescue of the mares all took place, the sequence of events and the things that brought them about were considerably rearranged and adapted for the movie. In real life, “Operation Cowboy” had actually already taken place before the performance staged for Patton! The commander of the expedition, Colonel Reed, was consulted by the filmmakers, but said that they went with the fictionalized version as more compelling. If you’re interested in learning more about the true story, here’s an interesting set of articles on how it all really happened.



And then comes the finale. Ten years after the end of the war, the Spanish Riding School finally returns from exile to perform again in Vienna. (According to IMDB, the elaborate red uniforms in this scene were another bit of movie fiction—Disney didn’t think the Spanish Riding School’s traditional brown dress uniforms were attractive enough.) Though the horses themselves are a presence throughout the whole film—the thing everyone is working so hard to save—they are not really characters in the story as often happens in an animal movie. But in this scene, they finally take center stage. Though the performance for Patton showed some of what they could do, this one is mesmerizing—almost ten minutes of beauty and precision, showcased in the splendor of the beautifully decorated Winter Riding School arena. Here is a clip with almost the whole performance (though it isn’t really complete without the entry into the hall—click here to see that):



This is where both Miracle of the White Stallions and Almost Angels succeed completely—beautifully capturing on film stunning performances by the groups that they spotlight.

This is my entry for the Classic Movie Horseathon, hosted by Page at My Love of Old Hollywood. Stop by to see what horse-themed films other bloggers are writing about! And I’m also taking part for the first time in the Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies meme, hosted by Todd Mason.