Manila, Open City (1968)
War drama set in the closing stages of World War Two. As Allied Forces are nearing the defeat of the Japanese Army in Manila, the Japanese Empire's soldiers begin attacking innocent civilians. A brutal month-long battle ensues.
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Excellent adaptation.
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Certainly the Filipino fighters and civilians were heroic all throughout World War Two. Japan pulled all the food it could find from the country leading to mass starvation that killed many times more civilians than the battles of Luzon and Battle of Manila. Japana raided the country for "comfort women" and mass murdered hundreds of thousands directly. It is perfectly appropriate to highlight their struggles.Unfortunately there is a lot of total misinformation in this film that we now know from Japanese's archives and also from US code intercepts is completely wrong.In the scene with the US brass stating the Japanese were not going to let the civilian's go, the Filipino colonel says "this is complete conjecture." In fact the US brass and SCAP (Supreme commanded Allied Powers) McArthur already knew, and the archives and full now confirm, that the Japanese Naval command (and the two hardened divisions in the city were Japanese's Marines) intended to have all the civilians die.Also completely missing for the film is the fact that US forces entered without bombing and artillery support, and suffered hugely increased US casualties, because the US had decided against using artillery even against fortified Japanese's positions in the city. It was only after three days of trying, and suffering more and more US deaths, that artillery was used.In fact the only time the US attempted to negotiate with Japanese's forces during all of World War Two was in this battle in the Philippines to reduce civilian casualties.