Sands of Iwo Jima (1950)

The training camp at the start looks like Australia all the trees are Australian trees. Gums and eucalyptus.

I was five years old when the Marines landed on Iwo, my eldest brother however was at Pharmacist Mate 3d (now Hospital Corpsman), with 3rd Marines at Iwo. He seldom ever spoke of it. Was called back in Korea, got a Silver Star with King Co., 3rd Bn., 7th Mar. in the vicinity of Sintanni, Nov. 1951. I enlisted in the Marine Corps, Plt. 344, San Diego, July 1959. Remember seeing the Sands of Iwo Jima on my first liberty from Lima Co., 2nd ITR, CAMPEN, as I'm sure many hundreds of Marines did, especially us new guys, in Oceanside, Ca. I digress: Seems like most of the time in the actions scenes the actors were either wearing field marching packs w/short blanket roll, or light marching pack, no blanket roll. While in the actual scenes, mostly the ones at Tarawa almost all the Marines were with out 782 gear (web gear)? Also Sgt. Stryker told them to hit the "sack". as I recall, and it's been many years, we used the term "hit the rack"? Moot points I'm sure, I'll probably watch it again, if fact I'm sure I will, and maybe have some more info as I recall it. Semper Fi

When I watch this movie back to back with Clint Eastwood's "Letter from Iwo Jima" it really puts perspective of how the war looked from both sides.If you see both movies, it's sort of clear that all these killing were unnecessary. Both sides were good men, not viscous killers, but for stupid reason being that you must obey orders at all cost, and some brainwashing, all this carnage occurred. Many wars if viewed in hindsight I'm sure will look this way. The movie is shot very well, and probably one of the most authentic movie of this type until more recent production such as Platoon, and Saving Private Ryan. John Wayne is great as usual, and there's real story to the plot. This is classic on its own right, and one of the better John Wayne movie that was made.

"Sands of Iwo Jima" (1949) directed by Allan Dwan in its modesty as movie was interesting because concerning namely the photography, which is instinctively made as though it was similar when it occurs like during the event itself. Near the recent myth of the images distributed elsewhere around the world, also as news after the battle with great losses from the soldiers who took part, expelling in that past occasion from the island the Japanese soldiers. Director Allan Dwan with this B picture immortalized this act, with a lack of much more production recourses to bring us a better movie, but it was also that fragility what putted inside the true history in his own plot, by the feeling of a document much more authentic in its similarity with the almost forgotten same event, barely five years after the end of the war in Pacific islands.For me what I remember as young of the main scene is the acting as though something of unexpected and not well prepared, but nonetheless well done like the feeling of an accomplished aim when some of the mariners in several positions, putting the leaning flag as pushing it against the slope almost shadowy as a strange cliff on the island horizon : leaning their bodies drilling a hole on the ground and in meantime one of them took snapshots and from these all newspapers sometime later made a choice of one, the one whose fame was known since then. This reconstitution is so well made by Dwan team, that it still makes emotion to the viewers over a landscape as though before derelict. Something of a touch from random that allowed to take this single picture, almost without any previous preparation as improvised it was the feeling on it with a leaned flag, observed by an infinite stand on the land of the battle with the corpses and the wounded imposing the framework of the composition, inspiring plenitude and the strength of tired muscles after great losses of human beings there in that war. It became one of the few most popular photographs of the WWII, the moment of high intensity and dramatic tension also on this movie and too a great chance for the almost anonymous survivors in it, as though in statuesque kind of stressing immobility for a second by a single imperfect shot and quite dark on the bottom of the slope, because the mental foolish of the death toll in it but bypassed by a few men up and down as mere working boundary of living.