Otto Preminger’s epic rendition of the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. It’s a huge film, intertwining the Navy’s preparation for war with a dozen personal stories, yet all the elements are kept in perfect balance. No one was better at these big-scale melodramas than Preminger; the cross-references here are Jack Smight’s Midway and Rene Clement’s Is Paris Burning?, both of which seem hopelessly muddled in comparison (we’ll leave Tora! Tora! Tora! out of this). The cast, also huge, includes John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, Paula Prentiss, Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Franchot Tone, and George Kennedy (1965).
