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William WylerThe Fighting Lady

"The Fighting Lady," directed by William Wyler, provides a portrait of
life on a World War II aircraft carrier, a vessel that is "enormous,
wonderful, and strange to us." After profiling the various activities
of the soldiers' day and following the ship's voyage through the Panama
Canal, the film takes the audience through a litany of actual combat
engagements. The Fighting Lady participates in a strike on the Marcus
Islands, then defends itself against a surprise nighttime raid by
Japanese fighters. Some of the photography comes from cameras set up in
the cockpits of American planes, showing first hand what it's like to be
diving through enemy anti-aircraft fire. The film culminates in a major
confrontation with the Imperial Japanese Battle Fleet. In this massive
operation, later dubbed the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," American pilots
downed almost four hundred Japanese Zeros, while incurring only
twenty-two losses themselves.


This movie is part of the collection: Cinemocracy

Producer: William Wyler
Audio/Visual: sound, color

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: rbigelo - - September 30, 2007
Subject: Well done.
Beautifully filmed in color and exquisitely narrated by Robert Taylor, a realistic documentary of live aboard a fleet carrier during World War II.

Reviewer: Cherokee Jack - - January 31, 2007
Subject: A carrier at war
This is the only film in the Cinemocracy listings that had no reviews, and I feel it's deserving of one. Shot in Kodachrome, this film depicts life onboard an Essex class carrier during WWII. Though not named in the film, most of the footage was shot onboard the USS Yorktown. "The Fighting Lady" highlights the saying that war is 99% boredom followed by 1% of sheer terror. We see footage of everyday life aboard the ship: from sailors stuck on KP duty to the aircrews responsible for arming and fueling planes to the pilots who manned them. At the end of the film we find out that some of the people depicted were KIA or MIA. I think that would have made more of an impact had they actually interviewed these people and create a relationship with the viewer rather than simply including them in the narration. I believe documentaries like this were created for presentations to workers in the factories (Grumman in this case) so that people who built the aircraft and material of war could see the end product of their efforts in action and making a difference in the war. A pretty good film that won the Best Documentary Oscar in 1945.