Have you seen…1941 (1979)

BY JOHN BILLINGER

Director Steven Spielberg has had a bit of a rough time recently at the box office. He’s often regarded as one of the greatest directors in film, but his last two projects: the remake of “West Side Story” and “The Fabelmans” have underperformed. This has been attributed to different reasons, but it does bring to mind an often forgotten project of his that had also performed below expectations, his 1979 epic comedy “1941.”

Contrary to popular belief, “1941” did not bomb at the box office. It made $95 million on a 35 million dollar budget, but in comparison to the films he had made just prior, it was deemed a disappointment. After directing two relatively small productions in the early 1970s, “Duel” and “The Sugarland Express”, Speilberg achieved worldwide success and recognition with “Jaws” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Both films were critically acclaimed and made major money. The former grossed $476.5 million in 1975 (and became the highest-grossing film of all time until “Star Wars”) and the latter scored $306.9 million in 1977. The sky seemed the limit for Spielberg, so he decided to do something he had never tried to do before, he made a comedy.

And not just a comedy, no, no, no. He basically decided to make a comedy epic akin to 1963’s comedy classic “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” crossed with 1970’s war epic “Tora! Tora! Tora!” with a cast to match either of those two films. Everyone is pretty much in this movie. You’ve got SNL alums like John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, comedy greats like John Candy, prior Speilberg alums like Lorraine Gary, masters of everything like Christopher Lee, classic character actors like Robert Stack and Warren Oates, and etc., etc., etc. Seriously, there are so many people in this one film, it’d be easier to name who isn’t in this movie. Just look at the cast of people in this film, you’re bound to recognize a few from somewhere, and if you don’t recognize the name, they’ve probably been in something that you’ve seen.

With the vast size and scale of this production, surely this would’ve been a hit, right? Well, as stated earlier, it performed lower than his prior films, and even the critics were divided on it. Was it justified? Well…we’ll get to that.

The plot is as follows…(it’s actually really hard to sum this movie up, but I’ll do my best).

It’s December 13th, 1941, the week after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States has officially entered World War II, and the city of Los Angeles is in a panic. Everyone believes that at any moment, the Japanese or the Nazis are going to launch a surprise invasion on the Pacific Coast. Sure enough, there is actually an Axis submarine waiting out by the shoreline, planning an attack. We pretty much follow several plotlines going on at once, there’s a tough war gun-ho pilot – played by John Belushi – on a mission to find some Japanese planes, there’s a teenager who wants to dance to impress his girlfriend, there are the Nazi and Japanese guys in their sub trying to locate L.A., and many more plotlines. Eventually, they all converge in one big explosive climax.

The first thing of note is that the film is a satire. It’s a satire of how people, in the days/weeks/months after Pearl Harbor, thought that there would be an invasion of the United States by the Axis powers. It might be silly to think about now knowing what ultimately happened, but it was a very real fear that people had. One of the inspirations for the film was the so-called Battle of Los Angeles in February of 1942, where a weather balloon flew over the city, and the army took to their cannons and shot it down, thinking it was an enemy plane. 

The film also takes inspiration from the Bombardment of Ellwood, the Zoot Suit Riots, and the time the U.S. Army put an anti-aircraft gun in someone’s backyard on the coast of Maine. It must have been pretty daring for Speilberg to make a comedy out of something that was pretty terrifying for people living during that time. And there have been great comedies and satires poking fun at some serious moments in history (some made during World War Two, such as Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”).

Unfortunately, this film isn’t one of them. It took me time to think of a good way to describe why the comedy in this doesn’t work, but I think the best way to put it is that this film is trying too hard to play both sides of the fence. What I mean is that it’s too dramatic to be comedic and too comedic to be dramatic. Like you watch a scene, and the actors are playing it 100% straight, the direction is playing it 100% straight, but then something that’s supposed to be comedic happens, and you end up thinking, “Was that meant to be serious or a joke?” That’s pretty much the whole movie. There are moments where the comedic elements do work, such as any scene that John Belushi is in or the scene where U.S. General Stillwell goes to see Disney’s “Dumbo” (something that the real Stillwell did twice the week after Pearl Harbor), but for the most part, you’re sitting in confusion on whether to think or to laugh. It makes for a long, confusing viewing experience.

The plot for this thing also doesn’t work. It’s trying to go for a big-scale comedic story akin to “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” but it doesn’t work. Not only is “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” a much better movie, but in it, all the plotlines stemmed from the same point of origin, a car crash. We’re introduced to all the characters at the same location, and we see where they all go from there, only to have them all converge at the end for an epic-scale climax. Here, we’re introduced to all the characters one at a time at mostly separate locations, and all the plotlines converge at the end for an epic-scale climax. But because they introduce all these characters, you never get a solid sense of what or who this film is about. It gets to a point where you forget about some characters until a full half-hour after they’re introduced, and then suddenly they appear again and you go, “Who’s that again?”. I think they tried to bite off more than they could chew. 

The film is well made, though. It’s Spielberg right after “Jaws” and “Close Encounters,” so it is well-directed. The practical effects are really good. For example, they built a miniature-scale model city of Los Angeles which is pretty cool. All the actors do a good job with what they’re given. Almost every scene with Belushi on screen is great. And John Williams delivers a decent enough score. But all of this, in my opinion, doesn’t make it any less the footnote/curiosity/discussion piece that it is known as today.

Overall, “1941” as a whole just does not work. I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you’re a Seliberg completionist or a fan of any one of the many actors and comedians in the film. If the latter is the case, skip to the scenes that they’re in. And even then, there’s a large amount of other content that they’re in, so I’d just say stick to those or watch their scenes on Youtube. As for Speilberg, he rebounded two years later with a film called “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and continued on to make plenty of more hits, with only a few duds here and there. Here’s to hoping that this current streak of duds comes to a close, and he goes back to making hits.

Side Note #1:

A scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” features the Nazi villain Toht slowly assembling a weird type of coat hanger that you initially think is some type of torture device. This small but memorable moment was actually a bit that was repurposed from a deleted scene in 1941.

Side Note #2:

The screenplay for “1941” was written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. Both are writing partners, also writing the story and screenplay for “Back to the Future,” which Zemeckis also directed. In addition to directing the two sequels to that film, Zemeckis also helmed directing duties for other films like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “Forrest Gump,” and “Cast Away,” just to name a few.