Midway (France 3): the true story behind the film

The Second World War, as tragic as it was, clearly inspired the seventh art. Thus, the great directors have never stopped filming their vision of the deadliest conflict in the history of humanity. From the auteur film to the biopic, passing through the romance and the big show, a plethora of cinematographic productions have emerged… Like Midway by Roland Emmerich, broadcast this Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 9:10 p.m. on France 3. A blockbuster which brings together a solid cast made up of Ed Krein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Woody Harrelson (recently seen in The Man from Toronto), or even Aaron Eckhart.

The Battle of Midway: A Historic Event

In 2019, Roland Emmerich, famous in Hollywood for his disaster films (Independance Day, The day after, 2012etc.) walks in the footsteps of Pearl Harbor of Michael Bay, by bringing to the screen the famous naval battle of Midway which took place from June 4 to 7, 1942. A major historical episode which has known many adaptations. With, among other things, a documentary by the director of the hellish pursuit, John Ford, himself present at the scene of the conflict and awarded the Oscar for best documentary film. In 1976, a fiction was born: Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda and James Coburn thus shared the poster of The Battle of Midway by Jack Smight.

The Battle of Midway: A Defining Historical Episode

Many specialists dispute the veracity of the facts depicted in Roland Emmerich’s feature film. Nevertheless, the German filmmaker endeavored to reconstruct the naval air battles of this major historical episode of the Second World War: “I tried to be as close as possible to the real story, even if of course I wasn’t there and I sometimes had to imagine what the characters were saying. We have received help from military advisers for each operation, from a pilot, from several historians, from a man who worked on an aircraft carrier in the 1960s, which was very similar to those employed in the 1940s”confided the director to Tele-Leisure. As a reminder, the Battle of Midway saw the American and Japanese fleets clash on the Midway Islands, in the northwest of the Hawaiian archipelago, from June 4 to 7, 1942. A conflict which was part of a rabid fight for maritime supremacy in the Pacific Ocean. Five months after the debacle of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Americans suffered a succession of defeats against the Japanese. So here we are taken to June 1942. The Imperial Japanese Army spotted the presence of three enemy aircraft carriers near Midway. Then follows a series of bombardments between the naval air forces of the two camps. The results are tragic for Admiral Yamamoto. The four committed Japanese aircraft carriers will sink, against only one on the American side. The Battle of Midway is a decisive strategic turning point for the rest of the war. In particular, it marks the end of Japanese domination in the Pacific in favor of that of the United States.