Review of The Battle of Midway

This Oscar-winning documentary – by one of the most revered American film-makers who would have celebrated his birthday on the day I watched this – is quite celebrated, having even been treated to a 2-page spread in the early 1980s British periodical "The Movies". However, the passage of time has not been at all kind to it: not only, at just 18 minutes, does it not dwell in sufficient detail on the famous conflict that purportedly changed the course of the Pacific War…but the whole is lent the director's typically homespun – read sappy – approach, which really dates it! The film obviously retains historical value for its rare colour footage of the battle (some of which was actually incorporated in the star-studded 1976 Hollywood rendition of these same events, MIDWAY!) and, for the record, Ford regulars Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell supply the intermittent narration.