Ruxandra Teslo wrote an interesting Substack post: Intellectual Courage as the Scarcest Resource, which sparked a good discussion in comments. Which got me thinking: What are some good films that feature courage, especially moral and intellectual courage? Here are a few that I think fit, some of which I’ve seen, some of which I haven’t seen but have heard about, and some suggested by others to whom I asked this question.
The White Rose, 1982 German film about the anti-Nazi resistance group of that name. There have been several other good movies about the group and its members, especially Sophie Scholl, but this film is in a class all its own. It portrays the members of the group not as plaster saints but as the kids they actually were–albeit kids with astonishing levels of moral, intellectual, and physical courage. The film never made it to streaming, but VHS tapes and maybe DVDs are findable. In German, with English subtitles.
There are several similarly-named films: this is the one with Lena Stolze as Sophie Scholl. Really, very highly recommended.
We The Living, a 1942 Italian movie based on Ayn Rand’s novel of the same name (which IMO was the best of her works from a literary & characterization standpoint). The film was weirdly approved by the fascist censors but then called back when they belatedly realized it was broadly anti-totalitarian, not only anti-communist. Very good film, except for the frequent display of white subtitles against a snow background…of course, you don’t need the subtitles if you can understand Italian.
A French Village--a French TV series set in a small town during the years of the Occupation. It does not make all French people out to be heroes, by any means, and portrays the difficulties and ambiguities that can exist in such situations, along with some portraits of genuine heroism. I reviewed the series here, and Sgt Mom also reviewed it. (Apologies for the weird and irritating typography, it is a WordPress problem which has recently shown up.)
Fueled–A strange Japanese movie, based on the fictionalized story of a man who built an oil-trading business from scratch, beginning when oil was a minor factor in Japan. The film & the book it is based on are apparently favorites of the militarist Right in Japan, and, indeed, there is no hint of an apology for WWII and its atrocities. Still, I thought it was a good story about courage and determination in business.
(I saw this movie a few years ago, and was reminded of it by Biden’s policy of drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve–which reminded me of the movie’s image of the Japanese oil people, after the end of the war, going down to the very bottom of the Japanese Navy’s deep storage facility to see what was left.)
Devotion–based on the true story of Jesse Brown, a black man who became a US Navy fighter pilot in 1946…and his (white) wingman, Thomas Hudner, who took incredible risks during the Korean War by landing his Corsair in enemy territory in a rescue attempt. I reviewed the film last year.
No Highway in the Sky, a 1951 film based on the novel by Neville Shute. A metallurgist, Theodore Honey, calculates that a new British passenger aircraft, the Rutland Reindeer, will be destroyed by metal fatigue of the tail after exactly 1440 flight hours on any particular airplane. A vibration test-to-destruction is underway with an experimental model of the tail, in order to determine whether or not the airplane really needs to be removed from service, but commercially-operated Reindeers are building up hours and some will reach the possibly-deadly number of 1440 before the test can be completed.
A crash occurs with an airplane which has flown 1407 hours, but the pilot is blamed. Honey, the metallurgist, is sent to Labrador to examine the wreckage–traveling on a Reindeer which already has 1422 hours. They do arrive safely in Newfoundland for a fuel stop…what, if anything, should Honey do before the airplane departs for the next leg of its flight to Labrador? Certainly, not be on the flight is one option…but there are others, which will have quite negative consequences for him if he is wrong about the metal fatigue.
The movie was surely inspired by the disasters that hit the first commercial jet transport, the Comet, and has resonance with Boeing and the 737 Max MCAS failures.
12 Angry Men. This 1952 movie, which I’ve somehow never seen, is about a jury in a murder trial, in which one member holds out for the acquittal which he believes is the right thing to do, against overwhelming pressure from the other jury members. An extensive review is here.
The site that the above link goes through is focused entirely on heroism, in fiction, legend, and real life, and the authors have written some books on the subject. I see that they describe Harry Potter as the ultimate fictional hero….they’re talking about the books, there have also been Harry Potter movies, has anyone seen them? If so, any opinions?
On the Waterfront, a 1954 film by Elia Kazan. It’s about a corrupt and violent union boss–a mobster, extortionist, and murderer named Johnny Friendly. One of the longshoremen is Terry Malloy, a former prizefighter who threw a fight when ordered to do so by Friendly. The longshoreman grows more and more disturbed by Friendly’s crimes, and plans to shoot him, but the local priest Father Barry persuades him to instead testify in court. Following Terry’s damning testimony Friendly is cut off from his powerful friends and facing indictment. Friendly bars Terry from union jobs. At the dock everyone is called to work except Terry, who taunts Friendly, shouting that he is proud to have testified.
Westerns. These movies often involve individual courage in some form. One classic is High Noon. Marshal Will Kane, ready to retire and newly married, is read to leave town with his wife, Amy. But he learns that Frank Miller, a vicious outlaw who Kane sent to prison, has been released and will arrive by the noon train the next day. His former gang, three very bad characters, will be waiting to welcome him.
For Amy, a Quaker and a pacifist, the solution is simple—leave town before Miller arrives—but Kane’s sense of duty and honor make him stay. Besides, he says, Miller and his gang would hunt him down anyway. Amy gives Kane an ultimatum: she is leaving on the noon train, with or without him. Kane finds that he will have no support among the townspeople–everyone has one excuse or another, except for a 14-year-old boy whose help Kane rejects on account of his youth.
The movie asks the question: Is there a moral obligation to fight against injustice, even on behalf of people who are not willing to take risks on their own behalf?
The Wikipedia article, from which some of the above is excerpted, is here.
What other Westerns offer good portrayals of courage in its multiple dimensions?
Schindler’s List is about a factory owner, originally motivated by the opportunity of making money by becoming a contractor for the Nazis, but nevertheless saves 1200 Jews from the Holocaust, at great personal risk. The movie is discussed from an ethical standpoint here.
The Story of Louis Pasteur is a 1936 biopic about the pioneering microbiologist, who among many other things disproved the theory of spontaneous generation and developed the rabies vaccine. I haven’t seen the movie (Wikipedia review here) and I’m not sure about the accuracy of the portrayals of some of the pushback that Pasteur received–was his recommendation that doctors wash their hands before attending patients (pioneered by Semmelweis, I’d always heard) really considered by prominent physicians of the day as ‘witchcraft’?…but there seems to be no question about Pasteur’s genuine courage:
Pasteur himself was absolutely fearless. Anxious to secure a sample of saliva straight from the jaws of a rabid dog, I once saw him with the glass tube held between his lips draw a few drops of the deadly saliva from the mouth of a rabid bull-dog, held on the table by two assistants, their hands protected by leather gloves.
There’s aren’t a lot of movies about scientists–what other film portrayals of scientific courage have you seen or heard about?
The Agents of Special Operations Executive. SOE was a secret British organization responsible for instigating sabotage operations in occupied Europe. Selwyn Jepson, a former novelist who was a principal recruiter for SOE, wrote of the importance of what he called ‘quiet courage’, the kind of courage one needs to face terrible risks and difficulties when no one is watching and there is no glory to be had. (He thought that women were generally better than men in this attribute, although he found it in both.)
One of the SOE agents was a Polish woman named Krystyna Skarbek (anglicized to Christine Granville), whose father was a bank official and a member of the nobility, and whose mother was Jewish. She became an avid horsewoman and skier, and was #6 in the Miss Poland contest for 1930. When WWII broke out, Krystyna was living in Ethiopia with her second husband, who was the Polish consul there. She immediately went to London and volunteered to work as a secret agent. Her remarkable accomplishments are portrayed in this YouTube video.
There is an upcoming Polish-British film about Krystyna, The Partisan, said to now be in production. Couldn’t find a release schedule, I’m going to contact the studio and see if they can tell me anything.
I met Krystyna’s SOE partner, Francis Cammaerts–whose life she saved through courage and cleverness–and spent a few hours with him at his home in southern France. One question I asked him was whether it was really a true story that she had been able to attract one of the German dogs that were looking for her and keep it quiet, so that the Germans left with no Krystyna as a prisoner and minus one dog. He said he couldn’t absolutely vouch for it as he wasn’t there at the time, but that she had always had an almost mystical connection with animals.
After the end of the war, Krystyna was treated rather callously by the British government, took a job as a stewardess on a passenger ship to support herself, and was murdered by what we would now call a stalker, a fellow employee whom she had tried to treat kindly.
Another SOE agent was Noor Inayat Khan,daughter of a leading Sufi teacher and an American woman. Her father’s version of Sufism was strictly pacifist, so her decision to join SOE reflected moral as well as physical courage. As did her honest statement to an SOE interviewer that she opposed British rule of India and after the war would work against it–but that at the present time, the battle against Naziism took priority. She was not a bold person by personality–firearms frightened her–and it must have been difficult for her to complete the physically tough and deliberately-stressful SOE training, let alone to carry out the missions, often alone, in enemy-held territory.
There is a 2014 movie, Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story, which I have not yet seen but plan to soon.
Interviewing Noor for the SOE role, Selwyn Jepson was impressed with her, but was reluctant to accept her for the job, telling her that she might be of more value to humanity if she survived the war and continued writing her children’s books. She indignantly rejected the suggestion. Jepson: “..with rather more of the bleak distress which I never failed to feel at this point in these interviews, I agreed to take her on.”
She did not return. Jepson never forgot her: “…not only in the dark hours of solitude, but at unexpected moments of daytime activity, it is as though a shutter opens in a familiar wall which I know has no shutter in it, and she is there, briefly, the light filling my eyes. She does not haunt me, as do some of the others…she is simply with me, now and again, for a little moment.”
What other movies have you seen, or heard of, that do an exceptional job of portraying courage, especially moral and intellectual courage–both real and fctional?
I love No Highway in the Sky! What a great movie!
I linked this post at Ruxandra’s substack post…she asked: ‘do you feel like there are less movies about courage these days?’ Interesting question, any thoughts?
“” Courage is fear holding out a few moments longer.”
In that regard, “Zulu.”
Another movie that portrays several forms of courage is the the BBC TV series ‘North and South’, based on Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1854 novel of the same title…that title expressing the contrast between the industrialized north of England and the more pastoral south. The story is that a clergyman feels that he cannot sign an oath attesting to his belief in a certain theological point, and hence will have to give up his position and home. His wife finds this position basically insane….how can the importance of a piece of paper compare with the family suffering which seems inevitable from a move to a dense northern city, without much income for support?
After the move, family’s daughter, Margaret, meets John Thornton, a mill owner with a reputation for being very hard-nosed, also some of the people who work in his mill.
Forms of courage portrayed in this novel/series include the pastor’s conscience-based refusal to sign a false oath, but also the courage Thornton demonstrated in building his business from scratch..and that of the union organizer who is pushing him for better wages and more safety. Also Margaret’s courage in overcoming her initial prejudices against Thronton.
Definitely recommended.
When you mentioned westerns, I thought of Shane. Not for the obvious Alan Ladd character, who was a gunfighter trying to change, but the farmer who was ready to meet the Jack Palance character.
And let’s not forget the remake of Wyatt Earp, where Kurt Russell’s Wyatt is going to meet Johnny Ringo, and asked Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday if he can beat him but hears that he can’t – but shows up anyway (a moment after Doc “beat him to the draw”.
12 Angry Men is a good choice – never saw the movie but saw the play.
Yesterday marked the anniversary of the first moon landing. What space-related movies come to mind that fit the theme of this post?
As far as space related, Apollo 13 leaps put – dire life threatening things go wrong 200,000 miles from home
Most the the movie profiled exemplary courage
One of the things Ruxandra talked about in her post was about courage that involves risk, but can have a high personal payoff it the action succeeds…fighting in a war if you’re a member of the nobility who can gain honor and lands, founding a startup in today’s world. But there’s also the other kind, the kind with a big personal downside risk, but as for upside, not so much.
“What we do lack though is courage that has low potential upside: that is, not much to be gained from it. And I am increasingly convinced this type of courage has always been even more rare than the high potential upside type. It requires one to not only have high risk tolerance, but also ignore one’s self-interest — two traits that are already rare to begin with, and even rarer together. It requires one to be a sort of Joan of Arc of intellectual life.
Being intellectually honest about a topic your academic (or journalistic, or any other type of intellectual) colleagues disagree with falls into the low potential upside courage bracket. There is stuff to be lost but relatively little to be gained. What’s worse, you will most likely not even be awarded the dignity of being openly cancelled: most likely, your career will become a bit shittier with each open disagreement you have, a dreary slog you cannot even wear as a badge of honour. You’ll become that which most ambitious people fear the most: a no-name. And you won’t even be able to tell where this comes from, to point to a culprit. If you are even a tiny bit ambitious the calculus is clear: shut up and agree. You need to be a bit mad to do it.”
That would describe the courage of the pastor in North and South. It also describes the ‘quiet courage’ of the SOE operatives as explained by Selwyn Jepson: downside is that you get tortured and killed–if you succeed, you may not ever even be able to tell anyone what you have done.
There’s not a particular movie that jumps to mind. I will wait (probably forever) for someone to finally produce one about Rick Rescorla; someone that I have held up to my kids as an exemplar of so many of the manly virtues – courage, daring, love. As to the prior mention of “Zulu” Rescorla was overheard in the south tower on 9/11 to sing “Men of Harlech”
There is the idea of courage in terms of grace under pressure, but the more fundamental aspect of courage is that it is a choice. Alot has been made of the courage of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landing Flight 1549 in the Hudson, he certainly was a hero, he showed unbelievable grace under pressure, but it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter. It’s when you have the ability to turn away from doing the “right” thing that courage manifests itself. Alot of good suggestions here in the comments, both big and small bring that out.
In that vein, are the people and situations depicted in Michael Walsh’s book “Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost” are courageous or just making the best out of a bad situation?
Perhaps the answer to that lies in answering Ruxandra’s question why there are less movies about courage. If courage is bounded by choice, by the possibility of being able to turn away, to shirk, then it is therefore also defined by the actor turning toward…. duty. That’s a word that is out of vogue in our postmodern world because not only does it ring of manly virtues but it is by definition of something that exists independent of our desires and wishes. It is a concept as old as the world itself
So perhaps I just answered my own question regarding Walsh’s book.
Mike…”A lot has been made of the courage of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landing Flight 1549 in the Hudson, he certainly was a hero, he showed unbelievable grace under pressure, but it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter.”
Maybe…NTSB retrospective analysis suggested that the flight could have made it back to LaGuardia…barely.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/sully-could-have-flown-back-barely-ntsb/1939574/
Risk of course would have been crashing in a populated area if he couldn’t quite make it. Teterboro Airport might have also been an option.
The practice of stretching glides in the hope of avoiding an off-airport landing has a generally bad reputation, and given what he knew at the time, Sullenberger did the right thing.
Many aircraft GPS systems now have a feature to display airports within achievable gliding range, but I doubt that this airplane had such a system installed.
There’s a 1954 movie, The High and the Mighty, based on the novel of the same name, about a situation rather similar to the Sullenberger flight. DC-4 flight to Hawaii has to turn around, fuel leaking, may or may not have enough to get back to San Francisco airport. Decision: try to make the field, or ditch in the ocean close to a ship which might be able to rescue at least some of the passengers?
“Maybe…NTSB retrospective analysis suggested that the flight could have made it back to LaGuardia…barely.”
If you pay attention to the news, at least monthly you’ll here about a pilot that is killed by doing exactly that. It’s certainly one of the favorite ways to kill yourself flying a small plane. Usually the NTSB doesn’t indulge in such fatuous BS.
The nut graph:
“After losing his engines to a flock of geese, Captain Sullenberger would have had to immediately decide to successfully return back to LaGuardia Airport with no time to think of whether he’d safely land the Airbus A320 in time.”
In other words; He would have had to react in exactly the way he had instructed many pilots over the years not to react and he might have gotten lucky and found himself on a runway instead of cutting the top off of a building. Probably not a message that advances air safety. Reacting without thinking is a time proven way to end up dead.
Certainly, an element of courage is having the presence of mind to keep thinking and find a workable solution under pressure rather than going off half cocked, getting yourself and everyone else killed.
There’s a movie titled The Man Who Saved the World, about a Soviet officer named Stanislav Petrov. In 1983, he saw indications of an American missile launch targeting his country, quickly followed by reports of four morelaunches. Protocol was for him to pick up the phone and report what he saw to his superiors. Only 23 minutes remained until the first US missiles were projected to strike.
The indications didn’t make any sense to Petrov, for one thing, he didn’t believe the Americans would really launch such a small strike if they were going to attack at all. But that really wasn’t his decision, it was intended to have been made at the highest level. That would have been Yuri Andropov.
We can’t know what Andropov really would have done, of course, but the risk to Americans and Russians of something awful was surely reduced by Petrov’s courage in taking a personal risk of career damage and maybe a lot worse.
Can’t believe I left out Robert Bolt’s ‘A Man for All Seasons,’ which is about Sir Thomas More. It includes one of the most eloquent statements ever about the importance of adherence to law, even in the case of unfavored people:
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
I was reminded of A Man for All Seasons by the proprietor of Grim’s Hall, who has also written quite a bit about Westerns and the portrayal of heroism in them. See
Heroism in Hollywood
https://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2008/07/heros-in-hollywood.html
John Wayne early years collection:
https://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2005/06/john-wayne-early-years-collection.html
…Grim notes that “What we today think of as “the classic Western” is probably High Noon. But High Noon was almost a complete rejection of all the Western’s standard modes. The lawman, who wears a black rather than a white hat, enjoys no support from the people; in the end, though he has done what they dared not, he has lost their respect and has lost respect for them. He leaves the town in disgust, rather than riding into the sunset. John Wayne, by then a veteran star of twenty years’ experience, called the movie “un-American.”
But Wayne made a similar movie himself ten years afterwards — The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It is in some respects even darker than High Noon”
El Dorado
https://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2024/02/el-dorado.html
As far as courage during wartime, there’s an old British TV series called “Secret Army”, about a Resistance cell based around a bar in Belgium. Some of the participants are so far undercover as apparent collaborators that they pay a significant price from the locals when the village is liberated. I liked it a lot, but the tone is so dour that it actually inspired a spinoff comedy series (!) called ‘Allo ‘Allo.
Here’s a different kind of movie about the space program…a 1964 film by North American Aviation, the idea of which is to put the space program in the context of American history, exploration, and development. The music, a mix of traditional and new, arranged & composed by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio.
With Their Eyes on the Stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDW1lsX8aAY&t=1315s
The culture gap between the America of 1964 and the America of today is clear, especially as regards cultural self-confidence. Maybe 30% of Americans then would have regarded the film as really, really corny…the number would probably be closer to 75% today (and 90% among Democrats)
1949 Twelve O’Clock High with Gregory Peck. Story of determined leadership
Good to see you here, Steve!
There’s another movie titled ‘The Man Who Saved the World’, in addition to the one I mentioned about Petrov. This one is a PBS sort-of-documentary, about a Soviet submarine officer named Vasili Arkhipov. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was aboard submarine B-59, which had been tasked to make its way from Russia to Cuba without being detected by the Americans.
Unknown to Americans at that time, this submarine carried a nuclear torpedo in addition to conventional armaments. The captain had authority to fire it if he believed war had broken out. Normally, he would have needed only the consent of the political officer, but because Arkipov was aboard, he required that consent also.
There’s still some ambiguity about exactly what happened…and the PBS video can’t be relied for accuracy, for example it refers to Arkipov as the flotilla commander, whereas actually he was only the flotilla chief of staff…but it seems clear the the sub’s captain was something of a hothead, not totally adverse to going out in a blaze of nuclear glory. Conditions on the sub (diesel-electric, not nuclear) were terrible, very hot, too little oxygen and too much CO2, nobody was at their best as far as mental sharpness went. Arkipov was a steadying influence.
Two comments.
1. Neville Shute wrote “No Highway” in 1948, a year before the first Comet flew and 4 years before it entered service with BOAC. The first crash was within a year, but 5 years after the novel was published. Shute/Norway was an aeronautical engineer.
2. “12 0’clock High” was based on a true story. The Gregory Peck character was based on Col. Frank Armstrong who took over the 306th bomb group which was failing. Armstrong flew as copilot in the first mission. The pilot was Paul Tibbets. They later worked together on the B-29 and the atomic bomb. The movie used a 3 multiple of the bomb group, the 918th, to avoid identifying the real group. The novel and screen play were written by Bernie Lay, who had commended a bomb group, had been shot down and escaped with the aid of the French resistance. Another 8th AF vet was Sy Bartlett, was coauthor of the book and screen play.
Commanded.
” The Right Stuff”
A couple of movies I think are suitable for kids:’
–Johnny Tremain, about a 14-year-old apprentice silversmith at the time of the American Revolution
–The Great Locomotive Chase, based on the factual history of a Civil War expedition in which Union forces sent an undercover group into Georgia to steal a locomotive and run it northward, destroying track, telegraph lines, and bridges as they went.
Both are Disney movies…it was a very different Disney from the current company that made these films.
You might be interested in James Bowman. That is a link to his page on “honor,” but he has many movie reviews. I believe he is retired, infirm, or dead, as the site hasn’t been updated in years.
On the SOE women: Why must heroes die and villains live?
Not all movies about heroes must be meaning-laden dramas: Support Your Local Sheriff.
And it fell out that the soul of Odysseus drew the last lot of all and came to make its choice, and, from memory of its former toils having flung away ambition, went about for a long time in quest of the life of an ordinary citizen who minded his own business, and with difficulty found it lying in some corner disregarded by the others, and upon seeing it said that it would have done the same had it drawn the first lot, and chose it gladly.
A move you have reviewed: Ikiru.
ErisGuy…I read the James Bowman book on Honor, some time back, and thought it was interesting.
“Why must heroes die and villains live?…not sure if that’s a movie or an observation. Certainly it’s ironic that Krystyna Skarbek survived incredible risks during the war only to be murdered in a hotel in Britain.
One more: “Failure is Not an Option” both a memoire by NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz, and a History Channel documentary. Basis for movie Apollo 13. The book is extraordinary story of leadership spanning multiple political administrations.
well I liked hacksaw ridge, about desmond doss, the conscientous objector medic, who went through the worst of iwo jima, the battle scenes were pretty strong,
The Gathering Storm is a must-see film for Winston Churchill aficionados. It dramatizes Churchill’s courageous attempts to wake Britain to the growing Nazi threat in the face of the withering scorn of his colleagues. There are countless examples of intellectual courage including by the bureaucrats who helped him at the risk of their careers and even their lives. The great Lena Headey of Fame of Thrones fame, in a very early role, impresses as the stalwart wife of one such bureaucrat who lost his life. This woefully under appreciated film features an outstanding cast led by Albert Finney as the great man and Vanessa Redgrave as his formidable wife.
Cato….sounds interesting. “The great Lena Headey of Fame of Thrones fame, in a very early role, impresses as the stalwart wife of one such bureaucrat who lost his life” Do you remember who that bureaucrat & his wife were?