Pearl Harbor in the cinema: four films about the Japanese attack of 1941

77 years later they identified a fallen in Pearl Harbor 0:53

(CNN Spanish) -

"Tora! Tora! Tora!" Shouts the Japanese commander Mitsuo Fuchida to the radio communicator, aboard his noisy bomber.

His open eyes sparkle with excitement: he has just informed the fleet that the first wave of 180 aircraft arrived at Pearl Harbor undetected, and that they will soon attack the main US naval base in the Pacific.

Although this occurred in part on December 7, 1941, the scene corresponds to the film "Tora! Tora! Tora!", A major production made by Japan and the United States and released in 1970.

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But it is not the only film interpretation of the 1941 Japanese attack on the United States Pacific Fleet, which led the country to enter World War II.

American actors Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift and Austrian-born director Fred Zinnemann talk between scenes on the set of the film "From Here to Eternity."

(Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

Here are four hugely successful Japanese and American blockbusters dealing with this 80-year-old event.

"From here to eternity" (1953, United States)

Based on the novel written by James Jones, who fought in the US Army during World War II, "From Here to Eternity" is a romantic drama that tells the story of a group of soldiers on the base. of Pearl Harbor in the moments leading up to the attack.

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It premiered in 1953 and featured some of the most famous actors of the time: Montomgery Clift, Donnad Reed, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, and Frank Sinatra, among others.

The film has become a cinema classic, popular with fans and critics.

According to the ratings site Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 90% approval rating in specialized reviews and 84% in public ratings.

"Storm Over the Pacific" (1960, Japan)

This Japanese production released in color in 1960 focuses on the story of Lieutenant Koji Kitami, a bomber in the Imperial Navy of Japan who participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Battle of Midway, and is the first film to show the Japanese perspective. .

It was directed by Shue Matsubayashi, and its main actors include Yosuke Natsuki, Toshiro Mifune, and Koji Tsuruta.

"Storm Over the Pacific" was released in the United States in 1961 - dubbed into English and shortened - and was called "I Bombed Pearl Harbor" there.

"Tora! Tora! Tora!"

(1970, United States / Japan)

Classic of war cinema, "Tora! Tora! Tora!"

(the title refers to the Japanese word for "surprise attack", and it was about the code that the pilots had to send after being successful) was a huge production between the United States and Japan that tried to show the two perspectives of the attack in an epic tone: the amount of characters and real-life scenes portrayed and the attention to detail make the film like a documentary.

For that he had two great teams: Richard Fleischer directed the scenes that showed the Americans, with a cast directed by Jason Robards and Joseph Cotten;

while Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda directed the Japanese sequences, with actors such as Takahiro Tamura and Tatsuya Mihashi.

The movie was a hit with audiences and is still highly rated by audiences - it has an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

But critics have lamented the documentary tone and its slowness, and it reaches 55% on the same platform among specialists.

But Fuchida's voice (played by Takahiro Tamura) hurling her "Tora! Tora! Tora!"

it has already become iconic among movie lovers.

"Pearl Harbor" (2001, United States)

Battered by critics - and historians - this 2001 romantic drama from director Michael Bay nevertheless made a huge fortune at the box office: it was the sixth-most successful film of that year, with earnings of nearly $ 450 million, according to with the Internet Movie Database.

Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin and Jon Voight are just some of the stars of that moment summoned to try another representation of the Japanese attack based on a much criticized love triangle between its protagonists, a Pearl Harbor perhaps more in tone farce than tragedy.

Only 24% of the reviews from specialized critics have been positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences, who enjoyed the spectacular fighting scenes, have rated it with 66% approval.

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