The major problem with American Civil War movies is that they're a lot like the "beards and bathrobe" Biblical movies of the 1960's. Viewers already know the plot so the effort must be in the telling. And a great deal of effort has gone into the telling of GETTYSBURG. This is not the greatest story ever told and the film is overloaded with theatrical artifices but on at least one level — the action sequences —it's as realistic as cinema will ever come to depicting Civil War combat, much better than even Glory, the story of the 54th Massachusetts. And indirectly, Gettysburg the movie makes a most provocative comment on the debate raging within the pages of Cry Havoc and elsewhere on the information highway about the qualities of Robert E. Lee's generalship. Lee cannot honestly lay claim to being the "Napoleon of the West" — that moniker having already been claimed by Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana — yet the film does masterfully portray Lee in Napoleonic terms, albeit a Napoleon with brilliant tactical and operational skills but one who would never quite rise to being a great strategic commander — his greatest failing to the Confederacy and the cause he served. But let's be honest here: the real "hero" of this Greek tragedy of a movie is General James P. Longstreet, who counseled caution based upon a more realistic appraisal of strategic goals, which in turn was based upon a knowledge of Union (and Confederate) military capabilities. Gettysburg — the film and the battle — was, for Lee, simply Borodino redux. Even the interlude discussion between the English Lt. Col. Fremantle and Confederate General Armistead reciting the lineage of the army's soldiery but reemphasizes that this is essentially a Virginian army, not a Confederate one. Laden (and belabored) throughout the movie are all the US History 101 epigrams about the Civil War: the Emersonian versus Hobbsian view of mankind (as typified by Colonel Chamberlain and his Irish ιmigrι enlisted man); Darwinism and the implied "they may have evolved from apes but we didn't:" and the endlessly repetitive "brother against brother." Finally, include a dialogue coach whose job is to teach everyone how to say "Suh." What redeems this film from being just another expansive historical costume drama is the sincere effort by all the re-enactor units to authentically recreate the Civil War battlefield. From uniform accouterments to battlefield maneuvers, these were not the matchless (or matching) armies of Europe but they were more than good enough to get the job done. From the variegated homespuns of the Confederates to the Union's corps insignia, this is a film fraught with interesting and endless detail — the pause/still button of your VCR should get quite a workout. What is also noticeable, and almost unseen in cinematic warfare, is the number of soldiers just keeping their heads down, helping their wounded comrades to an aid station or just drifting away to the rear. Paddy Griffith has written an interesting compendium of generalship ad tactics in the American Civil War entitled Battle in the Civil War (1986). If you can't find it, Gettysburg is a more than adequate substitute for a depiction of the nineteenth century battlefield. Towards the end of the film, the actor portraying General Lee states that "it's all my fault." Yes, it was Lee's fault — the fault that Lee (and the president he served) could not see beyond the narrow confines of Virginia and take a grand strategic view of how their Confederacy could survive. For all their military prowess, Lee and Davis were bested by an Illinois lawyer whose only military service was in the short-lived Black Hawk war of 1832 and an unsuccessful shopkeeper and farmer who greatly surpassed Lee in strategic depth and foresight. In this respect, the film Gettysburg reveals more about Lee than his hagiographers would care to admit. (Earl, a 1970 graduate of The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, admits that the American Civil War is not his preferred wargame era. His favorite Civil War games are 3W's Unconditional Surrender and the Fort Donelson game from SPI's 1862, a battle noted for its largest single haul of POWs in American military history and thus one not enshrined in the Pantheon of the "Lost Cause"). Back to Cry Havoc #10 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com