How Hollywood has filtered other real-life tragedies

How much time must pass before a tragedy is ready for its close-up?

"United 93," a movie about the one flight that didn't hit its intended target on Sept. 11, 2001, opens today, a mere 41/2 years after the day that changed the world and how we live in it. Is it too soon?

(enlarge photo) The Hindenburg (1975) Read reviews of 'United 93'

"We have constantly tried to make sense of 9/11 since it happened," says Matthew Bernstein, an Emory University associate professor of film studies. "These kinds of films have the potential to help us in that process of understanding such a traumatic event. As to whether 'United 93' is too soon, I really think it depends on the film itself — how much sensationalizing and manipulation [it] involves vs. how well it hews to the best principles of docudrama, i.e., compelling stories that are based in actual events."

Speaking from a more spiritual perspective, the Rev. Patricia Templeton, rector at St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church in Atlanta, agrees with Bernstein, adding: "I don't think there is a set time. It depends on what the event is and how it's portrayed. Telling the story of real events through film or fiction is a crucial way of keeping those stories alive. Most of what I know about the Holocaust, the gut-level emotions I have about it, are from reading novels or watching movies like 'Sophie's Choice' or 'Schindler's List.' They humanize that horror in a way that a mere recitation of facts in a history book cannot."

Movie lover Bob Cooper, president of Ivey Mechanical Co.'s Georgia business unit and a member of Templeton's congregation, puts it more simply. The time to make a film about 9/11, he says, is "when we start to forget."

Hollywood typically — but not always — has waited longer to depict major traumatic events than have the "United 93" filmmakers (with Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" following it shortly, on Aug. 9).

President Kennedy's assassination (1963)
— "Executive Action" (1973)

Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan starred in this thriller about a cabal of right-wing power brokers who plot to kill President Kennedy. Oliver Stone didn't show us his conspiracy theory in "JFK" until 1991.

Pearl Harbor (1941)
— "Across the Pacific" (1942)

At least five films referencing Pearl Harbor (including one starring the Bowery Boys) were released the year following the attack, mostly to stir up American patriotism. This one — about the plans for the attack — reunited director John Huston with the cast of "The Maltese Falcon" (Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet and Mary Astor). The attack itself wasn't fully re-created until 1970's "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (which also showed the Japanese side), followed by 2001's insipid "Pearl Harbor."

Vietnam (ended in 1975)
— "The Boys in Company C," "Go Tell the Spartans" and "The Deer Hunter" (1978)

You could argue that John Wayne's "The Green Berets" (1968) preceded them, but that was basically an updated World War II picture in a different setting. These films reflected the reservations and confusion that tore our nation apart. "Deer Hunter," with its infamous Russian roulette scene, won the Oscar for best picture. "Apocalypse Now" was still a year away.

The Holocaust (ended in 1945)
— "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1959)

As early as 1946, Orson Welles starred as the former mastermind of the death camps (living in Connecticut!) in "The Stranger," and in 1955, Alain Resnais' stunning documentary "Night and Fog" took us inside the camps. But this adaptation of the hit Broadway play got to the emotion of the Final Solution. Later would come "The Pawnbroker" (1964), "Sophie's Choice " (1982), "Shoah" (1985) and, of course, "Schindler's List" (1993).

The Hindenberg (1937)
— "The Hindenberg" (1975)

Apparently, the less the trauma, the longer it takes to make a movie about it. Capitalizing on the then-current disaster craze ("The Towering Inferno," "The Poseidon Adventure"), this is the movie that, blessedly, "United 93" is not: glossy, star-filled (George C. Scott, Anne Bancroft, Burgess Meredith) and preposterous.

United Flight 93 on television

TV, which usually has been quicker than the movies to produce docudramas and other shows based on tragic events, has already aired two programs based on the story of United Flight 93.

Last fall, Discovery's "The Flight That Fought Back" — a mix of re-enactments and interviews — averaged 7 million viewers. And A&E drew 5.9 million viewers, its largest audience ever, in January with "Flight 93," a dramatization based on facts in various public records. A&E will present an encore airing of its movie at 9 p.m. Saturday.

—  Howard Pousner