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Flags of Our Fathers
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 Flags of Our Fathers Production NotesTagline: A single shot can end the war.
The film is based on James Bradley's book "Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima".
The Battle of Iwo Jima, which took place in winter 1945, was a turning point in the Pacific theater. About 6,000 Americans died and 17,000 were wounded during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
The battle produced one of the most enduring images of WWII: a photograph of U.S. servicemen raising an U.S. flag on the flank of Mount Suribachi, the island's commanding high point.
From Academy Award-winning director Clint Eastwood ("Million Dollar Baby," "Unforgiven") comes the World War II drama "Flags of Our Fathers," produced by Eastwood and Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg ("Saving Private Ryan," "Schindler's List").
February 1945. Even as victory in Europe was finally within reach, the war in the Pacific raged on. One of the most crucial and bloodiest battles of the war was the struggle for the island of Iwo Jima, which culminated with what would become one of the most iconic images in history: five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi.
The inspiring photo capturing that moment became a symbol of victory to a nation that had grown weary of war and made instant heroes of the six American soldiers at the base of the flag, some of whom would die soon after, never knowing that they had been immortalized. But the surviving flag raisers had no interest in being held up as symbols and did not consider themselves heroes; they wanted only to stay on the front with their brothers in arms who were fighting and dying without fanfare or glory.
"Flags of Our Fathers" is based on the bestselling book by James Bradley with Ron Powers, which chronicled the battle of Iwo Jima and the fates of the flag raisers and some of their brothers in Easy Company. Bradley's father, John "Doc" Bradley, was one of the soldiers pictured raising the flag, although James never knew the full extent of his father's experiences until after the elder Bradley’s death in 1994.
Production Information
It is the most memorable photograph of World War II, among the greatest pictures ever taken. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for photography and one of the most reproduced images in the history of photography, the picture has inspired postage stamps, posters, the covers of countless magazines and newspapers, and even the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
“Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima,” a picture taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945 depicts five Marines and one Navy Corpsman raising the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi. The image served as a counterpoint for one of the most vicious battles of the war: the fight to take Iwo Jima, a desolate island of black sand barely eight square miles that would prove a tipping point in the Pacific campaign. Lasting more than a month, the fight was a bloody, drawn out conflict that might have turned the American public against the war entirely, had it not been for the photo, which was taken and published five days into the battle.
The photograph made heroes of the men in the picture as the three surviving flag raisers were returned to the U.S. and made into props in the government’s Seventh War Bond Tour. Uncomfortable with their new celebrity, the flag raisers considered the real heroes to be the men who died on Iwo Jima; still, the American public held them up as the best America had to offer, the supermen who conquered the Japanese…
…and then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the glory faded. For two of the surviving flag?]raisers, life became a series of compromises and disappointments; for the third, happiness came only by shutting off his war experiences and rarely speaking of them ever again.
“Flags of Our Fathers” is a human drama of friendship and love, sacrifice and manipulation, set against the violent conflict of the battle of Iwo Jima. Twotime Academy Award winning director Clint Eastwood focuses equally on the war and home, crosscutting between the viciousness of the battle and the manufactured propaganda campaign and careful manipulation of the image that followed – issues that remain prevalent today. As “Flags of Our Fathers” shows how the photograph became the very beginning of celebrity worship, the film questions our need to create and celebrate heroes, sometimes at a cost.
 About the Photograph“Everybody has their own idea about what makes the photograph special,” says Clint Eastwood. “On one level, it’s guys doing some work – raising a pole – and that may be how the six guys in the picture saw it themselves. But in 1945, it symbolized the war effort.”
The famous picture, taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, actually depicts the second flag raising on Iwo Jima. After the invasion on the February 19th, the Marine fifth division began the attempt to capture Mt. Suribachi. By the fifth day, the American forces had suffered many casualties, but had also forced the Japanese to retreat into caves on the island.
That morning, they raised a small American flag on top of the mountain as a signal that it had fallen. As the story goes, the secretary of the Navy, who wanted it as a souvenir for himself, demanded the flag. The marines were ordered to take it down and Marine runner Rene Gagnon was instructed to carry up another, larger flag, to raise in its place.
Gagnon climbed to top of the mountain, where he found Marines Michael Strank, Harlon Block, Ira Hayes, and Franklin Sousley, who had spent the morning laying a telephone line to the top of the mountain. They needed to find something large to use for a pole, and found an old Japanese water pipe.
Because of the weight of the pipe, the Marines needed six men to lift it, and asked for the help of Navy Corpsman John Bradley. Rosenthal, aware of what was going on, put down his camera and began piling rocks that he could stand on to gain a better vantagepoint. Realizing he was about to miss his shot, he picked up his camera, and pressed the shutter release. He did not use the viewfinder. One four?]hundredth of a second later, history was made.
“When you get a picture like that, you don’t come away saying you got a great shot,” wrote Rosenthal in Collier’s magazine ten years later. “You don’t know.”
Indeed, it would be some time before Rosenthal knew he’d captured something lasting, as he had sent his film to Guam to be developed. When AP photo editor John Bodkin saw the picture, he immediately radiophotoed the picture to New York. Seventeen and one?]half hours after Rosenthal snapped the picture, it was on the AP wire – an astonishingly fast turnaround time. It would be five or six days before Rosenthal would see his now?]famous photograph.
Like the surviving men in his picture, Rosenthal became a celebrity. Initially classified 4-F by the Selective Service (and thus not eligible for military duty) because of poor eyesight, Rosenthal was reclassified 2-AF (essential deferment) because – according to a Time magazine article from the time – the picture entitled him “to a classification better than 4-F.”
Still, there was some controversy. A few days after the now?]famous photo hit the front pages of newspapers across the country, a reporter asked Rosenthal if he had staged the shot. Rosenthal, thinking that the reporter was referring to a different, obviously posed picture of Marines cheering with the flag, said, “Sure.”
The fact that the picture chronicles the second flag raising of the day also added to the confusion, and for the next fifty years, Rosenthal was accused of manufacturing an image that he’d seen earlier.
To help handle requests for interviews and appearances, the AP set up a “Rosenthal desk.” Rosenthal met President Truman, received a bonus of a year’s salary in War Bonds from the AP, and won the Pulitzer Prize.
Rosenthal died in August 2006 at the age of 94. In an obituary in the New York Times, Richard Goldstein praised the photographer’s most famous work, writing, “The triumphant portrait, representing the first seizure by American troops of territory governed as part of the Japanese homeland, struck a tremendous emotional chord on the home front and resonated deeply as a symbol of the diversity in American life.”
For Rosenthal, it was clear who the heroes were. In the Collier’s article, he commented, “…[O]f all the elements that went into the making of this picture, the part I played was the least important. To get that flag up there, America’s fighting men had to die on that island and on other islands and off the shores and in the air. What difference does it make who took the picture? I took it, but the Marines took Iwo Jima.”
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Ryan Philippe as John "Doc" Bradley and Stark Sands as Walter Gust in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers.
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