The real history behind Saoirse Ronan’s movie

November 24, 2024 Vaseline blog 0

The real history behind Saoirse Ronan’s movie

Spoiler alert! The following story contains major plot details about “Blitz” (now streaming on Apple TV+).

NEW YORK – Saoirse Ronan had no desire to make another World War II drama.

But that changed when the “Atonement” actress read “Blitz,” which eschews the battlefield for a slice-of-life tale about a working-class mom named Rita (Ronan), who sends her 9-year-old son, George ( Elliott Heffernan), away to the countryside to protect him from the German blitzkrieg bombings of London. The film is written and directed by “12 Years a Slave” Oscar winner Steve McQueen.

“He took a story that we thought we knew and showed us a completely different side to it,” Ronan says. “The fact that he chose to make a mother and child the heart of the movie is so powerful. “It’s big and explosive, but he also strips it back to these really beautiful, intimate moments.”

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Were ‘Blitz’ characters George and Rita real people?

“Blitz” is a predominantly fictional story, although its characters and events are based on meticulous research. George, for instance, was inspired by a photograph McQueen came across “a small Black child with this large suitcase, waiting to be evacuated at a railway station,” he says. “As soon as I saw that image, I wanted to know what his story was and what would happen to him.”

McQueen was never able to identify the boy, but hopes his relatives might come forward as “Blitz” continues to be seen by more audiences.

Rita, meanwhile, was an amalgam of women “who were the backbone of the country,” McQueen says. While the men were away fighting, “they were the ones who looked after their elderly parents, evacuated their children and worked in ammunition factories. “This is the story of these women who have basically never been (represented) in war movies before.”

Did the London subway tunnels flood during World War II?

One of the film’s most harrowing sequences is the flooding of a London metro station, as George and dozens of others struggle to unlock the exit as waters quickly rise. The scene was inspired by the Balham station disaster in October 1940, which killed at least 64 people. “That’s all true,” McQueen says. “There was a bomb that exploded above (ground) and hit a bus, which went into a crevasse and broke a water pipe. That went straight into the underground.” But like George in the movie, “there was a 9-year-old boy who actually saved people by pushing through the iron gates” and helping them escape.

McQueen studied first-person testimonies, as well as the drawings of artist Henry Moore, to try and capture the panic of the air raids. It was visceral for the actors, too.

“To have explosions and children crying and so much choreographed chaos on set, it was quite triggering and overwhelming,” Ronan recalls. “But I didn’t want to shy away from that. I wanted to let that take over, because the fear of war is not knowing when it’s going to end or if you’re going to live another day. “What that does to your psyche is like nothing else.”

Did people steal corpses during the German blitzkrieg bombings?

There’s another disturbing moment in the film when the famed nightclub Café de Paris is bombed by Germans, killing at least 34 people including Ken “Snakehips” Johnson (Devon McKenzie-Smith), a gay Black bandleader. The song “Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!,” performed by Anita Sinclair (Celeste), was “the actual song being played when the bomb dropped,” McQueen says.

In the movie, a group of thieves wander through the rubble of the nightclub, stealing watches and wallets from dead bodies. “It was very important to see the makeup and disparity of London in the middle of the blitz, but also the aftermath where people are (cutting off) fingers to get jewelry,” McQueen adds. “Everything we show is based on historical fact.”

What is the song Saoirse Ronan sings in ‘Blitz’ movie?

When she’s not working in a factory, Rita is an aspiring singer who performs a handful of jazz and big band favorites throughout the film, including Fats Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehavin.’ ” She also croons the emotional “Winter Coat,” which sounds like a 1940s standard but was actually written for “Blitz.”

“I got my father’s winter coat when he died and I always thought it could be a good idea for a song,” McQueen recalls. Rita dedicates the wistful tune to George in a BBC radio performance after he evacuates London: “The idea of ​​putting this coat on, and the presence of someone around your body – it’s almost like a hug.”