Hollywood’s fighting spirit?

Hollywood’s three most-filmed battles in American history are the Alamo, Little Bighorn and Pearl Harbor.

Since 1911’s “The Immortal Alamo,” 17 movies have featured the San Antonio mission clash, including 1955’s “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier” and John Wayne’s 1960 epic, according to Frank Thompson, author of “Alamo Movies” and a consultant on Touchstone Pictures’ new “The Alamo.”

Custer’s last stand was portrayed in D.W. Griffith’s 1912 “The Massacre,” 1942’s “They Died With Their Boots On,” 1968’s “Custer of the West” and 1970’s “Little Big Man.” Ninety-plus productions depict Tokyo’s surprise attack on Hawaii, including 1953’s “From Here to Eternity,” 1970’s “Tora! Tora! Tora!” and 2001’s “Pearl Harbor.”

These engagements all were defeats. Furthermore, the Alamo, Custer’s last stand and Pearl Harbor were surprise attacks and massacres, perceived as glorious defeats of brave but outnumbered men. Most San Antonio mission defenders -- even Davy Crockett, depicted by Wayne -- were wiped out. The Sioux killed swashbuckler Errol Flynn and Seventh Cavalry soldiers in “They Died With Their Boots On.” In Arthur Penn’s “Little Big Man,” Dustin Hoffman portrays the fictionalized sole survivor of Custer’s last stand.

Annihilations, particularly of outgunned or betrayed soldiers, confer martyrdom and serve as rallying cries. George C. Scott’s gung-ho speech in 1970’s “Patton” expresses a prevailing American attitude toward aggression: “[No] bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die.... [T]he stuff we heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, was a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.... Americans love a winner and do not tolerate a loser.... That’s why Americans have never lost, and will never lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.”

Given this fighting spirit, it’s odd that popular culture has an obsession with debacles. Perhaps, the studios fixate on the Alamo, Little Bighorn, and Pearl Harbor because all were defeats of Yankees engaged in true clashes of civilization. Furthermore, Mexicans were viewed as “papists,” Sioux were “pagans” and “Nipponese” were Shintoists and Buddhists. The brown, red and yellow victors clearly struck underlying anxieties in this country’s psyche.

D.W. Griffith’s “Martyrs of the Alamo” was released in 1915, the same year as his “The Birth of a Nation,” and there is a tenuous connection. “[In ‘The Birth of a Nation,’] the heroic organization is the KKK, rising up to protect Old South traditions, particularly white women from black males’ aggression,” says Melvin Donalson, author of “Black Directors in Hollywood.” In “Martyrs,” the battle is caused by Mexicans lusting after white females, notes Donalson, who teaches at Pasadena City College and Cal State L.A.

Some see Hollywood’s renewed fascination with the Alamo as a reflection of America’s post-Sept. 11 collective psyche. As Thompson says, “After Sept. 11, it got really onto the active list. And they wanted a real patriotic movie.”

Thompson contends that most other Alamo films were “virtually fact-free,” while the new movie has an historical authenticity. Many critics, although cool to the finished film, agree that it sticks fairly closely to known events. “This movie gives as much on the Mexican army as it does on the Alamo men. In most Alamo films, the Mexican point of view’s been pretty much ignored,” Thompson says, adding that there’s never been a Mexican version.

An ad for “The Alamo” proclaims “hundreds stood against an empire.” Another interpretation is: Hundreds stood for expanding empire against an indigenous people. The ad ballyhoos “the ultimate battle for freedom.” By whites introducing slavery to Texas? Or by indigenous people trying to prevent land grabs by white illegal aliens stealing their continent? History -- especially movie history -- can get tricky.

“The Alamo” reappeared as Americans were brutally bushwhacked in Fallouja, and Iraq roils. President Bush is a Texan, and there are parallels between the Lone Star state and 2004’s lone superpower. Bush told Iraqi insurgents: “Bring it on.” In “The Alamo,” Crockett (played by Billy Bob Thornton), Jim Bowie (Jason Patric), William Barret Travis (Patrick Wilson) and Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) were archetypal gunslingers, personifying the “don’t-mess-with-Texas” attitude.

As Scott’s Patton pointed out, losing is unbearable for Americans. Fear of defeat spurs us to ultimate victory, so earlier defeats of our noble fighting men will not have been in vain. The first World War II movie to show U.S. soldiers in combat against the Japanese was Republic’s appropriately named 1942 actioner “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Howard Hawks’ 1943 “Air Force,” starring John Garfield, Harry Carey and Gig Young, portrays a B-17 crew caught up in the Pearl Harbor catastrophe. But by the time the Warner Bros. morale booster ends, the flying fortress has helped exact revenge on an Imperial task force, although the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway weren’t until May and June 1942.

The “Pearl Harbor” of 2001 also ends with America’s military resurrection, as fliers Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett join Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s (Alec Baldwin) daring April 18, 1942, raid on Japan. Likewise, in the climax of 2004’s “The Alamo,” Sam Houston captures Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. Catastrophe, defeat, revenge -- classic Hollywood movies can’t get enough of these recurrent themes.

Ed Rampell co-wrote “Pearl Harbor in the Movies” and “Made In Paradise, Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and the South Seas” with Luis Reyes.