Feature film directors (and Meryl Streep) tell the tales of American feature film directors in the 1930’s and 40’s who were sent to war to make documentaries for the homefront… with one of the best motion-graphics-meets-stock-footage opening title sequences. If you’re interested in filmmakers and\/or war, the whole thing’s just fascinating.<\/p>\n
William Wyler, fresh off the inspirational Mrs. Miniver<\/a><\/em>, rages against racism while Frank Capra is producing Private Snafu<\/em> cartoons<\/a>. Working (mostly) under Capra, John Ford and George Stevens are sent to film D-Day. John Huston makes the gritty San Pietro<\/em>, using mostly reenacted fight footage but real dead bodies. And Citizen Kane<\/em> cinematographer Gregg Toland proves himself a poor director. Stevens went on to film the liberation of concentration camps, while Wyler snuck a trip home and found the holocaust had killed his family and all their neighbors. In the end, Huston’s final work about emotionally wounded soldiers was censored for decades, Ford returned to make They Were Expendable<\/em>, and Capra\/Wyler\/Stevens founded their own Liberty Studio, which immediately went broke on the flop It’s a Wonderful Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n I’d love to watch a bunch of the original documentaries themselves, all available on netflix: Battle of Midway<\/em>, Report from the Aleutians<\/em>, San Pietro<\/em>, Let There Be Light<\/em>, The Negro Soldier<\/em>, The Battle of Russia<\/em>, Nazi Concentration Camps<\/em> and Memphis Belle<\/em>. But that’s six hours of WWII docs, and it’s Cannes Month now, and six movies I want to see opened in theaters this week, and a new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000<\/em> just came out, and it’s baseball season…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Feature film directors (and Meryl Streep) tell the tales of American feature film directors in the 1930’s and 40’s who were sent to war to make documentaries for the homefront… with one of the best motion-graphics-meets-stock-footage opening title sequences. If you’re interested in filmmakers and\/or war, the whole thing’s just fascinating. William Wyler, fresh off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1049,93,394,506,1207,909,156,845,2266,507,1156,386,1231,472],"class_list":["post-11987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2010s","tag-documentary","tag-francis-ford-coppola","tag-frank-capra","tag-george-stevens","tag-guillermo-del-toro","tag-john-ford","tag-john-huston","tag-lawrence-kasdan","tag-meryl-streep","tag-paul-greengrass","tag-steven-spielberg","tag-william-wyler","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11987"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12035,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11987\/revisions\/12035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}