Posted on 09/20/2007 12:39:48 PM PDT by dead
THIS is the big one.
I have spent the better part of my adult life watching TV for a living, and I have never experienced anything more powerful than this. "The War," the 14-hour documentary miniseries about World War II from epic-filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, is this fall's main event.
< snip >
I can assure you that you have never seen anything like this before, even though it might seem as if World War II has been covered from every possible angle in the hundreds of other documentaries seen on TV over the years.
This one succeeds at encompassing the entire scope of the Second World War by telling its story from the point of view of the Americans from all walks of life who went abroad to fight it, and the ones who participated in the war effort at home.
Even if you have watched a thousand World War II documentaries, you have never heard stories about the war like the ones told here.
More than any other treatment of the war, this one really gets to the central issue - the killing, and how ordinary people did it. When you hear the stories told by some who were there and did some of the killing, you will not believe your ears.
< snip >
It's like you've been through something unique and awful that has changed you forever.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
During wartime, films should be patriotic and show glorious death, like those John Wayne made during WWII (examples, Flying Tigers, Shores of Iowa Jima), and not show death and destruction, like I’m sure this Ken Burns film will. (I saw his Civil War program.)
During WWII John Huston, the film director, made for the army (he was in the military then) a film called The Battle of San Pietro. This was a documentary made on the spot as US forces captured an Italian town from the Germans.
The idea was to film combat as it really is with all the death and heartbreak to show it to troops in order to help perpare them for the experience before going into combat. When the army brass screened the film, their reaction was that it was too graphic. If they showed it to the troops, they’d resist going into combat, and the brass banned the film. After the war, a censored version was released.
That’s why I suspect showing Ken Burns The War at this time might, in part, be due to anti-war liberals’ desire to break America’s will to continue with the Iraq War until victory is achieved.
I had the honor to meet a man recently who was one of the first 50 Americans to land on Normandy. He was a UDT frogman clad only in a swimsuit with mask, fins and a .45.
I need to make contact with him and learn his story.
Doesn’t anyone think it’s suspicious that liberal PBS is screening this WWII program when we are in the midst of a war?
Ken Burns makes buckets and buckets of money for PBS. They’ll show anything he makes as soon as its ready.
Adam Buckman is a pretty conservative reviewer, so I think he would be sensitive to ulterior motives in this presentation.
War is violent. War is about killing people or being killed. I don’t think there’s anybody who doesn’t know that already. I don’t see any pacifist agenda in honoring those who step up to the ugly business when it becomes necessary.
Not the lonely violin, PLEASE!
What would you expect accompanying the reading of "The Letter Home" - a tuba?
????? I don't remember any special units for Hispanics. They served along with Italians, Irish, German, etc. etc. and other Americans. Unfortunately there were separate units for Black-Americans. I shared a shelter-half after we landed in Marseilles with Chavez from the Southwest. I am Irish. Our squad leader was an Italian from NYC. I don't know what our platoon leader was but he got buried in France.
Perhaps of interest for today's wars. The Battle of the Bulge was won by draftees. There wasn't too many regular army guys left.
Burns will weave racism into this one, like he does with all his work.
This film has been under production since 2001. It is scheduled to run now because it is finished.
I just finished reading the book that has been released to coincide with the film’s release. It is powerful and gripping. I can’t wait to see the film.
No, I don’t think war films should show “patriotic and heroic” death. Going to war requires patriotism and some reasonable degree of heroism, but death is never anything but awful. That’s why we should never, ever go to war unless we are certain we have no other choice and we exert whatever energy and resources are required to win with the least possible loss of life.
World War II was a truly brutal experience for those who fought it. My Dad was a navigator on a B-17 flying out of southern England in 1944-45. He had a horrible scar on his forehead from a wound he received and I am named after his co-pilot who got his badly shot up airplane back to England after the pilot was killed and my Dad and half the crew were wounded. I never, ever heard my Dad utter a word about his combat experiences other than to explain to me how I got my name when I was 8 years old.
We are going to be lucky enough to hear some of those stories from men like my dad beginning Sunday. If it is as good as the book has been, it will be great.
I just hope that somehow somebody outside the echo-chamber of PBS
got Ken Burn’s attention by saying:
1. This had better be as good or better than you Civil War series.
2. You’re going to have to sweat this one in order to redeem your
reputation after those snoozers you did on “Jazz” and “Baseball”.
(OK, that’s just VOA’s fallible personal opinion)
3. If you don’t get at least one commentating historian as awesome as
Shelby Foote, you will be in deep doo-doo.
(And no, you can’t use Shelby Foote because, as we say down South,
he has passed.)
He sure knew how to make you want to run up that hill behind him.
I think one of my cousins got the Duke's autograph on his bib overalls during the shooting of the movie near Dubuque.
“No, I don’t think war films should show “patriotic and heroic” death.”
War films just have to show what really happened.
That’s enough to fill any screen.
It may be apocryphal, but suppossedly a US General had a terse interchange
with director/actor John Huston at a cocktail party.
The general says “Huston, I hear you’ve just wrapped a war film and
it’s not very patriotic, maybe even anti-war!”
Huston replied “General, the day I make a PRO-War film, I hope you
will shoot me.”
Negronauts....Black NASSA....too funny, let’s Ken Burns it.
If it's anything like his other work, I'm sure there will be several segments focusing on how terrible the big bad white people in this country treated others during the war.
Of course it should have been ‘The Sands of Iwo Jima.’ I spell checked it and didn’t note the ‘correction’ was incorrect. Plus, that film isn’t a good example because it was made after WWII.
Maybe a better example would have been ‘Wake Island,’ released in 1942, showing the heroic deaths of the Marines defending Wake, though it didn’t star John Wayne.
The narrator bills himself as a Freno State graduate. Great satire!
I don’t think any WWII documentary can ever top “The World At War.”
It’s a small world after all.
Probably not many days when Ms. Goodwin gets mentioned in TWO threads
at FR.
I’m not self-promoting, but you might like to see the thread about
one of Ms. Goodwin’s fellow historians and my post at #72 at URL below
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1899635/posts
So, it starts this coming sunday night?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.