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Five Came Back: A Story Of Hollywood And The Second World War (2014)

by Mark Harris(Favorite Author)

4.07 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1594204306 (ISBN13: 9781594204302)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Penguin Press HC, The

review 1: Absolutely riveting. An amazing true story of 5 great film directors (Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens and William Wyler) and their experiences chronicling WWII. The best praise I can make about a book is that I LEARNED something. I was educated beyond my expectations about these men, their work and their contributions (good and mediocre) to film history. A valued addition to my library of cinema chronicling tomes.
review 2: This exploration of the effects of World War II on five directors--George Stevens, William Wyler, John Ford, John Huston, and Frank Capra--is an interesting read. I was most interested in the effects of the war on the making of particular movies. The author's discussions of the way the war affected Hollywood and movie-mak... moreing overall were also worthwhile and seem accurate. The biographical aspects of the book--such as how each director's war experience affected his relationships to his family--seemed less relevant. The overall impression that I received is that an organized military effort, coordinated between the branches of the service, could have used these directors' and others' talents much more effectively than the scatter-shot, undervalued approach that was actually employed. Of course, that leads one to the question of how much one wants the government involved in reporting and creative film-making both during and after a war, and my conclusion is that leaving the journalism and the creativity unsupervised, except when necessary to protect military secrets, is probably the best approach. But the government lost some chances to record the circumstances of the war by ignoring, for the most part, the role that film-making could have played in the cause of history. less

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