#I didn't even mention Ronald Reagan auditioning for Capra's no-fraternizing in Germany doc

[opheliaintherushes]

The last five minutes of Five Came Back made me weep unabashedly (I am a sucker for a good ‘rediscovering our humanity at the movies’ montage) so it was with rapturous pleasure that I tackled Mark Harris’ detailed history.  Ostensibly a focus on five directors (Frank Capra, William Wyler, George Stevens, John Ford, and John Huston) and their involvement in the war effort, Harris sweeps back the curtain on a treasure trove of fascinating details

- Hollywood refrained from incorporating anti-Nazi sentiment into their films throughout the 30s until Jack Warner (who was, let me say, quite the character) finally threw down the gauntlet

- the reason for this, of course, is because nearly all of the studio heads were Jewish at the time, and red-baiting from isolationist types was barely a smokescreen for anti-Semitism (it comes up again when Capra, compiling Why We Fight, constantly and inaccurately accuses his left-leaning writers team of inserting secret Communist messages)

- there are a bunch of cameos from major power players later: Harry Truman raises his profile by questioning the waste of propaganda; Capra recruits Dr. Suess and Mel Blanc for a series of cartoons; Marshall (yes, of the Marshall Plan) oversees the war film department; George Stevens stops angry young man Irwin Shaw (!) from starting a fight and takes him under his wing - the push and pull of American vs British propaganda - little warnings not to tell the British we won the last war when American troops made it over there; the superiority of British propaganda threatening the narrative that the U.S. was leading the war effort in the public’s eyes - the hints of a whole other film history that never happened; films like Huston’s PTSD doc Let There Be Light shelved, incise and relevant dialogue cut - William Wyler’s story definitely stands out (you can see why he inspired Spielberg) - Wyler bribing the State Department for entry of more and more relatives; Wyler punching an anti-Semite on leave; Wyler flying combat missions to the dismay of his superiors, who realized that if he was captured by the Germans, he would be killed; Wyler deafening himself on his final run but returning home to usher in a new era of realism with The Best Years of Our Lives - in particular, Harris details a conversation between Wyler and the woman watching his father’s old shop in his Alsatian hometown; it volleys between the woman’s anger at the American bombs that had recently hit and Wyler’s anger at the collaboration that had thrived during the war. He speaks to the mayor in search of family and friends, but the mayor tells him not to ask questions - all of the Jews are gone - the final chapters where Stevens stumbles upon and documents the liberation of Dachau are harrowing, into the grotesque of the Nuremberg trials, where his film provokes only pride from the accused, and to the revelation that he then sealed the film away until he was to make The Diary of Anne Frank; he lasted five minutes, locked it away, and never again returned.