Man's Greatest Adventure

A good portion of the author's introduction is spent preparing faithful war movie fans for the shock of finding out their personal favorites have gone missing. Sacrifices were made to leave room for the requirements of a new kind of omnibus video guide, one with a sense of historical accuracy. Some of these war films were made in wartime, with inevitable effects otherwise unnoticeable to the average civilian. Sidebars in this book don't just celebrate the stars or throw out "didjaknow" trivia. There's a reason why both versions of Henry V are included; so you can appreciate the textual differences between Ken Branagh's 1989 portrait of a young man who grows up fast and Olivier's hand-made (of papier-mache and metal paint no less) epic, photographed throughout the worst of the Nazis' Gott strafe England campaign.

There's a reason why, Captain Dale Dye (USMC, Ret.) writes in the foreword, "novelists, screenwriters, and other storytellers keep coming back to the well." Dye, who has credits as a military/technical advisor or actor for 40 films, including Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July, says that the war movie tells a particularly powerful story because it features the full gamut of human emotions, totally unfettered. "Bad guys can be good and good guys can be bad under pressure of combat. Hell, anything can happen--and usually does--in war. In moviespeak, war's got legs." Dye's foreword breaks with the dry standard of an academic overview, and the typical celebrity's bout of name-dropping and in-jokes. It's a free-standing autobiography that retells, in a self-deprecating but unaffected style, his journey from disillusioned early retirement (as, he says, "a man without a plan") to the Oscar-caliber experience of Saving Private Ryan by way of an intense collaboration with fellow Viet Vet, Oliver Stone.

The book salutes 201 of the most significant war movies ever made: enduring classics like All Quiet on the Western Front, Casablanca, and Wings, as well as modern epics such as When Trumpets Fade, Saving Private Ryan, and The Thin Red Line... But its range is wide, with classic battle movies such as Henry V, Braveheart, and Gallipoli joining ranks with Vietnam dramas such as Platoon and The Siege of Firebase Gloria. VideoHound's War Movies scopes out the driving forces that brought these films to the screen; discovering often-overlooked gems as well as well-intentioned failures, fictional stories and documentaries alike. Each entry includes sidebars about the "Big Guns" (like John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart) and technical behind-the-scenes secrets (like Saving Private Ryan's battle choreography), plus full movie credits. International sections cover British, French, Japanese and Russian war stories, while times between the World Wars, during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, and postwar adjustment periods are also given unique treatments.

Breaks in the tension (of realistic films like Zulu, or stories about hardened vets like Sam Fuller, who filmed his platoon's liberation of a Czech concentration camp) allow for humor as well. Chuckle at the title cards from silent dogfight film Wings. Note how Waterloo is like a spaghetti western. Find out why John Wayne's directorial oddity, The Alamo, prefigured Blazing Saddles! Mayo's personally compiled list of war genre cliches is a Cook's Tour of international stereotypes:
* Japanese officers do not ride in cars.
* Italian officers are vain and love opera.
* French Resistance fighters wear black leather jackets and berets.
* Female French Resistance fighters wear tight black sweaters.
* Nazi officers enjoying a glass of Pernod at a Paris sidewalk cafe will be victims of a Resistance drive-by shooting.
* The sexually voracious wife of a German officer seduces one of his subordinates.
* The parachuting Allied pilot is killed by an enemy fighter while he's hanging helpless in his 'chute.
It's a small world, after all!

As Mike writes, at the end of his introduction, "The writing of this book certainly honed my own skepticism. I saw a lot of propaganda in all its forms--effective, sly, obvious, silly. But that's only one side of the war film and overall, the good far outweighs the bad in the ones considered here. I remain a true fan, and I hope that this book will enhance other fans' enjoyment of the form." ...We're sure it will!