[jyl]

I watched this tonight. It is a fascinating and thoughtful documentary about five top Hollywood directors who volunteered for the military in World War 2 and made war movies to support the war effort. At first they struggled to work within the military bureacracy, making overt propaganda and sanitized or staged rah-rah. By the end of the war they were making powerful, groundbreaking, historically important, real life documentary films that changed the way the war was seen and changed the directors themselves. When they returned to civilian life, they were different men and each then made their greatest movies.

The directors were Frank Capra, John Ford, John Houston, George Stevens and William Wyler. There's probably ten Oscars between them. The series is narrated by some of today's greatest directors.

They made movies about San Pietro, Pearl Harbor, the African Campaign, the Negro Soldier, the Blitz, war hospitals. They filmed the Memphis Belle's 25th mission, the island campaigns, D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Paris, the discovery of the concentration camps. Some of their footage was suppressed until decades later. Some was too gruesome to ever be shown. Two of them were wounded, some of their cameramen died. Modern documentary film making, taking handheld cameras to capture real action, shaking and concussed, probably started then.

Highly recommended.