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Great War Videos and DVD's
Well, we do have some stuff, but not nearly as balanced as I want. Please send us your input and movies we should list! I have gone through and listed a lot of the "classics" we watched growing up... us inthe '60s and '70s anyway.
Most WWI movies are kinda rare and they're majorly over-acted. More recent ones like Lost Battalion starring Ricky Schroeder (ack!) are quite PC and still have idiot prop-geeks who don't know their job. And don't get me going on the "John-Boy" version of All quiet ont he Western Front... -- oh, movies like these are fine to watch and all, but as far as accuracy and detail, they suck. Hollywierd tends to have too many art-geeks who know nothing about what they are doing and they end up "fudging it," which is why I rarely watch movies about WW1 or for that matter the "Hitler Channel" (what most reenactors call the History Channel -- comes from back when that's all they showed, as compared to current day, whereas all they show is the "history of ketchup" and dumb stuff like that).
Anyway, you will notice I have more links and PREFER DVD's to VHS -- get over it! Time to buy a DVD machine Kinder!
Please send us your input and books/movies we should list!
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A note: if you use Earthlink, AOL or probably MSN as your ISP, they sometimes have "pop-up" ads blocked (a good thing) but it also can mess up our book links to amazon.com. If you are experiencing this problem, please contact your ISP and ask THEM how to correct this... we don't know how.
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One other thing: IF one of the book ads doesn't show up and instead, you see a big, ugly generic amazon.com ad, right click it and hit "reload frame" -- we are told this comes from Amazon's servers being busy ;-(
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All Quiet on The Western Front -- This 1930 film, No. 54 on the AFI's Top 100 list, still holds up as a surprisingly forceful and honest antiwar drama. Indeed, the modern sensibility is almost as startling as the sometime stagey acting of Lew Ayres, which can be excused by the fact that, three years after the introduction of sound, actors were still applying stage techniques to talking pictures.
Directed by Lewis Milestone, starring Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, Slim Summerville. Adapted by Maxwell Anderson from the novel written by Erich Maria Remarque. This is the classic movie about the German WWI soldier, with original uniforms and equipment and actors trained by real WWI German vets. A irritating thing about this movie is the heavy 1930s-style moralizing which includes Lew Ayres' heavy over-acting. The "must-have" movie for your library. Do not confuse this with the vastly inferior "John-Boy" made-for-TV version of All Quiet which was made about 25 years ago, that "film" is pretty bad and not worth buying. Anyway, buy this one, sometimes it even comes along with an interview of Lew Ayres.
Ayres plays a German college student during World War I, who is brainwashed into enlisting in the Army (along with the rest of his class) by a zealously inspirational college professor. Once in uniform and on the front lines, however, he quickly discovers that the glory of the Fatherland is of little concern to a soldier dodging bullets and explosions, whose comrades are dying in his arms. As powerful in its way as Platoon almost 60 years later, it remains a classic tale of young soldiers' confrontations with the possibility of imminent and arbitrary death.
Director Lewis Milestone shows a surprising range of techniques in this film from the formative years of moviemaking with sound.
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WESTFRONT 1918; Vier von der Infanterie (VHS --'taint in DVD yet...) -- Directed by G.W. Pabst, starring Fritz Kampers, Gustav Diessl, Hans Joachim Moebis, Claus Clausen. In German, with subtitles -- well, poor, but amusing subtitles anyway (“Hey, that’s not what Scheiße means!”). This is another “gotta-have” for your film library! Original uniforms and equipment with many of the actors having been real WWI German vets. The only bad thing about this flick is the heavy 1930s-style moralizing--much like in All Quiet. |
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Paths of Glory (1957) -- Stanley Kubrick had already made his talent known with the outstanding racetrack heist thriller The Killing, but it was the 1957 antiwar masterpiece Paths of Glory that catapulted Kubrick to international acclaim. Based on the novel by Humphrey Cobb, the film was initiated by Kirk Douglas, who chose the young Kubrick to direct what would become one of the most powerful films about the wasteful insanity of warfare. In one of his finest roles, Douglas plays Colonel Dax, commander of a battle-worn regiment of the French army along the western front during World War I. Held in their trenches under the threat of German artillery, the regiment is ordered on a suicidal mission to capture an enemy stronghold. When the mission inevitably fails, French generals order the selection of three soldiers to be tried and executed on the charge of cowardice. Dax is appointed as defense attorney for the chosen scapegoats, and what follows is a travesty of justice that has remained relevant and powerful for decades. In the wake of some of the most authentic and devastating battle sequences ever filmed, Kubrick brilliantly explores the political machinations and selfish personal ambitions that result in battlefield slaughter and senseless executions. The film is unflinching in its condemnation of war and the self-indulgence of military leaders who orchestrate the deaths of thousands from the comfort of their luxurious headquarters. For many years, Paths of Glory was banned in France as a slanderous attack on French honor, but it's clear that Kubrick's intense drama is aimed at all nations and all men. Though it touches on themes of courage and loyalty in the context of warfare, the film is specifically about the historical realities of World War I, but its impact and artistic achievement remain timeless and universal. |
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Sergeant York (VHS --'taint in DVD yet... them commie bastaards) -- Gary Cooper plays Alvin York, the real-life country lad and sharpshooter drafted to fight during World War II but blocked from killing by his pacifist sentiments. Howard Hawks makes a rousing, heroic film out of the tale, and Cooper gives one of his best performances (for which he won an Oscar). The 1941 feature seems as much a valentine to wartime America (and a not-so-subtle piece of propaganda) as anything, with Hawks capturing splendidly shot scenes of life in York's home state of Tennessee, which in turn provide a striking contrast to the battlefield. A key scene in the film, in which York is presented with an argument in favor of killing in war, is still thought provoking. |
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