![]() ![]() Use quotation marks to search as a phrase Select "Full text" to search only the scanned or transcribed text for items. Select "Records" to search only metadata for items. When a job needs to be done, Holden is the one who does it, and he is one of the most unforgettable characters in American cinema.Select "Records and Full text" to search both the metadata and available full text. ![]() So here’s William Holden who is not claiming to be a hero he just wants to survive this. One thing you hear from a lot of veterans is the guy who talked the most about his wartime service and how brave he was is the often the man who did the least. When the plot of “who is the spy inside the barracks?” is slowly uncovered, then you see William Holden step up. He runs a little trinkets shop and barters with the Germans because it makes his life more comfortable, and he sells to his fellow prisoners in the barracks. ![]() He’s maybe the first great American anti-hero. ![]() There is also a spy among them.īut William Holden, who plays J.J. The prisoners try to have a Christmas dance in which the men dance with one another. There’s a rat race between rats named Equipoise and Schnickelfritz, and the prisoners put bets on their favorite rats. You have a lot of time on your hands and some of the things that happen in the barracks are really hilarious. You try to remember why you’re in this war in the first place, but it gets increasingly difficult. ( The Bridge on the River Kwai is one.) Directed by Billy Wilder, Stalag 17 is about men in captivity and how you go kind of stir-crazy. This one is about the “forgotten front” there are very few movies made about POWs. Watch: Amazon Prime, iTunes Stalag 17 (1953) Some of them bore psychic scars and others bore physical scars, like Harold Russell. To me it’s maybe the best film made about World War II because it’s about what happens after those 16 million men and women came back home. He has prosthetic hooks, and watching him dress, watching him drink a cup of coffee, watching him try not to notice the stares of the people on the street - it’s devastating. He was not a professional actor he was a serviceman in the war who had both hands blown off in a training accident. A lot of guys were able to stay home and advance, but he’s been gone.īut the reason this movie works is because of the third: a sailor, played by Harold Russell. A younger guy, played by Dana Andrews, was a hero in the Air Force and is back to being a soda jerk. One is an older guy, played by Fredric March, who has a family and goes back to his job at the bank. It’s about three servicemen who come home from the war and try to pick up their lives where they left off. Watch: Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, Google Play, iTunes, vudu, YouTube The war is in the background, but, by and large, this is a movie about human relationships and social change during war. films made during the war, and this is one of them. The freer sexual mores is a common theme of war films. One of the characters mentions there are eight women to every man in this town. There’s a housing shortage, so Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea are in the same apartment actually. area to work in these new offices and bureaucracies that were opening up to run the war. This story is about people coming to the Washington D.C. It’s about the great internal migration at the time: Of the 135 million people in the country, 24 million moved from their place of residence to work on war industries to help advance the war effort. John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis-Getty Imagesĭirected by George Stevens and starring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, it’s a trenchant look at the American home front during World War II. Watch: AmazonPrime, Google Play, iTunes, vudu, YouTube The More the Merrier (1943) That’s been extremely important to American memory of the war. We don’t pick a fight with anyone unless when we see someone being picked on, and then we step in. The movie also shows Americans as they like to see themselves, in the character of Rick. It expresses a high truth about World War II, that this was a moral conflict, that you had to be sure you were on the side of the right guys, and in this case, the right side happened to be on the side of the Allies. Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, is running an American café in Casablanca, and his famous line, he says it several times, is “I stick my head out for nobody.” At the end of that movie, Humphrey Bogart sticks out his neck for Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), the resistance figure who has to be smuggled out one step ahead of the Nazis to lead the worldwide struggle against fascism. Hitler and the Japanese militarists had to be stopped, and this movie is about the need to be clear about your moral purpose. World War II was fought for intensely moral reasons. ![]()
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