David Doc Robertson

World War II at the Movies David Doc Robertson

Other than love and death and growth of the human spirit, World War II has been the subject of more motion pictures than any other specific event - ever, and that's not including documentaries. Over 800 films have been made about those historic four years, depicting the Greatest Generation at its best and its worst. For the most part, many of these films ran their courses in movie houses, were shown on television a few times, and finally ended up in scholarly or studio archives or wasting away in someone's attic. The list of actors who participated in this ongoing monumental tribute to those who fought and died for the freedom of the world extends from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman to Richard Pryor, (yes, Richard Pryor), Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck, and Kate Beckinsale. Fortunately, after the final peace treaty was signed, the war was officially over, and the dying stopped. The stories of the war, which actually began before U. S. involvement, have since proliferated the golden screen with fictional or true accounts of soldiers, families, and victims of horrendous suffering on a worldwide scale. Some have been told more than once with greater detail, while resourceful artists still seek that untold saga waiting to be discovered. In writing about these films, I found it important to be objective and not approach the subject from a contemporary point of view. It is not my purpose here to judge these films as a critic. Only recently they have been produced with the artistry that comes close to depicting virtual re-enactments.