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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 6, 2011 21:37:02 GMT -5
Between some of NewMad's and Crowfan's posts and hanging out with a vet recently, I was considering a thread on war documentaries. That, or a wider one on general documentaries, might still be a good idea. A good OB idea might be one on the effects of shifting from print to video for such things, but I digress again. With that in mind I got to looking for the haunting opening credits of Gwynne Dyer's War, which ran on PBS in the early '80s and was the most systematic televisual discussion of warfare as a human institution I've ever seen. What I found was the whole series, and it's sucked me in again. The linking is a bit scattershot, however, so I hunted up the bits and put them in order for my own benefit. Having done so, I figured why not share the results. Dyer is not someone with whom I always precisely agree, but he is someone to whom I always attentively listen. I'd say it's worth anyone's time to do the same, while cautioning that the series is often as disturbing as it is insightful. The world has changed since 1983, but I don't think the relevance of this material has, even if the nuclear arsenals aren't quite as hair-trigger . . . Segment One: The Road to Total War part 1part 2part 3part4part 5part 6Segment Two: Anybody's Son Will Do part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5part 6Segment Three: The Profession of Arms part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5part 6Segment Four: The Deadly Game of Nations part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5part 6Segment Five: Keeping the Old Game Alive part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5part 6Segment Six: Notes on Nuclear War part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5part 6Segment Seven: Goodbye War part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5part 6
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 7, 2011 18:22:33 GMT -5
cool, i'd participate in a war doc thread. I've still got a bunch of world at war disks on my queue but i'm also gearing up to start a world war i documentary as soon as i get through all this stuff from the George Lucas obsession this site's sent me on.
One of my more recent excursions has been a book on tape called "The War Lovers," a very interesting study of the Spanish-American War as a biography of Teddy Roosevelt, WH Hearst, William James and some other prominent characters who played a role in starting and fighting that war. Netflix has a few docs about the Spanish-American War, in fact. I'd be interested in checking out some docs of wars outside the usual suspects -- the Civil War, WWI and II, Vietnam, etc. For instance, the Russo-Japanese War of 1902! how much do i not know about that war? Well, just about everything.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 7, 2011 20:16:47 GMT -5
OK, I'll change the thread title then, and just leave War as a highly recommended example. I've rewatched all but the last, and if anything it's even better than I recollected. Truth to tell, back then I don't think I'd have laid money on seeing 2011 without a nuclear exchange.
Your posts on World at War also bring up that excellent one. I first saw it at age ten or twelve and certainly wasn't fully processing it. Still, I'm thankful there was something other than Hogan's Heroes to shape my early view of the conflict.
I've also found streams of some excellent wartime by the likes of Billy Wilder and John Huston, so it is a rich topic.
Heh heh . . . actually the Russo-Japanese War was '04~'05, but '02 was the date of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance which a significant step toward it. (^_^)
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 8, 2011 11:30:06 GMT -5
starting through "War" now. The comments on those youtube clips actually give me a little hope for humanity, which is not usually how Youtube comments make me feel.
I need to start up on WaW again, i got through disk 3 and then got distracted getting other stuff...
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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 8, 2011 12:17:36 GMT -5
I know what you mean about YouTube comments. They can be depressing, and given the subject matter I was afraid to look at them.
I finished War again. Truly excellent laying out of the problem, though Dyer's final, tentative suggestions of a solution don't seem workable to me (though that's getting into OB territory).
World at War was truly an achievement. I think the Brits are generally better on those sorts of things, but it was also made at just the right moment. Enough time had passed for feelings to cool and many secrets to come out, but even many high level participants were still around to be interviewed.
I like that they also did segments on several of the home fronts, with "Home Fires," "Red Star" and "Japan" being favorites of mine. Also the final segment, "Remember," is a very powerful capstone.
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Post by Crowfan on Nov 8, 2011 16:22:23 GMT -5
World At War is an excellent series. I have it on DVD. I would also highly recommend the Ken Burns series, The Civil War, which is a beautiful example of a documentary. I remember when PBS first showed it.
There is also an excellent British, I believe, documentary on World War One called The First World War which was originally produced by their Channel 4. It has been on the Discovery Military Channel and is available on DVD. It looks at the war from all sides, uses letters, etc. to explain things, and in general try to explain the First World War to people who aren't college professors or history majors.
An older documentary that's been on the History Channel is The Nazis: A Warning From History, about the rise and fall of the Third Reich. With interviews from survivors, letters, etc. It came out in the 90's but is also on DVD.
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Post by Crowfan on Nov 8, 2011 17:37:49 GMT -5
Tonight on The History Channel is the premier of VietNam in HD. It looks pretty good from the ads
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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 9, 2011 9:03:02 GMT -5
Being HD, I presume that's not the old PBS one, but something new? Burns' The Civil War is definitely a good one. One reason so many documentaries focus on more recent wars is because there's footage for them. It's kind of like the old joke about losing your keys in the basement buy searching the kitchen because the light's so much better there. Just wanted to link some of the old, wartime ones I've been watching lately, as many are online. The first two are William Wilder. Memphis Belle documents a B-17 mission to Wilhelmshafen (and was the basis for a horrid Mathew Modine film). Thunderbolt covers P-47s doing interdiction in Italy, and the scenes of their housekeeping show just what kids those flyboys were. Note that Thunderbolt was not released until '47. I've heard various reasons, but have wondered if it might have been the fairly indiscriminate strafing shown. To this day it's hard to know just who any particular ground target is, and the "Oh well, no friends of mine" attitude among pilots is pretty common and comprehensible enough. John Huston's San Pietro is also streaming. It documents the battle for that town, one typical of Italy which just happened to sit on a strategic pass. Bill Mauldin called it the best documentary of the war, and his Back Home includes a cartoon of Willie at the ticket counter of a theatre running it saying, "You're damned right it showed the war; that's why I want my money back!"
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 9, 2011 9:52:51 GMT -5
Burns' The Civil War is definitely a good one. One reason so many documentaries focus on more recent wars is because there's footage for them. this actually makes me wonder if we'll start seeing fewer docs about post-Vietnam war docs because now that they embed journalists we're back to not having a lot of footage of wars anymore.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 9, 2011 10:57:29 GMT -5
Hard to say. I suspect they're still generating a fair amount of footage, on top of which there's cheap modern video, though of lesser quality. Modern guided weapons also generate quite a bit, though that restricts your view to a fairly narrow keyhole.
There's also the increasing popularity of CGI, but that's problematic. I found a chunk of a Hiroshima documentary awhile back that had elaborate CGI, unfortunately highly inaccurate.
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 9, 2011 12:53:34 GMT -5
you know, i think i might have "San Pietro" on an old VHS tape somewhere. I remember long, long, LONG ago seeing a documentary on San Pietro that looked to have been military-made, and i was expecting rah-rah propaganda, and instead it was very well made and haunting stuff. You see the film of those kids and it's like you're looking at ghosts, because most of them died over the months it took to move up into italy.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 9, 2011 13:02:55 GMT -5
Yes, I also remember an interview with Huston some years ago in which he said that the first edit included interviews with several GIs about their hopes for the postwar world, after which came the footage of the same guys going into body bags. He ultimately decided that would be too much for their loved ones.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 10, 2011 23:50:21 GMT -5
Caught a bit on NPR today about a documentary running on POV tonight about National Guardsmen from Michigan serving in Afghanistan. Sounds interesting, essentially it's a unit of combat engineers who grew up together and went into combat together when their Guard unit was called up.
That would have been a common story in the Civil War, and in the British Army of WW1 was also common (and tragic when such units went into costly attacks). Wouldn't have been common in the US forces in the world wars, though. Many Guard divisions were federalized for them, but in every case I've heard of there had been considerable personnel transfer during training and by the time the units went into action they'd lost their local character.
Hate to admit that that surprised me. Sometimes the past is so well documented one overlooks the present.
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Post by Crowfan on Nov 12, 2011 12:30:31 GMT -5
In thinking about why there aren't that many docs about the current war, I think some of what has been shot is probably classified. That's just how the military works. Eventually stuff will come out, but as long as we have troops in Afganistan or Iraq, you probably won't see a lot. At least not from US sources.
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Post by Crowfan on Nov 12, 2011 13:03:29 GMT -5
Back in May, HBO ran a documentary called WarTorn 1861-2011. It covers veterans and post traumatic stress syndrome, or PTSD. It's a fascinating look and PTSD is nothing new. I expect if they had found letters from the Revolutionary War, those would have been included too. It's not for the faint of heart though, some of the images and pictures are very explicit.
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