Netflix put up a new “show” this weekend – really three hour-long documentaries called Five Came Back. It’s about five Hollywood directors who joined the armed forces during WW2 – primarily to make films for the government (don’t call it propaganda). It’s Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, William Wyler, and George Stevens.
Each man did his own type of film in different theaters of the war. One was on Midway, another in Italy, one filmed DDay and spent the next five days on a drunken bender. One filmed the advance across Europe and then documented Dachau, footage of which was used at Nuremberg. One lost his hearing filming from inside a bomber. One made a racist “know your enemy” documentary about the Japanese that was never shown because MacArthur didn’t want to demonize the enemy (that and the print arrived three days after Hiroshima).
There’s a lot of their footage in the film, much in color, and much from the documentaries and shorts they made from the footage. Some filmed battles, some re-enacted them, some created bawdy animated shorts for the GIs (including the character SNAFU), some filmed “why we fight” type reels, and one filmed a coming home doc about soldiers with PTSD before that was even an acknowledged thing.
Meryl Streep narrates and Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Copolla, Guillermo Del Toro, Paul Greengrass, and Lawrence Kasdan provide commentary.
Overall, a good and interesting documentary about the men who, between them, would go on to make It’s a Wonderful Life, Shane, Ben-Hur, The Searchers, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Score: 86