|
Post by kijii on Sept 28, 2017 23:00:17 GMT
A Soldier's Story (1984) - Excellent movie directed by Norman Jewison and totally written by Charles Fuller--play and screenplay. I just saw it for the first time this year. It is really somewhat of a mystery story than anything else.
Biloxi Blues (1988) about boys who were drafted and went through boot camp but missed the war itself.
|
|
|
Post by manfromplanetx on Sept 28, 2017 23:11:09 GMT
Heroes For Sale (1933). From the gloom of World War I of trench warfare to the tramp armies of the depression. Veteran , Thomas Holmes (Richard Barthelmess), struggles to make his way in civilian life, obstacles confront him in almost every way imaginable.
Tom was a war hero whose bravery and glory got pinned to another cowardly soldier. Tom was seriously injured and became a POW, treated for his injuries Tom developed a morphine addiction. Exposed as an addict, he is confined and eventually cured in an asylum. When he comes out in 1922, he is unemployed and alone but determined he embarks on a fresh start. Despite all the hardships the veteran maintains a positive attitude, he is a humanist, an idealist and an inventor but once again Tom's return to a normal life is thwarted for is wrongly arrested as a ringleader of a riotous mob, and put away for five years in prison...
This is a haunting and powerful social conscious drama, William Wellman's Heroes for Sale was released at one of the darkest points in the Depression Era. The films view of returning veterans and American society were particularly dark. The police are there to beat up demonstrators and harass people, who they consider dangerous radicals, their squads little better than vigilante gangs. The bankers are crooks, honest businessmen are outweighed by those who care only for their profits and at the expense of workers... but the ending is not in despair Tom's rousing final speech, is an expression of hope with confidence in the future...
|
|
|
Post by bravomailer on Sept 28, 2017 23:38:50 GMT
Malick's The Thin Red Line gets inside the minds of soldiers in battle. It draws a great deal from Cornel Wilde's overlooked Beach Red.
Till the End of Time is a good film about GIs back from WW2, which got overshadowed by The Best Years of Our Lives. Come to think of it, Crossfire fits in here.
|
|
|
Post by manfromplanetx on Sept 28, 2017 23:46:29 GMT
The Strong Man (1926) Frank Capra's debut feature... The film opens with our hero Harry Langdon playing a meek WW1 Belgian soldier, behind barbed wire in "no mans land" on the European frontlines. he alone mans a machine gun post. A distraction from the horror and a huge moral booster Harry receives and reads affectionately pen-pal letters from America. He is infatuated by a letter and a photo from Mary Brown an American girl who has written to him...
When the war is over the veteran soldier decides to immigrate to America to find Mary Brown...
The sending of pen-pal letters to the frontline soldiers I found an interesting aspect... how many other returning veterans sought out their pen-pal friends?...
During World War One up to 12 million letters a week were delivered to soldiers, many on the front lines. and an equally large number were sent from the front, back home. The wartime post was a remarkable operation, a fascinating story of remarkable ingenuity and amazing courage.
|
|
|
Post by neurosturgeon on Sept 28, 2017 23:48:48 GMT
Not a film most would think of, but a good one. Wish I could manage to post pictures with my iPad because I have some from the stage production done in Los Angeles a few years ago, with Martin Sheen doing the part of the father. As a girl, I like the almost syrupy ones. "Till the End of Time" was written by Niven Busch with the hopes his wife, Teresa Wright, would play the lead. She decided to do "Best Years of Our Lives" instead. No wonder the marriage didn't last. I also like "You Came Along," about the doomed soldier on the bond tour. i keep the Kleenex😵 handy.
|
|
|
Post by bravomailer on Sept 28, 2017 23:59:51 GMT
Sinatra plays a deranged veteran in Suddenly. 6.5/10.
Hmmm...I suddenly thought of The Manchurian Candidate.
|
|
|
Post by ZolotoyRetriever on Sept 29, 2017 1:46:37 GMT
Sinatra plays a deranged veteran in Suddenly. 6.5/10. Hmmm... I suddenly thought of The Manchurian Candidate. Yep... I also think of his "glam" war movie, Never So Few (1958), with Gina Lollobrigida. That one is a guilty pleasure of mine.
|
|
|
Post by ZolotoyRetriever on Sept 29, 2017 1:59:28 GMT
A couple of foreign films come to mind:
Mediterraneo (1991), Italian, directed by Gabriele Salvatores. Comedy-drama. In WW2, an Italian Army unit of misfits occupies an isolated non-strategic Greek island for the duration of the war.
A Year of the Quiet Sun (1984), Polish, directed by Krzysztof Zanussi. Drama, set immediately after WWII in an area abandoned by the Germans and in the process of being resettled by Poland. While one small town begins to be revived, an American soldier (Scott Wilson) and Polish refugee (Maja Komorowska) fall in love.
|
|
|
Post by kijii on Sept 29, 2017 2:25:12 GMT
Did Fred Zinneman direct a post war triolgy? I have heard it described that way:
1. The Search (1948) 2. Act of Violence (1949) 3. The Men (1950)
What about Teresa (1951)? If so, we might call it a post war tetrology
|
|
|
Post by koskiewicz on Sept 29, 2017 16:52:00 GMT
...and a few more:
Fraulein Doktor - a little seen 1968 film set in the WWI trenches
A Midnight Clear
Bridge on the River Kwai
Stalag 17
Bataan!
Back to Bataan
Memphis Belle
|
|