The other sections of this book deal with specific wars or parts of wars. This one is devoted to the aftermath. What do the participants—both winners and losers—do with the peace? How do they handle the internal and external changes that war has brought about? It's a complex subject, and it has inspired some excellent films. Two of the best were made in 1946. Edmund Goulding, …
1946 William Wyler William Wyler's story of returning veterans is the most critically acclaimed film of the post-war years. Because it has been so popular with audiences, few people realize how unusual it is. For mainstream entertainment, it's a drama with few conventional confrontations or resolutions. The characters are faced with difficult situations and they resolve them realist…
1989 Oliver Stone Everything that people love and detest about Oliver Stone's films is in full flower here—ambitious theme, bracing visual style, undisguised political biases. The film is also an important turning point in Tom Cruise's career, completing his transformation from rising star to serious actor. He received his first Academy Award nomination for his role as Ron Ko…
1978 Hal Ashby Hal Ashby's film shares many of the characteristics of the other big Vietnam film of 1978, The Deer Hunter. Both are passionate and essentially incoherent in their view of the war. In this instance, though, the filmmakers' sharply left-of-center sensibility piles on additional political baggage. As Ashby and writers Nancy Dowd, Robert C. Jones, and Waldo Salt see it, …
1996 Edward Zwick Edward Zwick's second war film doesn't equal Glory, but it does deal fairly with complex military issues. Zwick may attempt too much in his efforts to make a serious drama entertaining on an escapist level. If so, his mistakes are ambitious, and even when it is not at its best, the film is enjoyable. It has two important assets. The first is an imaginative script b…
1961 Stanley Kramer Writer Abby Mann and director Stanley Kramer use a variation on the traditional courtroom drama to examine the horrors of Nazi Germany. Though their film is long, deliberately paced, and grim, it deals honestly with a difficult subject. Unlike so many works that address Nazism, this one tries not to see it as pure evil, but instead to measure the degrees of individual and col…
1946 Edmund Goulding “This is the young man of whom I write. He is not famous. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end, he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on this earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. Yet it may be that the way of life he has chosen for himself may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow man so that long afte…
1949 Carol Reed In The Immortal Battalion, director Carol Reed praises the patriotic spirit that united England and other countries against the evils of fascism. In The Third Man, he takes a cool look at the fruits of that victory and finds a moral landscape as treacherous as the bombed-out rubble of Vienna. The film is justly famous as an intelligent thriller, precursor to the American films noi…