Wooden Crosses: A Movie of Wartime France
Reading the Absolutist last week, a British novel of war in the trenches, WW I, I was reminded of …
Tag Archives: War
Attila The Hun and Mao Tse-Tung in Song and Dance
I managed to crowd my Opera season into two evenings a few weeks ago, no longer able to afford the tariff for …
The Devil in the Flesh: Adultery in WW I, France
Raymond Radiguet, the 16 year old author of The Devil in the Flesh / “Le Diable au Corps,” 1923, died …
The Absolutist: A Novel of War Time Refusal
John Boyne, born in Dublin in 1971, manages to summon the spirits of two very particular men, sent to fight …
The French Resistance, A Priest and Dammed Desire
Updated at * below… Jean-Pierre Melville, whose well-regarded noir gangster film are on every Francophile or film-buff’s list of must-sees, …
The Silence of the Sea — A Film of Noncooperation with Evil
The Silence of the Sea, a 1949 film by Jean Pierre Melville, may be one of the strangest war movies …
Downfall: The Last 10 Days of Hitler’s Reich
I remember being interested in seeing Downfall, the 2004 movie by Oliver Hirschbiegel when it came to theaters, and somehow getting the idea …
Sunflower: Italians on the Russian Front — a Movie
Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, in their prime would be enough to attract any warm-blooded movie goer, much less an Italo-cinephile. …
Let There Be Light: John Huston’s 1946 Documentary on PTSD
John Huston is one of the great directors of American movies. Who hasn’t seen “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), “The African …
The Wedding Song — In Tunis As the Nazis Come
The Wedding Song [2008] is a deeply felt film of young women’s friendship under the extreme stress of wartime as …
The Crimean War: Orlando Figes
In 1853 the United States was 8 years away from a civil war. Napoleon had been defeated at Waterloo only …
Deep Blue Sea: Dark and Cold
Sometimes stage plays make it to the movies very well, other times not. Terrence Rattigan’s 1952 play, of love and …