Five Came Back

Five Came Back (Laurent Bouzereau, 2017) If you've ever cared to delve into the "Special Extra's" of some of your favorite DVD's, you might have seen the name of Laurent Bouzereau, a French director who has done a lot of producing/helming chores on many "Making of" features as well as a few soundtrack reconstructions. One word comes to mind when considering Bouzereau's work and that is "definitive"—once he's done a documentary on a film by Spielberg, or Hitchcock, or Scorsese, or DePalma, or Lucas, or Lean, or Bertolucci, you can pretty much say "Okay, that's been done, I don't need to see anything more about it" because Bouzereau's research is fastidious, his story-telling skills make the most esoteric points obvious to the untrained, and his attitude incessantly celebratory.

He has expanded his reach and, under Spielberg's "Amblin" shingle directed a 3 hour distillation of Mark Harris' extraordinarily well-researched book "Five Came Back," detailing the war-time careers of five Hollywood filmmakers who volunteered into the Army Signal Corps for the purposes of documenting the war, creating propaganda films for the public and educational films for the troops, with all the professionalism and artistry that they had to bear. The purpose was to "sell" the war and counter the propaganda efforts of the Axis powers, who were creating a new form with the use of film.

Guillermo del Toro takes on Frank Capra

It's a complex story of the life- and career-transforming effects on five very different directors—Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, George Stevens, and John Huston. The backgrounds and career-stages of the five couldn't be more diverse. Capra and Ford started their careers in the silent era, while Huston had just started directing films after a tenure as a screen-writer. William Wyler was an immigrant from the very theater where the war in Europe was taking place. George Stevens was known for making stylish comedies.

Francis Ford Coppola talks about John Huston

Bouzereau tells their stories, with archive footage—some of which has never been seen due to its graphic nature—the work of the film-makers, archived interviews with the five, and a chorus of contemporary film-makers who bridge the gaps in the narration (done by Meryl Streep) with anecdotes and analysis. The "new kids" take on a director apiece: Guillermo del Toro focuses on Capra, Steven Spielberg on Wyler, Lawrence Kasdan on Stevens, Francis Ford Coppola on Huston, and Paul Greengrass on Ford. 

Paul Greengrass' subject is John Ford.

The footage taken by Ford and Stevens is gruesome and unnerving, so much so that Ford walked to a French chateau for officers and went on a drinking binge that put him in a stupor for three days, ending his military service. Stevens continued on through The Battle of the Bulge and the opening of the Nazi concentration camps where he realized his job had changed from documenting to gathering evidence—he also had the temerity to re-stage the surrender of Germany outside when the setting proved to be too dark to photograph. Wyler spent so much time filming the crew of the "Memphis Belle" that he lost most of his hearing, and remained close to the crew for the rest of his life. Huston became adept at "faking" footage of war-time action, and his last film on "Battle Fatigue" was banned from being seen until the 1980's. Capra's film of "Know Your Enemy: Japan" was found to be so racist that even Gen. Douglas MacArthur refused to allow it to be seen by troops. 

Lawrence Kasdan goes over the service of George Stevens.

What the film really sells is the way the war changed the directors, as was apparent immediately after they came back from the war. Ford's first film was the decidedly downbeat They were Expendable, Capra made the despairing It's a Wonderful Life, Wyler directed The Best Years of Our Lives, about the struggles of returning veterans, while Huston made his long-planned exploration of the worst parts of human nature with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Stevens stopped making films for years, unable to shake what he'd experienced and made dramas instead starting with A Place in the Sun and, ultimately, The Diary of Anne Frank.

They emerged changed down to their souls and their outlook on life and their art.

Spielberg says he watches Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives every year.