All language subtitles for Five.Came.Back.S01E02.1080p.WEBRip.x264-STRiFE

[Steven Spielberg] When the five
filmmakers got to Washington D.C.,

they were thought of as mythmakers.

They were making Hollywood movies.
They were making stuff up.

This was the real world, folks.
This was the real war.

And now we've got these Hollywood guys
coming to tell us how to acquit the war,

or suggesting how they can make
a contribution to the war effort?

Well, how dare they?

[Paul Greengrass] The relationship between
the US government and Hollywood

was entirely unclear.

[Lawrence Kasdan]
No one had done this before.

There had never been a situation

where you could take
Hollywood professionals

and use them to help sell the war
to the American people,

and to help win the war
by building morale.

And so, they were
really trying to figure out:

"What should those movies be?"

[Guillermo del Toro]
The idea of propaganda filmmaking

is to propagate, to disseminate ideas.

Each of the five men that we're
talking about goes at it differently.

You have John Ford, who approaches it
on a mythical, epic scale.

You have John Huston going at it
almost like an adventure.

Wyler and Stevens approach it
from an incredibly human point of view.

And their experiences
are different from Capra,

who approaches it very much as
a concept problem-solving point of view.

When the immensity of World War II
comes in,

he is given to a single sentiment:
Why we fight.

[man]
From millions of feet of film

confiscated from the enemy
or donated by American film companies,

these men are preparing pictures
to set the war record straight

and to counteract enemy propaganda.

[second male voiceover]
Scream you're abused,

shout you're oppressed.

The world's wrong, you're right.

If you speak it loud enough
and often enough, they believe you.

[del Toro] One of the most brilliant ideas

is for him to use iconic, simple,
super clear animation,

created by Disney, for everyone to read
and see and understand.

[narrator] In the summer of 1942,
the British Army was fighting

to maintain its position
against the Nazis in North Africa.

[man]
The British Army of the Nile

digs in after its withdrawal from Libya.

[narrator] And the US launched
its first military offensive

against the Japanese

with a surprise invasion of Guadalcanal.

[man] Off the hostile shore,

American warships bombard
the Japanese position.

The attack takes the Japs by surprise,

and this wave of leathernecks
encounters little resistance,

swarming ashore.

[explosions]

Official pictures made
by the United States Marine Corps.

[narrator] In September,

John Huston's last film
before reporting for duty was released.

You probably don't share my enthusiasm
for the Japanese.

I don't know.
I never thought much about them.

[Francis Ford Coppola] Across the Pacific

is a kind of early propaganda
Hollywood film

against the new enemies
we were going to be facing.

You guys have been looking for a war,
haven't you?

That's right, Rick.
That's why we're starting it.

You might start it, Joe,
but we'll finish it.

[narrator]
While shooting Across the Pacific,

Huston lost track
of his enlistment papers

and suddenly realized he was due
to report immediately to Washington.

He was forced to let another director
finish the film.

[Coppola] He was married
and having a bunch of affairs,

and that whole mess in his mind is partly
what made him escape to the Army

and join the Army.

[narrator] The Army didn't trust Huston.

A report called him
"Capable and intelligent,

but also self-centered,
with an odd personality."

[John Huston] They put me behind a desk,
and it was ghastly, it was terrible.

What I wanted, you know, I wanted
to be out with a camera in the field.

[narrator] Finally, he received
his first assignment,

on a battlefront
as out of the way as could be imagined.

[Coppola] Eventually, he was sent
to this Aleutian outpost

near the Bering Strait,

which was the Japanese's
closest point to us.

But it was a place where
absolutely nothing was happening at all,

and he was just there with these men,

day after day after day,

just living to get a letter from home
or, you know, playing cards,

and occasionally,
some bombers would come over,

and they would refuel them,
and they would go off.

Well, I wasn't at all self-conscious
about it.

It seemed to me
that making a documentary was...

It wouldn't be any different
than making any other film.

I suppose it was
a somewhat different approach,

in that in the documentary,
I allowed material to reveal itself.

And slowly,
the shape of the thing appeared.

[Coppola] He had that great asset
as a filmmaker,

as he could always write
a fantastic narration,

and he could record it, too.

[man] Bookkeepers, grocery clerks,

college men and dirt farmers.

That is, of course, ex-dirt farmers,
ex-bookkeepers, ex-college men.

Soldiers now, as though all their lives
they'd been nothing but.

[narrator] Despite the monotony
at the base,

Huston came face to face
with the terror of war.

On an aerial bombing run, he saw a gunner
shot dead in front of him.

By the way,
it was to be a propaganda film.

And I'm afraid there are elements of that
that show in Report from the Aleutians.

[muffled voice on radio]

[Huston] There was a little bit
of the hurrah in it,

where we were cheering
our own boys on, as it were.

[man] Our bombs found the target.

[Huston]
There were planes lost on that mission,

but the War Department wanted it to be
a completely successful mission.

[airplane hums]

[man] Nine bombers came out,

and nine are going home.

Audiences were very used
to a sterilized Hollywood war.

Listen, Dale, this is your first time up.
Don't try to win this war all by yourself.

[Spielberg] You know, with John Wayne,

and where the war is secondary
to the heroes who were fighting it.

And so, we see bloodless combat,

and it's exciting,

but it is nothing like the real thing.

Look, Captain Jim! Lookie! Wham, wham!

Termites.

[Spielberg] Hollywood made
a lot of movies about the war.

Air Force, The Fighting Seabees.
They were basically made

to get people to get out of their seats
and write a check.

[uplifting music]

[man] Calling all Americans.

Calling all Americans
to buy war bonds and stamps.

The motion picture industry mobilizing
America's 100 million moviegoers

into a regular bond-
and stamp-buying army.

The esprit de corps, after Pearl Harbor,

of wanting to be part of this

and wanting to be an American,
not a movie star...

[man] James Stewart,
winner of top film honors for 1940,

volunteers for his greatest role:

buck private in Uncle Sam's Army.

[Spielberg]
...is something that we forget.

We forget the fact that Clark Gable
and Jimmy Stewart and many actors,

they flew missions.

[narrator] In the heart of Hollywood
Bette Davis spearheaded

the opening of a popular nightclub
for enlisted men.

[women sing]
♪ Manhattanites can brag of lights ♪

♪ And Boston has its bean ♪

♪ But on the coast we proudly boast ♪

♪ About the Hollywood Canteen ♪

♪ GI Joe... ♪

[narrator] John Ford's wife, Mary,
often helped out at the Canteen

while her husband was away.

[women] ♪ From every camp
For miles they tramp ♪

♪ To the Hollywood Canteen... ♪

[narrator] Although the Armed Forces
were still segregated,

the Hollywood Canteen
welcomed servicemen of all races,

a rarity at the time.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor,

a poll revealed
that half the residents of Harlem

believed they would be no worse off
if Japan won the war.

Their morale became a subject of great
concern for the War Department.

[del Toro] Capra wanted to prove
that this was not just a white man's war,

that all Americans needed to be involved.

[narrator] Capra proposed what he called
a "Negro War Effort" film.

William Wyler, eager
for his first assignment,

signed on enthusiastically.

And they knew very early on that,
used in the right way,

a film could influence
just scores of Americans.

Wyler recruited an African-American
playwright named Carlton Moss

to write the film,

and the two men embarked
on a research tour

of Southern military bases.

[narrator] Wyler was appalled,
both by the way Moss was treated

and by the racism that the black
servicemen he met routinely faced.

In Georgia, a group of black soldiers

told him of living in fear of attacks
from nearby townspeople

and the Ku Klux Klan.

Wyler received guidelines,
not from Capra,

but from the War Department directly,

about how to depict
African-American soldiers,

including: "Play down officers
most Negroid in appearance.

Omit all references to Lincoln,
race leaders or friends of the Negro."

[Spielberg]
Wyler wanted no part in making a film

that would perpetuate this kind of racism.

When he got to Washington,
he told Capra he was out.

[narrator] At a party in the capital

Wyler met the Commander
of the Army Air Forces

and asked for a filmmaking assignment.

He was made a major the next day
and sent to England.

In London, tensions between the two Allies
were running high.

The British were frustrated
that the American effort

had been focused on the Pacific front,

and not on helping them
in Europe and Africa.

When Wyler arrived in London

he ended up in the same hotel
as John Ford.

Wyler was struggling
to navigate Army bureaucracy

to get equipment and crew,
and was being ignored.

He saw the ease with which Ford
was able to get what he wanted

and approached him for help.

[Greengrass]
Ford didn't help Wyler in London

when they were in London during the war.

Really, he should have done.

That was the petty side of Ford.

For a great man,
he did have his petty side.

[narrator] Ford had been sent to England
on his first assignment after Midway

to prepare to film the Allied invasion
of North Africa.

It would be the first
cross-Atlantic military operation

of American troops in the war.

[Greengrass] Bear in mind,
that was very important for Britain.

Here we were, you know, a small island,
we'd been pinned back.

We'd fought on our own for a long time.

[narrator] The Americans and the British
each had filmmaking units

working independently.

Ford arrived in Algiers with a crew
of Navy filmmakers.

But once on the ground,
he learned he was no longer in charge.

Darryl Zanuck,
his old boss at Fox,

was now Colonel Darryl Zanuck,
his commanding officer,

and was overseeing the entire
American filmmaking effort in Africa.

Ford's relationship with Zanuck
was love-hate, hate-hate...

[chuckles] love-love.

[narrator] When Ford was among
fighting men, he just tried to blend in.

In the field,
he wanted no special treatment.

But Zanuck had his own car,
his own entourage, his own rules.

His short stature and autocratic manner

had soldiers derisively referring to him
as "the littlest colonel."

Ford couldn't wait to get away
from Zanuck's control.

[narrator] Ford and his men moved
as quickly as they could

toward the front lines
and away from Zanuck.

In Tunisia, they found themselves
in the middle of a firefight...

taking cover from German tanks
and dive bombers.

[explosions]

When Zanuck finally caught up,

he insisted on pulling Ford
and his troops back,

away from danger.

As the Allies dug in,

meeting heavy resistance
from Axis forces in Tunisia,

Ford and his men had to turn over
all their footage to Zanuck.

But Ford was skeptical
about Zanuck's ability

to make a compelling war documentary.

In Hollywood,
Capra was securing more studio space

for his expanding program of war films.

[Frank Capra] We had installed ourselves
at Western Avenue.

But we couldn't get any furniture.
So we stole it.

I went to Columbia Studio
to steal a table.

George Stevens
was just coming out of the stage.

He comes by, and I'm in uniform,
and he sees me,

and he comes over and says,
"How about me coming in with you?"

And I said, "You just come right over
to Western Avenue,

and you'll be in the Army."

The last film that I did, in 1942,
before I went into the Army,

was a comedy
called The More, the Merrier.

[Kasdan] Stevens, who was very good
at a lot of light entertainment...

[silence]

...felt that the war
was something substantial

that he could get involved in.

[narrator] Stevens told his boss
at Columbia, Harry Cohn,

that as soon as he finished editing
The More The Merrier,

he was joining up.

Cohn warned him not to go,

telling him he risked losing his place
among Hollywood's top directors.

-Here are the keys.
-Where are you going?

Back to California?

No. Africa.

You know, I'd gone so far
with this business of films,

and so I just retired.

I had a deal with the Army
to go right to Africa, where the war was.

I had no certainty
that I was gonna pick up again.

Everybody said, "If you do, you'll be
out of it for three years or longer.

But that might be it,
as far as filmmaking is concerned,

if you're lucky enough
not to get hurt badly."

[narrator] Leaving his wife
and ten-year-old son

was the hardest thing for him.

He shipped out with only his camera,
a small crew and vague orders.

From Washington, Stevens,
now a major, flew to Miami,

then to British Guyana, then to Brazil,
then to Nigeria.

He ended up
on an Army puddle-jumper bound for Cairo.

[Kasdan] I believe that, of these five
directors,

Stevens' experience in the war
was the most intense,

the most life-changing

and, in some ways,
the most impactful for history.

His route to get there
was incredibly circuitous, difficult.

And Stevens suffered from asthma.

He was sometimes laid up.
He couldn't even move.

So, he had struggled to get over here.
Physically, he's suffering.

[narrator] In Egypt,
Stevens sat with hundreds of GI's

as they watched a two-year-old
Betty Grable movie.

He saw the power of film,
even a lowbrow genre picture,

to bring people home and stir emotions
as he never had before.

He kept moving,
through Tripoli and Benghazi,

getting closer to the front.

Finally, he reached Algiers,

ready to become a war filmmaker at last.

When he stepped off the plane,
he learned that there was no war to film.

Hitler's army had been badly beaten
and was one day from surrendering.

The campaign was over.
He was too late.

That day, his diary entry
was just three words:

"This damn war."

[uplifting music]

[newscaster]
Tunis: Capital of Tunisia.

Last great milestone
in the Allied liberation of North Africa.

Thousands upon thousands
of Italian and German troops

lay down their arms and surrender.

The battle of North Africa,

which has cost the Axis
some 400,000 men

in dead, wounded and prisoners,
is over.

The victory is won,
and now the victorious Allied leaders

look eagerly across the Mediterranean

to the shores of Hitler's fortress Europe.

[narrator] As Frank Capra continued
to work on the Why We Fight films,

his ambitions were growing.

Capra's first installment
had been an instant hit

with the new Army recruits
it was made for.

The success of Prelude to War internally
is so great

that Capra wants the film to be shown,
to reach the masses.

[narrator] Capra needed approval
from Lowell Mellett,

who was appointed by Roosevelt to oversee
the Hollywood war filmmaking effort.

But Mellett strongly opposed showing
Prelude to War to the general public.

[Capra] Yes, that was Mr. Mellett.

He thought, "It's too gruesome.

The American people
should not see this picture.

They'll hate the Germans from there on.
Then we never can be friends again."

[interviewer] Did you want people to hate?

[Capra] No...

[laughs]

I did not want people to hate,
I wanted to knock off people that hated.

I wanted to stop that hatred.

And you couldn't stop that hatred
unless you stopped it.

And you weren't gonna stop it
with candy bars.

[narrator] That year,
the Motion Picture Academy announced

the debut of a new category:

Best Documentary Feature.

Capra went around Mellett

and secretly screened Prelude to War
for Academy members,

qualifying it for the Oscars.

Look, if you can survive
the politics of Hollywood,

you can basically survive
any political arena.

[narrator] Spurred on

by the enormous success
of The Battle of Midway in theaters,

Ford screened his own film
for the Academy's president

and suggested that he expand
the new category.

Ford wanted the Oscars
and personally lobbied to get it.

[del Toro] Capra has
this competition with Ford, in a way,

and I think the competition
was seen by Capra

with Ford being a quintessential
American filmmaker,

and him being the little guy
that needs to prove his worth

with less resources, less time.

[Greengrass]
Ford was very interested in glory,

very competitive with his peers,

you know, Capra, Wyler,
and all the other guys.

Well, I mean, he was a glory hound,
was Ford.

I mean, he used to make
a tremendous song and dance

about not going to the Oscars
and, you know,

"Oh, directing is just a job of work,
and I have no interest in it."

I never cared that much.
It's just a job of work.

Like the man digging the ditch.

Well, that's all, you know,
to use his phrase, a crock of shit.

[uplifting music]

[man] Once a year,
Hollywood honors its brightest stars.

Tonight, they also salute the 27,000 men
of the cinema industry

now serving in the Armed Forces.

I'm very happy to be here,
ladies and gentlemen,

once again on the stand.

[laughter]

So close, and yet so far.

[laughter]

[narrator] Twenty-five documentaries
were nominated,

and four took home Oscars.

Both Battle of Midway and Prelude to War
were winners.

At the ceremony, Mellett gave a speech
to reassure the studios

that the government would not try
to insert propaganda into their movies.

This government is engaged in a war

to save and perpetuate democracy,

not in a war to destroy it.

So, the government is not going
into the motion picture business.

[applause]

[narrator] After Prelude to War won,
Mellett gave in to pressure

to release Capra's film publicly.

It was a box office flop.

Audiences were now hungry
for the latest images from the front,

not a film detailing the history
leading up to the war.

[dramatic music]

[Henry Gladstone] US forces make
a smashing surprise attack

on Jap-held Attu Island.

[narrator] In May, 1943,

Allied forces recaptured the last of
the Japanese bases in the Aleutians.

[Gladstone]
Except for occasional snipers,

the Japs offer no formal resistance
to the establishing of beachheads.

Bombing raids almost daily
from nearby US bases

have done their job.

[narrator] The victory brought
renewed focus from the Army

on Huston's just-completed
Report from the Aleutians.

Huston's cut of the film
was over 40 minutes,

more than twice the length
Lowell Mellett wanted.

[Coppola] These were filmmakers
who wanted to do a piece of work,

and the Army wanted a short,
twenty-minute film

that they could show before the cartoon
and the coming attractions.

There was always going to be a struggle

between the administrators
and directors of this level,

pouring their hearts into the work.

[narrator] After being stymied by Mellett,

Huston decided to go directly
to the press in New York.

When newspapers began running stories

about the government
withholding Huston's film,

the Army was left with no choice
but to release it at full length.

They used the same tactics to get
what they felt was best for the picture

with the military
and their representatives

that they had been using
with the studio bosses.

[narrator] But Mellett had been right.

The long running time meant
Report from the Aleutians couldn't play

before Hollywood features.

Released as a main attraction,
it failed to interest audiences.

[newscaster] From North Africa,

former Hollywood producer,
Colonel Darryl Zanuck,

has brought an official film record
of frontline action.

[narrator] Zanuck's film
about the North African campaign

was finally released in theaters...

to withering reviews.

[man] Needlework.

[narrator] Zanuck had turned it into
a blatant exercise in self-promotion,

even releasing a book
about his experience.

His behavior caused many in Congress
to question the use of Hollywood talent

in the war filmmaking effort.

The Americans out there were not prepared,
and they didn't have the material.

[narrator] By contrast,
when the British documentary

about the North African Campaign,
Desert Victory, opened in the US,

audiences and critics were astonished.

The British were pretty sophisticated
at understanding the role of cinema

in building morale and propaganda.

[narrator] Desert Victory not only made
the American filmmaking effort in the war

seem amateurish by comparison,

it also created the impression

that the British were winning
the war in Africa single-handedly.

[Kasdan] You have not only talented
Hollywood movie directors

who didn't really know
what they were doing in this case,

and you have military leaders
who had never made films,

and you have political people
who are funding all this,

and they're not sure what's the best way
to help the war effort.

So, you have a lot of people
who don't really know exactly what to do.

[narrator] The War Department felt that
Desert Victory could not go unanswered.

So the Army turned to Capra
to make another film about North Africa,

to be called Tunisian Victory.

Faced with making a compelling film
without any good footage to work with,

Capra decided to simply restage it.

[Kasdan] There was a lot of manipulation
of these films,

because events didn't allow them
to shoot what they wanted.

So, they would go back and dramatize it.

[narrator] Stevens was still in Algiers
when he received orders to take a crew,

drive tanks through villages
that had already been liberated,

and shell them again,

this time for the cameras.

[Kasdan] When Stevens is asked to do
what he thinks is inherently dishonest,

he doesn't rebel. He does the work
that he's supposed to do.

But I think it impacted everything else
that happened to him

in the rest of the war.

[narrator] Capra then turned to Huston,

sending him to shoot staged aerial combat
in the Mojave Desert

and Orlando, Florida.

Huston followed Capra's orders,

but he knew the recreations
were unconvincing.

Huston thought it was terrible.
He was beside himself.

[narrator] In England a sequel to
Desert Victory was already underway.

So, the Army sent Capra and Huston
to London

with orders to convince the British
to join them,

combining all their footage
into one joint production.

[Coppola] But then, when they saw some
of the work of the British film units...

this was real filmmaking.

[narrator] Huston grew disheartened
with what his war service was becoming.

He felt he'd been part of a plot
to take a strong British film

and destroy it.

This was Capra's first and only
major wartime assignment

outside of the United States.

One night, the air raid sirens sounded,

and he and Huston
had to evacuate their rooms.

That night, Capra wrote,
"The war lost its glamour for me.

Old ladies and children cower
in the hallways.

I was scared, but I was more sick
at the thought of them being mangled.

How far has man gone mad?"

After several months
of tense negotiations and reediting,

Capra convinced the British Army film unit

to approve a joint film
emphasizing Allied cooperation.

[man] On both sides of the Atlantic,
the effort was tremendous.

Guns, trucks,

aircraft, petrol,

water, food, barbed wire, locomotives.

But ammunition alone
was shipped 520 different times.

[narrator] By the time Tunisian Victory
was released theatrically,

the film had been condemned
in a harsh internal Army report

that accused it of attempting
to reenact the war on a Hollywood scale.

It was another box office flop.

In England, Wyler felt hopelessly stalled.

Then Mrs. Miniver opened in London.

It was a moment Wyler had been dreading
since he got there.

[Spielberg] When he got to England,
he saw really what was happening.

He thought he had been too soft
in his own movie, Mrs. Miniver.

It has just been announced over the air
by the Prime Minister

that our country is at war.

[narrator] But British audiences loved it.

Suddenly, Wyler was a celebrity
in London, and within the Army.

He was finally able to get
the assignment he'd been longing for.

He'd make a film
about the crew of a bomber

flying its 25th mission,

a milestone after which
they could go home.

[man]
This is the crew of the Memphis Belle.

324th Squadron,
91st Heavy Bombardment Group.

[narrator] Wyler was urged by colleagues
to fake it using miniatures,

but he refused.

He took flight training courses

to be able to film on the actual
bombing missions over Germany.

[man] The Group Commander,
Colonel Stanley Wray,

steps up to the target map,

and, for the first time,
you learn where you're going.

Sometimes your face turns white
when you find out.

Sometimes the feeling you won't come back
tightens your insides.

The job is to bomb Wilhelmshaven,
effectively and economically.

The enemy is strong, skillful,
determined to stop us.

[narrator] One day, a reporter
for the Army magazine Stars and Stripes

arrived to photograph Wyler.

When he asked why, the reporter told him
that he'd won an Academy Award.

"Well, I'll be damned," said Wyler.

[applause]

[commentator] Irish-born Greer Garson
wins the award

for her unforgettable Mrs. Miniver.

[narrator] Mrs. Miniver won six Oscars,

including Best Picture

and Wyler's first award for Best Director.

Wyler's wife Talli accepted on his behalf
from Frank Capra.

Thanks so much, everybody.

It makes me very happy
to accept the award for Willy.

I wish he could be here.

He's wanted an Oscar for a long time,

and I know it would thrill him
an awful lot to be here,

probably as much
as that flight over Wilhelmshaven did.

[Spielberg]
The fact that he wouldn't allow himself

to be misled into stylizing the war,

I think when Wyler got overseas,
and he got up in a B-17,

and he started doing sorties
with that crew,

I think he was dedicated
to not sparing us anything.

[man]
The wheels of the Memphis Belle

leave the soil of England
for the 25th time.

The friendly soil of England,
with its ordered farms and rural hamlets,

its country estates surrounded
by formal gardens and well-kept parks,

the England these Americans knew

only from the classics
they had to read in school.

Higher and higher, climbing to reach
your best operational altitude:

Twenty-five thousand feet,
five miles straight up.

So high you can't be seen
from the ground with the naked eye.

So high that after one minute
without oxygen, you lose consciousness.

After 20 minutes, you're dead.

[Spielberg] He went on these missions
to show what the air war was like...

and to show how young these kids were
that went up in these tuna fish cans,

where there was no air
and it was freezing cold.

[man] You look out
at the strange world beyond,

reflections in Plexiglas,

like nothing you ever saw before
outside of a dream.

[Spielberg] And there was
monotony and terror,

and then terror and monotony,
you know, so interchangeable,

during any aspect of war.

[man] Morgan changes course
every 15 seconds.

Evasive action
to confuse the flak batteries.

Bomb sites set for correct altitude
and speed,

bomb bay doors open,
crosshairs lined up on target,

adjustments for wind drift made.

[gunfire]

Two more fighters diving
from nine o'clock.

They've hit this sport,
but he keeps on his bombing run.

[explosion]

Bombs away.

If the plane was knocked out
and Willy parachuted to safety,

why, he wouldn't be accorded
the same treatment as other flyers.

[Spielberg] They were afraid of Wyler
being shot down over Germany.

He would not be treated as a P.O.W.

As a Jew, his fate would be sealed.

[man]
The first half of the mission is over.

The easy half. Now to get home.

Fighters at six o'clock.
This is what a gunner sees:

a speck in the sky.

That's a fighter. And then a blink.

That means he's firing at you,
2,300 rounds a minute.

[pilot 1]
Check that B-17, Chuck. Three o'clock.

-[pilot 2] Motor's smoking.
-[pilot 1] Fire at 10-30.

[Spielberg] You know, what really
strikes me in that film, in Memphis Belle,

is showing other B-17s being shot down,

and in particular, that one 17

that was making that slow spiral
down from the sky...

[pilot 1]
B-17 out of control at three o'clock.

[gunfire]

[pilot 2] Come on, you guys,
get out of that plane. Bail out.

[pilot 3] There's one.
He come out of the bomb bay.

[pilot 1] I see him.

[pilot 2]
There's the tail gunner coming out.

[Spielberg] ...where they were counting
how many parachutes were opening,

how many of the crew got out,
how many of those ten survived.

That's one of the most stunning things
I've ever seen.

[pilot 2] Eight men still in that B-17.
Come on, the rest of you guys.

Get out of there.

[narrator] During a mission,

one of Wyler's cameramen,
Harold Tannenbaum, was killed,

when the B-17 he was filming in
was shot down.

[uplifting music]

[newscaster] Somewhere in England,

the crew of a battle-scarred
American flying fortress,

the Memphis Belle, departs for home.

Flying with a new wing
and a patched-up tail,

the Memphis Belle arrives in Washington
right on schedule.

[Spielberg] On the 25th mission,

the Memphis Belle crew
rotated out of combat,

and they went back to America.

And then Wyler recorded
all of their voices.

[crewmember 1]
There's four of them. One o'clock high.

[crewmember 2]
They're coming around. Watch it.

[crewmember 1] Two at six o'clock
coming and diving at you.

[crewmember 3] Trouble at two o'clock.
Watch it.

[crewmember 4] It has an engine on fire.

[explosion]

[narrator] The War Department
worried that the movie was too realistic.

Some were offended
by its rough language.

[crewmember 1] I'm on him.
Come on, you son of a bitch.

[narrator] Others complained that
showing fighters taking evasive action

made them look scared.

But Wyler fought them all the way up
the chain of command, and won.

He just wanted everything to reflect
his experience

and the experience of those young men
that he got to know and love so much.

And then, when the audiences
saw Memphis Belle,

it meant so much to America.

[narrator]
Memphis Belle was a huge success

with audiences and critics,

becoming the first movie in history
to be reviewed

on the front page of The New York Times.

[man]
As General Eaker read the order

for what he called their 26th
and most important mission:

return to America to train new crews

and to tell the people
what we're doing here,

to thank them for their help and support

and tell them to keep it up
so we can keep it up.

[narrator] Wyler was an American
filmmaking hero again.

But he almost missed the opening
of his own movie.

In Washington, he was leaving a hotel

when he heard a doorman call
a taxi passenger a "goddamn Jew."

Wyler punched him in the face.

The next day, he was arrested

and charged with conduct
unbecoming of an officer.

Wyler explained
that the doorman's language

was why he joined the war effort
in the first place.

The Army told him
he could take a reprimand

or face a court-martial.

Reluctantly, he took the reprimand.

Despite the box office failures
of Prelude to War and Tunisian Victory,

Capra's reputation within the Army
continued to grow.

He was now working closely
with director Anatole Litvak

on the fifth and greatest
of the Why We Fight films:

The Battle of Russia.

While Capra and Litvak worked on the film,

the Red Army started pushing back
the Nazis at Stalingrad,

in one of the costliest battles
of the war.

[man] For the first time
since the mighty German Army

started its career of blitz,

smashing into submission
one European country after the other,

that same German Army
came up against a country...

that did not submit.

[narrator] Though it had been made
as a training film,

The Battle of Russia was so well-regarded

that Capra received permission
to release it theatrically.

One reviewer called it
"the best and most important war film

ever assembled in this country."

Capra was also turning out
biweekly newsreels,

shorts and training films
for troops at the front.

[man]
Screen magazines showing the soldier

what's happening on the home front.

GI movies made strictly
for his entertainment.

[del Toro] In the entire canon of
the war films that are done under Capra,

one of the most fascinating things
that is created is Private Snafu.

I just learned a secret,
it's a honey, it's a pip.

But the enemy is listening,
so I'll never let it slip.

It was first and foremost
an entertainment tool,

but it also drove home,
in a very underhanded way, with humor,

the vital principles of soldiering
and living through the war.

And Capra creates salacious, funny,

raunchy, incredibly accessible cartoons

that really connected and resonated
with the average soldier.

[screams]

[man] SNAFU:

Situation Normal,

All...

All Fouled Up.

[narrator] Because the cartoons
were intended only for troops,

Capra was able to include crude,
racy material

that would never have made it
past Hollywood censors.

[man] It's so cold,
it would freeze the nuts off a Jeep.

[narrator] Capra recruited
an all-star team

of writers, animators and voice actors.

To work on scripts for the shorts,
he enlisted an editorial cartoonist

named Theodor Geisel,

better known as Dr. Seuss.

[del Toro] For the final animation,

the competition was between Disney
and Warner Bros. for the job.

Capra goes to the more populist,
street-level humor of Warner Bros.

Eh, what's up, doc?

[del Toro] And he gets Chuck Jones
and Friz Freleng, voiced by Mel Blanc.

Stick 'em up,
or I'll blow your brains out!

[German accent] Ah, what a rifle!

Comrade!

[narrator] There was a notable difference

in the way Germans were depicted
in Hollywood and in propaganda films,

and in the way the Japanese were depicted.

Snafu, bingo-bango!

[exaggerated Japanese accent]
Calling Tokyo! Help!

[del Toro] Even the German portrayal
is somewhat human.

The enemy is Hitler,
not the German race per se.

But Japan, as a whole,
is viewed as a colony of ants,

equally pernicious, one or the other.

The Japanese were often referred to
as rats or monkeys...

and caricatured with buckteeth
and bad vision.

In 1942, under the authorization of FDR,

the US government ordered
over 100,000 Japanese-Americans

to report for relocation
to internment camps.

[man] We knew that some among
them were potentially dangerous.

Most were loyal.

But no one knew what would happen
among this concentrated population

if Japanese forces should try
to invade our shores.

Military authorities therefore
determined that all of them,

citizens and aliens alike,
would have to move.

[narrator] The government was planning

to eventually relocate
these interned Japanese-Americans

to small towns throughout the country.

But the War Department was concerned

that if the Japanese were consistently
depicted as inhuman monsters,

no town would accept them.

[del Toro] And that prompted Mellett
to very, very pointedly say,

"I am not only concerned with these films
helping us survive the war.

I'm really concerned with us being able
to survive as a democracy

because of how incredibly polarizing
some of these notions are becoming."

[narrator] John Ford found himself

unexpectedly confronting
this issue head-on.

[Greengrass] I think he then faced
a real challenge, actually,

which was a challenge
I don't think he'd foreseen.

And the challenge was this:
if you've organized the production,

which is effectively what he'd done
by setting up Field Photo,

you've almost inevitably become
a producer, not a director.

And this came home to him
very, very clearly

when he went off to see Toland's movie
about Pearl Harbor.

[narrator] Immediately after Pearl Harbor,

Ford had been sent to Hawaii
to supervise the production of a film

about the rebuilding of the Pacific fleet.

Ford assigned the project to Gregg Toland,

his cinematographer on
The Grapes of Wrath.

Toland was one of the most sought-after
cinematographers in Hollywood,

a status he cemented with his work
on Citizen Kane two years earlier.

[Greengrass] Ford knew
that Toland wanted to direct,

and I think he believed that he could,

and he went out of his way
to make it possible.

Well, of course, when Ford got out there
some months later,

what he found was that,

far from Toland making, effectively,
a small documentary film

about what had happened and the aftermath

and the destruction and the rebuilding
and all the rest of it,

what Toland was actually doing
was making a full-on movie.

[narrator] Toland's feature-length film

made extensive use
of recreations and miniatures.

He had cast Walter Huston as Uncle Sam,

and angrily indicted the United States
as a sleeping giant

that had failed to see
Pearl Harbor coming.

The film also was full
of the anti-Japanese racism

that Lowell Mellett was working to avoid.

Toland exploited that,
made that a big part of it,

the sort of racial stereotyping.

Watch out, US.

Someday, one of these "incompetent,
stupid little children of the Orient"

will choose you,

and when they get ready to square off,
they won't worry about offending you.

They'll pick their time and their method,

and they'll come over here
and blow that bastion of military might

behind which you sleep so easily
into smithereens.

[narrator] The War Department
was furious at Toland, and at Ford.

It had happened on his watch.
They told him to fix it.

[Greengrass]
Ford realized that, in a time of war,

what the American public wanted
was to understand

and have unmediated
their sense of reality of this conflict.

And what that film had done

was to try and create this kind of
Hollywood semi-fictional mishmash,

and it didn't play.

And what Ford did
was what he did with his scripts.

Ford was famous for taking a script,
you know,

and just gutting it, filleting it,

taking out the flam, the flim,
and getting to the core of it,

the essence of it.

And that's what he did:
cut it in half and made it truthful.

[man] 2,343 officers and enlisted men

of our Army, Navy and Marine Corps

gave their young lives
in the service of our country.

[narrator] In a section Ford shaped to
honor the fallen soldiers of the attack,

he chose to spotlight
a diverse selection of men.

[Tafoya] I am Antonio S. Tafoya,

United States Army.

My father and mother
are Mr. and Mrs. Jesús A. Tafoya.

[interviewer] How does it happen
that all of you sound and talk alike?

[serviceman] We are all alike.

We're all Americans.

[narrator] Ford salvaged the film,

recutting as the half-hour documentary
about the rebuilding of the fleet

that was originally intended.

But Field Photo was placed
under much heavier scrutiny,

and Ford was unsure if he'd be sent
on another assignment.

[del Toro] You know,
Capra never gave up on projects,

and one of the projects that he felt
was urgent to not give up on

was the film The Negro Soldier.

[narrator] After Wyler walked away
from The Negro Soldier,

Capra had reassigned the project
to a different director,

but kept its original writer,
Carlton Moss.

[del Toro] As they go along, I think
Moss becomes the backbone of the project.

He brings not only a perspective
that is needed,

but also a commitment to the subject,

defending what he thinks is important
for the film to embody.

[narrator]
When The Negro Soldier was first shown,

there was great concern
in the black community

that it would be nothing more
than a reinforcement

of the stereotypes and clichés

that were pervasive
in Hollywood films of the time.

Moss addressed the audience directly,
casting himself as the preacher

who serves
as the film's primary narrator.

The gospel according to Hitler.

I'm not going to read all of this,

but there are one or two things
in this book that will interest you.

I quote:

"From time to time,
the illustrated papers

show how a Negro has become a lawyer,
a teacher,

perhaps even a minister.

It never dawns on the degenerate,
middle-class America

that this is truly a sin
against all reason,

that it is criminal madness
to train a born half-ape

until one believes
one has made a lawyer of him."

This book was written 20 years ago.

The plan which it foreshadowed
has become a reality.

[narrator] Audiences saw a portrait
of black America

that no mainstream movie
had ever attempted.

The film was given
a wide theatrical release

in both black and white markets.

The writer and poet Langston Hughes
praised the film,

calling it
"distinctly and thrillingly worthwhile."

Because of Moss' conviction
and Capra's insistence,

the film becomes one of the most
successful American propaganda films,

not only gaining good reviews,

but being praised
as a worthy and powerful film.

[narrator] In the Pacific,
the Allies continued

to push their offensive towards Japan.

[man] The most difficult,
the most dangerous

of all military operations achieved.

Victory at Tarawa stands
as a dramatic symbol

of the growing offensive power
of the United nations in the Pacific.

[narrator] An official War Department
short documentary

about the taking of Tarawa

marked a turning point
for the American filmmaking effort.

[gunfire]

Made with on-the-ground footage
shot during the battle,

it was also the first American war film
to show the bodies of dead US soldiers.

[man] These are Marine dead.

This is the price we have to pay
for a war we didn't want.

[mournful music]

[narrator] Capra wanted to make a film

that was as vivid and realistic
about the war in Europe.

Something that
would show home front audiences

that the course of the war was changing.

In September, 1943, the Allies began
an invasion of Europe,

landing in southern Italy.

[man] Allied troops entering
a town just taken from the Nazis

are alert for lurking snipers.

[gunfire]

[Coppola] Capra wanted to show
an Italian town being liberated

and the people coming out
and welcoming the soldiers.

[narrator] Eager to move on
from their work in London,

Capra assigned the project to John Huston.

From England, I was sent to Italy.

We got to the threshold of Liri Valley,

which was defended by a little town,
San Pietro.

Rain had just fallen,

and everything looking very bright,

and the sun had come out after the rain.

[sighs]

It was... It was quite a day.

There were numbers of dead.

Men dead behind their machine guns.

[Coppola] The town they were going
to do this, San Pietro,

had been bombed to hell.

There was hardly anything left.

The people were hiding.
They were in caves and what have you.

[narrator] The battle had ended
a few days before Huston's arrival.

[Coppola] So, Huston and his team

decided to do this whole
fake liberation of a town

that was already a rubble.

[dramatic music]

Fire.

[narrator]
With the full resources of the US Army,

including equipment and battle reports,
at his disposal,

Huston meticulously recreated
the entire three-day siege.

[Coppola] Huston was extremely ingenious

in the way he decided to simulate
all of what it would be like

if the footage was real.

Cameras getting knocked apart
and going out of focus

and using all that stuff.

The way he would shake the camera
and the way he would have...

even instruct the soldiers,
as they walk into the assembly,

to kind of glance
at the guy shooting, the camera.

In other words, in staged material,

you might think a movie director
would say,

"Okay, just go in.
Don't look at the camera."

But Huston was so smart,
he knew that in a real combat situation,

the young guys would look
at the cameraman who was sitting there.

So, he had them do it.

[man] To break the deadlock,

orders were given
for a coordinated divisional attack.

[explosions]

[gunfire]

[Huston] It had largely to do
with the 36th Texas Infantry Division.

They're a wonderful outfit.

We were attached to them.

It was the story of that regiment
in the operation.

[man]
Our initial assault on San Pietro

had been repulsed, with heavy casualties.

[narrator]
Though the battle scenes had been staged,

the footage of slain soldiers
that Huston had captured was real.

[Huston]
I remember when it was being first shown.

This was in the Pentagon.
We were in a projection room.

The big brass was assembled,

and I realized that it wasn't like
any picture about combat

or any military film they'd ever seen.

But I wasn't prepared for the...
for the shock with which they received it.

There were several generals in the room,

and the highest-ranking general presently,
in the middle of the picture,

stood up and walked out.

Well, then, the next...

the next-ranking general walked out.

And finally, we got down to colonels.

And so they went, one after the other,

until I was alone.

I thought, "What assholes."

The Army didn't like the picture at all.

The reason was they thought
it would demoralize troops,

demoralize men
who had never been in combat.

[Coppola] The generals had felt
he had made an antiwar film,

and, of course, his response was,
"Well, if I ever make a pro-war film,

I ought to be shot."

[Huston]
A couple of weeks, I guess, went past.

And then,
by one of those fortunate accidents,

General George C. Marshall saw the film.

I suppose he'd heard
enough bad things about it

to elicit his interest.

His reaction was exactly the opposite
of everyone else.

Marshall said that they were the very men
who should see such a film,

to prepare them
for the experience of combat.

Well, the atmosphere changed overnight.

I was decorated, and I was made a major.

[Coppola] So, the result was that,
when the film was opened,

it got great reviews,

and they were saying how compelling
the combat footage was.

[Spielberg] I didn't know until years
after I saw The Battle of San Pietro

that John Huston
had actually staged some of it.

I didn't realize that until much later.

When I saw it, I really believed
that it was actual footage,

and that some of it, especially the man
that is shot to the right,

the camera pans just in time
to get him hitting the ground,

I didn't know that was staged.

[interviewer] Did you feel
that you and your men

were in real danger at San Pietro?

Oh, of course. Of course.

It was...under fire
a good part of the time.

[Spielberg] I was disappointed when
I found out that that had been staged.

But I also was very respectful
of the impact that film had on audiences

and had on me when I first saw it.

[Coppola]
I myself am less critical of the fact

that they were saying this stuff
was real combat footage,

and in fact it was staged.

The filmmaker, and a writer-filmmaker
such as Huston was,

is inside the thing he's creating.

So, whether or not it really is
the Battle of San Pietro

or it's the fiction
of the Battle of San Pietro,

in his mind,
there may be little difference.

If you get the essence of the thing,
it doesn't matter whether it was--

There could be a real document happening
during some incredible war

that has less to it
than one of these reenactments,

because cinema is magical.

I'd like to think that all war movies
are antiwar movies.

I made Apocalypse Now,

and I certainly don't think
that's a pro-war movie.

This is for television!
Don't look at the camera!

Don't look at the camera!
Just go by like you're fighting!

Like you're fighting!

[Coppola] But, on the other hand,
when a film has the excitement of combat

and the adventure connected with combat,

it can't help but get those juices flowing
in the audience.

So that, even though you may consider
that you're making an antiwar film,

it's not, really, because it tends to,
if not glorify,

at least enhance the sensation

that makes people be able to participate
in this kind of thing.

[newscaster] Inside Nazi-occupied Europe,

the enemy waits grimly
for the day of invasion,

as, across the English Channel,

Allied forces plan the great offensive
that is sure to come.

Prime Minister Churchill
and General Eisenhower, Allied Commander,

see thousands of American paratroopers
drop from the skies

in a spectacular rehearsal
for the day of invasion.

[Kasdan] Eisenhower decided
this grand invasion,

which had been planned for years,

and which was the most top-secret
operation of the war,

should be covered by film.

[Capra] I got an elite group of cameramen,

and they weren't newsreel men,
they were Army cameramen,

headed by George Stevens.

I think at the time that Stevens
runs into Capra

and says to him, "What can I do,"

he was quoted as saying in his diaries,
"I wanted to be in the war.

It's very hard to get a 50-yard line seat
to something like that."

And the fact is that he got exactly that.

You can't get any more central
to the operation

than to cover D-Day.

[narrator]
Ford received orders to go to London.

While Stevens was setting up
the Army filmmaking effort,

Ford was asked to supervise preparations
for the Navy.

When they realized the scale
of the operations,

Stevens and Ford agreed
to coordinate efforts.

Together, the two men prepared Army
and Navy filmmaking teams for D-Day.

[Greengrass] It was the largest combined
operation in history at that point.

Who better than John Ford to film D-Day?

Famously, I think he told his wife

that he was going off
for a little local skirmish.

[Kasdan]
The fact that Stevens had that wish

is an indication of his courage
and his commitment to the cause,

which he thought was worth risking
family, friends,

career, life.